A Cup of Weird and Wild

The Movement of Noticing

WONDERFUL:
"way up in the sky, like a witch," as defined by Princess

WEIRD:
"to turn, to wind, to become"

WILD:
"fantastically irregular, inhabiting the forest"

The coffee heats up as I watch—mystical, magic, mysterious. It's a simple task I do every day, warming coffee in a small saucepan over the stove. Today was different. I finally see what happens.

How does change happen, in the biggest sense of the word? I have no idea. But the way coffee moves into steam—becoming so hot there’s no other choice but to "yeowp" and become air—that I get.

Today, the steam transcends, just because I open my eyes and I’m open to it. I watch a pot boil. No music, no radio, no distractions. Just silence. And a quiet dog sitting at my feet, still soaked with rain. She has the gift of seeing, tapping into the world when any little thing catches her eye. On walks, she freezes mid-step to listen, to peer into the distance. To feel the wind as we move.

I tip the pot. The mug, made with old earth, waits—inert, but ready. My weight shifts on the wood floor, and steam rises over the flow of coffee. The transformation is subtle. On any other day, I would not have noticed.

Walking to the table, I pass tall windows smeared with rainwater. Earlier, walking the dog, I saw pansies in pots drowning in the downpour, their bright and sunny petals flinching in the tiny rapids. They will dry or they won't. They will die or they won't. There will be more pansies, but not like these.

At the table, I write. My friend Carrie said, “write!” So I do. I don’t go to the store. I don’t clean. I write. I move through fear as it rises. My pen may run out of ink, but I won't. The side of it says, "ink joy." That’s why I bought it. So, let the joy come through—the weird, the wild, the wonderful.

Is that what I feel today? Wonder? Well, finally! Writing in my captain’s chair at my long table, I am wonderful. Or I am “way up in the sky like a witch,” as a young princess once said when I asked her if she knew what wonderful meant. She was right, a mini visionary. At the time, we were putting on a play. A play! How wonderful.

Yesterday’s cold coffee is wonderful, today’s miracle. I can stand over a saucepan, hovering over a bitter brew. As it whirls, I call it to become something else. Steam circles, disappearing into thin air. I see the illusion, heating something with intent until (yeowp!), it’s done. How beautiful! How weird—as in turning, winding, becoming. Or a spell, an enchantment. Or having power to control fate.

If I know anything in this coffee-spilling world, it's that I have control over nothing. Nevertheless. The wind chimes ring outside the window; the wind is changing. The trees are no longer drenched; they’re glistening.

Writing at my table, I drop into something. Intuition. Tip of the iceberg. I swim down to a deeper knowing in the stream that runs below my day-to-day. In this flow, I know who I am. Wild—as in fantastic, irregular. Of the forrest. A thing with teeth—stealthy, treacherous. A fern—curving ancient. A river—always in motion, sculpting immovable rocks.

I am wonderful, weird and wild.

From the river, steam rises and changes into air, into rain, into oceans. I know I won't always swim here, with this deeper sense of knowing. I won't always drop down and notice. I won't always watch a cup of coffee with white hot intensity.

But today I do.

And that is everything.

With a tip of the hat to Julia Cameron and Natalie Goldberg.