FilmOnDeepWater

Skill
22 September 2000 - Autumnal Equinox
Portola Valley, CA                                                                         
                                                                                                            

Last day of summer, first day of fall.  Actually, it is an autumn morning, with no trace at all of summer.  No doubt moments, fleeting moments, of summer will come by, but there is also no doubt that summer is over.

This has been a difficult season for me.  No doubt about that.  Most of the time I have been alone, a bit of a hermit, I guess.  Strange how I don't feel isolated like I did before.  I feel more separated instead.  A distinction that I never thought of before.  Me being isolated is more of a state of being.  In a way it feels imposed.  I don’t think I choose isolation.  It chooses me.  Separation is different.  It is more of a clear choice.   It is something I do with more, rather than less, awareness in the moment.

The distinction is not always as clear as I just made it out to be.  I see that now.  In this moment I feel isolated.  It has nothing to do with geography.  It has everything to do with psychology – or psyche, anyway.  Maybe all this is being triggered by the appearance of fall.  I don’t know if I can tolerate an even deeper descent into the psyche.  I feel like I have already descended too far for too long.  Maybe I will move counter to the seasons and move into action when, or while, the garden moves into stillness.

I have idea after idea for the website.  Could be that I have too many ideas.  I still lack some of the skills I need.  I need some time around writers, to be with people who care about and know good writing.

The isolation must be getting to me.  I keep checking my e-mail – as if the in-box is some determinate of my skill? funny word to write.  I hadn’t intended to write “skill”, but I did.  I was going to say “some determinate of my existence”, but I didn’t.

Turns out that skill has an interesting root system.  Comes from skel, which means “to cut”.  It is from an Old Norse word, skil, meaning “reason, discernment, knowledge – as in “incisiveness”.  And then there is incisive, which means “to cut”.

What have I been cutting away, or not cutting away?  What are my skills now?  All skills seem to share this common element of cutting.  Whether it is the skill of the carpenter, or of the surgeon, or of the writer – it’s all the same.  It is essentially about cutting away all that is extraneous, all that is non-essential.  In a way that is the artist’s skill, too.  Wasn’t it Michelangelo who said about David that he cut away all the extraneous marble to liberate the figure encased inside? 

All skill requires cutting. Cutting away and then letting go of what is no longer.

Being incisive also means cutting away, getting to the core.  I heard on the radio this morning the story of the family in London with the conjoint twins.  The parents could not agree to the operation to separate them because one would die.  The judge used his skill to cut to the core of the matter.  Both girls will die if they did nothing.  One will die if separated.  He decided to save one child.  And now the surgeons will use their skills to cut away the child who was never destined to survive.

In a way each of us has a twin, the one of us who is never to be.  The one of us who is sacrificed so that we may live.  It is our twin from the other world, maybe our spiritual twin.  It is as if one, the one I think of as stronger, is really the one not ready to live in this physical world - she is just not of this world.  And the other twin, the survivor, who appears stronger maybe is just not able to survive in that spirit world - she is just not ready. The twin who will survive will have all the scars of that separation to keep him in touch with the loss of that connection.

Separation and isolation are very different.  The scars from cutting apart the twins show that.  My scars show that.  The skill is in the cutting.