Loitering on the edge

Loitering on the Edge    by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Couns., PhD
Nov 2011

     Last Sunday I went to a jazz gig at the Lismore Bowling Club where I reflected, as I always do, on the nature of jazz as being a music that plays with the edge of things.  There are planes and angles, 3D shapes and near misses; tangents and elaborations; edges and precipices just avoided. I like jazz for all this. It isn’t about melody for me, with this kind of music; it really is its geometry.

     In this article I want to explore the edge and loitering around it. I work at the edge of things as a therapist. The nature of the work I do is spending beautiful time with other people exploring their edge. This is a profound space:  a richly textured and evocative geography that merges tears of sadness, love and laughter. It is where discoveries are made, insights found, connections explored, and old ways of seeing discarded. It is where our mutual humanity is met and shared. 

      The edge is a thick place, in the sense of its intensity, and as such one meets in oneself tremendous resistance in going there. Much nicer, it seems, to flitter around on the edge, or loiter with intent to postpone the learning that comes from actually engaging in what one knows needs to be addressed. I know this loitering very well, but this is not a bad thing. I have come to appreciate the loitering. Too often in our culture, we are told to go for the jugular, as it were. To go directly to the thing that we feel called to do, and to regard hovering around as wasted time.

      I think of loitering at the edge a useful time of preparation, emotionally, cognitively and soulfully. The art is, however, to jump when you are actually ready, and not suppress that realization. The art is not to loiter longer than required by your innermost heart.  Things get really sticky when you have postponed  going to the edge and doing the jump in new ways of thinking, or any new enterprise, actually.  Here in the stickiness,  actions are iterative (things done over and over and over, without resolution) and  are classic procrastination.  A jazz musician would be crippled if she/he got stuck. The whole art of jazz is in letting go, but, paradoxically, also returning to the place already explored – and playing with the two states. 

      Many of us know procrastination intimately. For instance, I have been hovering around doing my tax this year and left it and left it and left it. Fortunately, I finally mobilized my energy and went and saw my tax agent who looks after me wonderfully.  I don’t doubt that this a common experience, but it is an interesting one. What is going on in this place of apparent overwhelm? Why did other things suddenly become more important? Why didn’t I tackle the thing that was just there looming bigger than Ben Hur? What became of my usual intelligence? Why the fog around the item procrastinated upon? It remains a mystery to me. Is it the fear of being made look stupid and paying for that stupidity; is it a fear of being accountable; what?

      Artists loiter at the edge of their blank canvas, and sometimes cannot begin. They can struggle. Will this work be nothing more than a pragmatic, “let’s just get this thing painted”, or will this work explore the depths of one’s being? Will this nurture the soul in its doing, its process, or will it be a superficial thing, a mere product that will bring a quick buck? It can be hard to get going, but there is a need to begin. I know for myself that beginning gently, beginning softly, with little steps and nurturing the infant idea till the energy of doing takes over and the work is done. The engagement in the process becomes the food for continuing. The work drops down from a superficial doing to a wonderful enriching working. Time, though, is required to simply allow the process to be. This is when loitering on the edge becomes a rich time. The plunge into the work then is an entirely natural event; not forced, not artificial, but real and exciting. The embryonic idea grows, is tamed and yet remains wild and, in some way, a bit “other”, a bit “self”. 

      I used to paint a lot and when I felt the work done I’d take it to the bathroom where there was a large mirror. I’d look at my painting in the mirror. I’d see the work and I’d see my own face. If I liked my work, my face would glow. Somehow or other this knowing of my own delight would be reflected in the eyes of other people when the work was right.  Thus painting became a reciprocal process, a bit like therapy. The shared engagement in the exploration of the edge, and the playing with it in all its intensity, is mutually held, nurtured, and let go, and new ways of being is discovered and built upon.

Copyright @ 2013 Dr Elizabeth McCardell