Slowing down, getting small

After the Nashville shooting, taking some time to process, little by slow.

‘Small is all’ is on display at Austin Creative Reuse, where you’ll find this mosaic, made from thousands of bottle caps, toys and buttons.

It’s been a heavy week, with the Nashville school shooting and, closer to home, the migrant center fire in Ciudad Juarez and all the awful bills coming out of this year’s legislative session.

It’s a lot to handle.

I’m learning that when it feels like things are getting to be just a little too much, which is at least a few times a year at this point, I have to do things with my hands. Pull weeds. Play piano. Match every last loose sock in the house. 

Sometimes, I use those hands to write, and sometimes I use those hands to sew.

I remembered that one of my online quilting friends makes these tiny quilts that are meant to fit into a pocket or a wallet.

Then I thought about Annie Lamott and her one-inch picture frame, and adrienne maree brown’s “Small is all,” the first of nine principles in Emergent Strategy. (Scroll down to read all of them.)

To get through this week, I was going to have to go small.

No, mini.

I found an online tutorial, threaded my needle, picked out some scrap fabric and slowly started stitching together these 1-inch pieces of fabric. Instead of using an iron, I used by fingernail to press the seam.

I never baste, but here I was, making small invisible stitches to hold down a seam that was only a few millimeters wide and that no one would ever see. I started thinking about the friends I wanted to give these little quilts so, and my energy shifted from anxious about what news might happen next into a sense of generosity and connection.

About an hour after I started, I was whipstitching the last edge of these tiny little treasures, made from well-loved scraps of clothes, that are small enough fit in your palm.

As I stroked the front, I noticed that the hand-stitching them gives them a different texture than the machine-sewn work. It’s almost as if our hands can perceive the extra fingerprints that our eyes cannot see.

In all her work, brown — whose most recent book, Maroons, a fictional book in her Grievers series, came out in February — asks us to imagine what happens if each of us takes on these intentional small actions, these little projects that teach us about adaption, the smallest step toward justice? And to keep doing actions each day?

From brown’s poem: if you can’t see the small

if you can’t see the small
you miss the whole miracle
it is all moments nearly missed, private,
impossible to perform, or
perfectly acted, context and all
moments of faith hit the surface and change it
shivering us open
to love
to our ridiculous longings

My ridiculous longing? To live in a world free of gun violence and oppression against women and queer and Black and brown people. 

When that longing feels hopeless, I seek out exercises like this one to remind me of what I know.

In this case, that the large is a reflection of the small.

When I catch myself bearing, fighting and growing weary of the world’s problems, it really helps to find whatever my “small” is at the moment. 

What’s the smallest detail I can notice about the textures, smells, sights and sounds around me? 

What if I spent 5 minutes watching the birds in the trees outside my window?

Can I leave my phone alone for just one more minute? 

What’s the shortest email I could send to express my rage to lawmakers who represent me? 

Can I let that hug with my child linger just a few seconds longer? 

Can I find the space between my breaths? 

When my “small is all” practice is present, satisfaction is within reach.

I write shorter to-do lists.

I stop overexplaining myself and criticizing others.

I enjoy “just for today.”

I find what I’m looking for, in part, because I stop looking.

So, with that, I’m going to go back to my quilting and my resting and my quietly pushing through the immense pressures of being a human. (I’m actually writing this from the cafe next to the mechanic shop, where my car is getting fixed.) 

But before I go, here are the rest of the principles from Emergent Strategy, which adrienne maree brown describes as “a strategy for building complex patterns and systems of change through relatively small interactions”:

1. Small is good, small is all. (The large is a reflection of the small.)

2. Change is constant. (Be like water.)

3. There is always enough time for the right work.

4. There is a conversation in the room that only these people at this moment can have. Find it.

5. Never a failure, always a lesson.

6. Trust the People. (If you trust the people, they become trustworthy.)

7. Move at the speed of trust. Focus on critical connections more than critical mass — build the resilience by building the relationships.

8. Less prep, more presence.

9. What you pay attention to grows.

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As part of my “feel better about the world” plan this week, I went to Austin Creative Reuse, a store that’s like a Goodwill for crafting supplies.

A friend of mine from childhood just started one of these in Springfield, Missouri — so proud of you, Re! — called Arrow Creative Reuse.

Austin’s art supply thrift store has been around since 2015, when it first opened in the Linc. By 2020, the volunteer-run store had outgrown its first home, so it moved to a bigger place at 2005 Wheless Lane in Northeast Austin. It now has a mix of paid staff and volunteers who keep the place impeccably organized.

I found the most delightful fabrics that I probably didn’t need and a few sewing notions that I did, but it was taking a small bit of time to browse the supplies and nourish my creative spirit that — again — made the biggest difference in my week.

Not a bad way to spend $30 and support a non-profit that helps so many artists bring their own dreams to life.

I hope you all are taking good care of yourselves, as always. My aim is for this newsletter to remind you of something you already knew or give you a new perspective on something you didn’t.

I learn so much as I write it, and I’m so grateful for the opportunity to do so.

Thanks for all your support.

We’re in this together,

Addie

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SXFC: South by Fire Cider

A father's gift: Enduring curiosity