Volleying text messages with a friend yesterday, I mentioned that my timeline was still in flux. He responded, “Flux is the only way.” Amen. Recently I’m seeing more and more reminders that flowing, ever changing, fluidity is intrinsic and omnipresent. Agility and adaptability are essential. Essaying to be comfortable with (and even embrace) inconstancy and unpredictability is what I call the art of flux.
Change is the only constant in life.
— Heraclitus
Spoiler alert: today’s post offers no earth shattering revelations or plug-and-place solutions. Sorry.
Furthermore, that photograph above and the photograph below may better communicate my thoughts than the jumbled scrapbook that follows. Again, sorry.
Let’s start with the image above. My former sailboat, Errant, moored in front of Rosslyn, glimpsed — as if through a foliage keyhole — with lilacs (Syringa vulgaris) blooming extravagantly in the foreground.
The second image, almost the same as the first, expands the frame and widens the view. It includes the boathouse, a sliver of dock, and more lilac blooms.
Both photographs were taken on June 9, 2019. Five years ago today. Slightly less than two years after snapping these pictures I would sell Errant to a nice family from Vermont. The sailboat had not been for sale. But the offer found me, and I realized it was a good time to let go. Time to find another boat. (I’m still looking.)
Boats come and go, if we’re fortunate. Like wind and waves. Lilac blooms. High lake levels that threaten the boathouse. Low lake levels that require moving the dock into deeper water.
What am I trying to say? Where am I trying to go? Sailing is a sport, a lifestyle, a mindset, an art of flux. As is a boathouse. Blooms. Rising and falling water. Seasonality…
Helming 6-tons of home, vessel, food, and plans into a stiff chop and a swift blow is one of my “happy places”, as the saying goes. A plan and an itinerary but also a comfortable awareness that circumstances and conditions could shift unexpectedly, that sailing by definition presupposes a state of fluidity and flux from undocking (or untethering) to setting anchor or returning to harbor.
To some degree this euphoric state is present every time I set out in any boat, any journey, any transition. Our seasonal migration between the lush shores of Lake Champlain and the high desert southwest is one of these undocking rituals. A setting out. An ending. A beginning. Closure. A fresh start. A new adventure. Another chapter. Seasonality writ large…
(Source: Undocking)
I’m failing to find my mark. But still endeavoring to demystify the common ingredient in our coming to, and departing from, Rosslyn. The connective tissue of our Rosslyn lifestyle itself…
The art of life lies in a constant readjustment to our surroundings.
— Kakuzo Okakura (Source: The Book of Tea)
On the one hand, this property is timeless, consistent and enduring, guiding and nurturing for two centuries. But on the other hand, there are so many elements of life at Rosslyn that keep us in tune with a perennial cycle of transition, including seasonality, lake levels, rising and falling, planting and harvesting, boating, etc.
We’re on the cusp of a perennially bittersweet transition. One among many. A seasonal migration mid a monsoon of transitions. Such flux. Such disconcert. Unsettled and evolving. If you’re curious, comfortable with unpredictability, inspired by inflection, then I invite you to join us. I’ll be waxing romantic-but-honest in the days and weeks ahead. Change, inside out, for the hale of heart. Bumps, bruises, and blemishes. But also predawn profiles emerging out of the obscurity of night; stark silhouettes and crystal clarity; the beginning of the end of a familiar, comfortable chapter and the end of the beginning of a still-enigmatic and wonder-filled new chapter. I will stumble. But with your patience, your guidance, I will get up again. And I will emerge on the other side, ready.
(Source: Predawn)
What is this art of flux? A receptivity to, and even courtship of, mindset shifts, allowing for meaningful change by experimenting whimsically. “What if?!” I think it’s a matter of tapping into our inner child, cultivating our innate curiosity, challenging and questioning conventions, sometimes breaking free from those conventions, flexing and stretching our potential in the interstices. Pro protean places. Overcoming obstacles in new ways, evolving habits, iterating, and innovating. Creating questions that discomfit confidence in existing answers, de-angsting uncertainty. Familiarizing myself with the sorts of growing pains that reassure me that I am moving forward despite the inevitable second guessing and uncertainty of growth.
Transitions. Flux. Liminality. Interstices. Inflection. Evolving.
To remain nimble amidst unpredictability and unforeseen challenges, optimistic astride setbacks and failures, innovative and creative under duress. And to navigate gratefully and passionately at all times.
(Source: Transitions)
The art of flux demands humble gratitude, and grateful humility. A lesson often relearned. And passionate pursuit of learning. Living. Growing. Becoming.
Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.
— Lao Tzu
Flow forward. And sometimes fall back. Flow and ebb.
I’ve lost control of this post. If I ever had it. A will unrealized. A scrapbook smash-up!
Fusion. Collage. Combinatorial creativity… It’s been immensely satisfying to help catalyze the morphing. Every day there are more happy accidents. They’re not all tidy or comfortable. Sometimes there is friction and frustration. Sometimes fission in place of fusion. But we’re in a flow state that, like an undertow and a strong surface current, are pulling us forward. Where? Too soon to say. But creative collisions and happy accidents suggest we’re trending in the right direction!
(Source: Creative Collisions & Happy Accidents)
The art of flux does not exclude accidents. Sometimes smashups are the vital seeds of change I didn’t know I was looking for in the first place.
To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.
— Henri Bergson
Again and again. Fluid. Protean.
In the midst of movement and chaos, keep stillness inside of you.
— Deepak Chopra
Sorry if I’ve left you with more chaos and stillness today. If so, return your the photographs above. They’re all you need.
What do you think?