April Newsletter
The Empty Space, Flamingo Estate, and Trusting the Unfolding
A few weeks ago, I bought a new concealer; after using it for a while, it needed to be sharpened. For a few days, I researched several websites claiming they offered the best one, one big enough for the extra-large size of the concealer I had purchased.
I don’t know why I was being so specific about something which cost ranged between $3.75 and $8. I could not find one that I ‘trusted’. So I postponed the purchase.
When I returned from Hawaii, as I cleaned my make up drawer, I found an old sharpener that was the exact size of my concealer. To tell you the truth, I had seen that sharpener before, but the concealer didn’t seem to fit.
During my online research, I had seen a video that showed the presence of a little ring around the bigger hole in the sharpener, that had to be removed, in order to accommodate larger pencils.
When I returned from Hawaii, on April 2nd, I removed the little ring from my old sharpener and, not surprisingly, I was finally able to sharpen my concealer pencil without ever making the purchase.
But we all know that this story isn’t about whether I purchased a cosmetic pencil sharpener or not…
During my vacation in Oahu, I purposely spent several hours a day without looking at the phone. It took me almost the entire vacation to see the change my decision would bring.
On our last day, Ben and I took turns to spend some time in the adult-only pool, which was located in the most beautiful and quiet corner of the property.
On that last day, as I looked at the reflection of the sun on the ocean, and at the tall palm trees swaying, seemingly following the rhythm of the soft waves, I meditated. It was around 5:00 in the afternoon. I thought about my friend Mo, the one who has recently passed. I closed my eyes. The soft music playing in the background didn’t bother me, all around seemed silent, even though there were people in the pool.
I felt something.
I began to think about an answer Catherine had given me earlier, as we played in the water, and that had filled my heart with pure magic, with the tangible essence of her being.
I felt something, and I smiled.
I felt something and smiled because I had allowed space for something to be felt, space for smile to appear and stay on my face, unafraid of being seen by the many people in the pool.
I had not been on Instagram for hours, I had not been searching for the best sharpener, or doom scrolling until jealous, resentful, and angry.
I have been having a sense of this for a while, but never like that day, April 1st at 5:00 in the afternoon, did I face my instinct to fill to the brim every other second of my waking time. I don’t know why I have seemingly lost my natural fascination with the present moment; I don’t know why I allowed space and time to shrink, disappearing before my eyes. This problem with denying space, however, is that I also deny the gifts that space brings.
When Catherine tells me that she is bored I say:
“How exciting! I can’t wait to see what you do with it!”
I, on the other hand, retreat from it as from skinny jeans. I pick up the phone as if it were a cigarette, I work out, work, pretend-work; I look for a sharpener that I will never buy, send emails to grasp for more, organize what is perfectly fine disorganized, or plan what would be perfectly acceptable unplanned.
I run out of space, time, breath. There is no empty space, and without empty space nothing can happen.
Something amazing did happen a month ago, when I inadvertently allowed “empty”space between action and result to unfold.
Someone from Flamingo Estate had seen my cookie mixes in a store, contacted me, and showed interest in featuring them in one of their beautiful subscription farm boxes.
So, like I always do, I prepared a tasting and offered samples.
I had sold my my mixes to the store where Flamingo Estate saw them just a few days before, and I had gone about my day thinking the sale wasn’t enough:
“They’ve only bought twelve; it’s insignificant.”
I remember that day very well: after delivering the mixes, I had gotten in the car to pick Catherine up from school:
“Not even $100, how will this ever be a successful business?”
I wasn’t angry or demanding; I was worried and confused on what to do next. I wish I could write and confused on what would come next, but I was still in the ‘do-do-do’ frame of mind, the day I sold twelve mixes.
I drove for approximately 30 minutes. I stayed with the feeling of ‘not enough’ for approximately 30 minutes, changing three freeways, just driving, and thinking, and feeling. No phone, no weights to lift, no emails to send, no sharpeners to buy.
On May 2nd, a huge quantity of my cookie mixes will be featured in the new Flamingo Estate’s Regenerative Box!
A couple of Sundays ago, Catherine and I went on a hike.
Almost every plant and flower we walked by had ladybugs on their leaves, and Catherine was so fascinated and happy to see them, that when she saw one on the path I asked:
“Do you want it on your hand?”
She was thrilled as we kneeled down, motioning her finger close to the ladybug. She kept moving her finger, however, and the ladybug seemed confused and tried to avoid the obstacle. So I put my finger on the ground, and I kept still. With no other place to go but a sturdy hand, the ladybug tiptoed onto my hand in no time, and then smoothly went onto Catherine’s.
The strong finger was the ladybug’s only path, and she took it.
My friend Mo, used to say:
“Trust the unfolding, Alicia”.
That’s how she called me…
The ladybug had no other option but to trust the unfolding.
On April 11th, 2018 I wrote an essay about Ma, the Japanese term for negative space, an interval or emptiness in space. Ma is the time and space that life needs to breathe, to feel and connect. Ma is the space between the ceiling and the floor, without which there wouldn’t be a room. This is a beautiful concept that can be applied to many aspects of life.
From the essay:
As I kept on walking, I looked at Catherine’s perfect eyes, finally closed, her cheeks now relaxed, and her tiny right hand resting beneath her chin. I also saw a bird bathing in a puddle of muddy water residual from the recent rain, pink flowers I tried to guess the name of, small sunflowers painting lawns with dots of yellow, and magnolias, with their creamy, glossy leaves.
As I kept on walking, I tasted the saltiness of a drop of sweat mixed with the Apricot La Croix I was drinking, not really sparkling any more, but very refreshing as the temperature rose. “This is Ma” I thought. In fact, I had been walking in that “empty” space between the grocery store and the house, the essence of the journey, the portion of street where the inspiration to write this came
On April 11th, 2018, I was ready for my first understanding of how important the empty space is. I was a young mother (Catherine was four months old), I was tired, I was in search for a place in the world, I was confused and hungry for recognition.
Was what happened a month ago with Flamingo Estate a lesson in trusting that things happen when they have the space to unfold? Had I been compulsively looking for a sharpener to avoid uncontrolled space to just be?
I didn’t know Mo in 2018. I didn’t trust the unfolding because there was no room for anything to unfold.
But I can see now that I had opened a door, gained an inch of possibility.
In being aware of the empty space between the [now closed] Whole Foods on Ventura Blvd, and our old house on Shirley Avenue, I had planted a seed. The road would be uphill, literally (it was a steep, long, uphill walk) and figuratively, but today I have harvested my firs crop.
Today, trusting the unfolding feels the most empowering and freeing thing I have ever done.
See you next month, but before I leave you, if you can, please consider donating to Wine & Eggs Go-Fund Me page. This shop is a treasure, and the owner is struggling to stay afloat. It would be a real shame for such a gem to close down. Monica, the owner, was the first one to buy my cookie mixes; she is special, her store is special.
Thank you.
Alice
Beautifully stated and so much more impact to listen to you telling this story. It’s interesting that sometimes filling space can calm down anxiety for a while by turning down the noise in our heads with distraction, but the downside of using that tactic is that you also disengage too often from your gut instincts and intuition. Those things live in that open space and when you go too long without getting in touch with your inner voice, you dull that important connection which I think can cause you to stop trusting yourself which opens the door to putting other people’s opinions and feelings ahead of your own. I feel so sad that many children today never seem to have that wide open unstructured space that many of us were gifted with. I never understood childhood friends that would say they were bored when there were so many ways to be creative with your free time. So much creativity and possibility are brought to life in the space between.
isn't it fascinating how, 99% of the time, we often already have what (we think) we need?