Author: Anne L'Ecuyer

Anne is a writer and social impact executive who stays closely connected to an international network of creative leaders and individual artists. She writes about and trades vintage postcards at The Posted Past.

Pacing Around Problems

I walk to think and feel at the same time.

In a small space, I pace. On the phone with a collaborator, I clock steps between rooms as we work out the right course of action. Often, it turns into yoga or dance, stretching and twisting according to the stuff we discuss. Deep breathing when the whole of it needs a pause, holding commentary when my chat partner is onto something good.

One aim for my practice in the new year is to get a short walk in nearly every day, with ample room in my schedule to hike and dance.

I often mention ‘pace of trust’ as a way we all catch a flow together around purpose and power. It sounds nice, but it helps to take the idea around the block. Warm-ups, sore muscles, bad air quality, poor attendance — all factors that affect pacing on any kind of trek.

The social studio makes me sit for a few hours at a time. That’s nice, too. I did mow through my notes last week. Working my way through the slides, the creative tensions are brewing. Maybe they are for you, too.

The Completing and Creating process is about spending a little extra time working it out. Walking is one way I catch my own pacing — and pause as needed.

Geographic Pragmagics

Driving south from Tempe to Tucson on a familiar road, I noticed for the first time two of my sisters’ names on street signs. They weren’t placed there for me, per se. But, any reminder to call my sisters is a clue. Universal or coincidental, it serves.

Later in Tucson, I found myself wandering around the precise location of my brother’s Bike Church brick memorial. I stumbled upon it on my way out of town. Lingering in the last hours of my visit and looking for breakfast, I landed in a local neighborhood where stores were closed and streets haunted by living ghosts, the kind of folks at the center of Paul’s mission.

I walked for a while looking for a broom to brush silt and sticks off the named bricks at the Church, all here to remember but looking a bit forgotten. I saw a school nearby, but I didn’t dare breach the daunting fence or cause a confusing concern with my presence or request. No people were out in yards or welcoming doors open. I had a chat with the shop owner, but alas, no burrito to buy or broom to borrow.

I managed to clean my brother’s space with a tissue and tears. Years of missing him melting into memories, inside jokes, and a celestial conversation nearing on two decades.

All logics are not analytical. Patterns and memories make internal architectures and neural topologies. Maps of a terrain that projects before, now, and hereafter on the people and landscapes around us. The internal connected to the external and situated at intersections of magic, matter, and meaning.

Moving in pragmagic flow is an embodied and integrated experience. I accomplished the practical efforts of my days (Tucson trip very productive!) and ticked them off the list. I also inevitably encountered unmissable magic that improves my perception and experience, sometimes transformatively.

We’re just about to start another loop in the creative cycle. Conversations and quiet parallel play pointing in all the sacred directions and expanding the circle.

One way to locate in abundance is to turn the senses appreciatively to what was, is, and is becoming. Then, walk around a bit.

On the Tucson trip, I called my sisters, had a chat with the divine folks upstairs, cleaned up around me, and left 20 bucks under a rock at the church. Driving north, like magic, the coordinates for this next loop and lap in the journey appeared on the horizon ahead.

Old Tools

I’ve come into a curious batch of old hand tools recently. One my mom calls the egg beater is a hand crank drill that would actually work in the kitchen. Also, a soldering kit and some tin snips. Old saws that tell stories of a different time. Some that still cut wood.

I like the familiar phrases that come from times past, too. Measure twice, cut once. Each day, a task has me whispering righty-tighty, lefty-loosey.

Song lyrics, too. Dad and I made our way through big band, swing, and all the classic crooners. Singing along, I hear all those lyrics again, differently.

Belting out Sinatra’s My Way at a friend’s karaoke night was one of the Completing releases I needed that year. Singing in public meant conquering a lifelong fear. Embodying the accountability of my self-directed path through those classic lyrics was magic.

Over dinner the other night, we talked about the curious metaphysics of cultural transmission. For example, how did the life-saving island wisdom of Bob Marley make it on cassette tape to tiny me in the 1970s desert southwest?

One love, one heart, let’s get together and feel alright

The Completing and Creating prompts often reveal what we say to ourselves. Lately, I notice how what I say comes from what I sang over the years.

Old tools (and tunes) that work better over time.