What is Besieging You? Or, How the Onslaught Became My Memoir, Boundless, and Life Turned into Art

In response to the parade of sorrows and disasters, I am tempted to form a Mercury Retrograde support group. Instead, I turn to poetry.

Moonrise over Sandia Mountains. There is beauty, even during the onslaught of Mercury Retrograde.

I am ever-so tempted to send out a call for a Mercury Retrograde support group, given the onslaught of trouble this month, but instead, I am turning to the poet David Whyte’s essay, “Besieged,” from his Consolations collection.

Plus, wouldn’t that be an exercise in supreme frustration—to attempt to get a Mercury Retrograde support group going? We already know that all the technology would fail and all those needlessly suffering people would never be able to match up their Mercury-disrupted schedules. Then we would have a wound on a wound and have to choose trauma therapy over peer support.

A senseless idea, that. I turned to a poet.

My thought here is maybe you feel besieged, too, much of the time, as
David Whyte writes in the opening line of his essay, and this post may give you some relief. 

While this month, I seem to be responding to a parade of sorrows and disasters, I can also see that the problem is not about tarantulas or broken cars. The problem is that once again, I’m being asked to be agile, be in the midst of it, find the path again to rejuvenation.

And rejuvenation is what I have made a practice of since the events I depict in my forthcoming memoir, Boundless, to be published Sept. 4, 2024, by Atmosphere Press.

My symphony and my siege

Here is the particular flavor of my besiegement, so that you see the whole symphony that has captured my attention and turned me back to the practice I know well. 

1. On the first day of Mercury Retrograde, I got locked out of my primary email for two hours, the one I’ve used since my first book was published in 2003 and is my primary business email. This shut my whole show down for hours. No one at Microsoft would help me. I was sent into the endless loop of chatbots to a land curiously uninhabited by helpful humans with a heartbeat.

2. I watched a veterinarian stop a heart. It came time for us to say goodbye to Snowflake, the sweet-hearted bichon frise who was like the third child in the family. Through her tears, my 24-year-old daughter told me, “This is the end of my childhood.”

3. I bought a pet casket.

4. Someone close to me unleashed life-crushing words that I don’t know if I can ever forget. It wasn’t a surprise—this person can never see me—but those words felt fatal to our relationship.

5. I dug a grave. Together with my daughter, her boyfriend and her father, we carved out a five-foot deep hole by the four-wing saltbush where the quail lay their eggs. Snowflake’s great daily delight was keeping an eye on those quail and their babies. 

6. The end came for the Prius, for which I have a crazy love that I can explain to no one. My mechanic has left no stone unturned in Canada, the United States and Mexico for the rare and extremely expensive part that would save it. There is no solution anywhere to be found in all of North America.

7. My heart broke to hear my daughter say, “Snowflake was like my daughter. And she was my guardian angel.” It was a blessing to hear that my daughter has been so lucky that from age 7 to 24, she has started out her life with a guardian angel. That is precious.

8. I found a tarantula in my kitchen, which is what kicked off this whole conversation. And there is nothing like a poisonous desert spider hanging out by the fridge to make you feel besieged.

My well-worn copy of Consolations, by David Whyte

Instead of a to-do list, make a not-to-do list

Instead, though, we can see besiegement as an invitation to live and thrive in the midst of it all. 

When I feel crowded upon, I remember that most of us feel besieged all the time—by random events that feel impersonal; by technology that feels like it’s being mean to you and only you; by heartless people who don’t think before they speak; by the necessities of life such as having to maintain a home or a car, when it seems the odds are against you unless you succumb to frantic consumerism.

Or, by parenting, by participating, by creative possibilities. Things you invited in.

Whyte notes that we can even feel besieged by our successes, something we set in motion years ago and has become the container (and the necessity) of our lives. 

When we feel besieged, we want the world to go away. If it won’t go away, then we want to go away.

Here is what he offers in his essay: “If the world will not go away, then the great discipline seems to be the ability to make an identity that can live in the midst of everything without feeling beset.”

Instead of beginning your day with a to-do list, start your day with a not-to-do list, he writes.

“Beginning the daily conversation from the point of view of freedom and being untethered allows us to re-see ourselves, to re-enter the world as if for the first time,” he adds.

With fresh eyes. With agility. With no tether to the past days.

Hello, it’s you -- what’s new?

Since the year of the events that take place in Boundless, my forthcoming memoir that is a road trip to rejuvenation, I have placed this in my practice field. More and more, instead of acting from a place of “oh, that again!” I act from a place of, “Oh, hello, it’s you! What’s new?”

The test question for this practice is: If I toss out yesterday’s to-do list and I halt the old story, I don’t have to keep telling it and I don’t have to keep acting from it. Then how would I see today?

Does anything that happened in your family of origin need to determine what happens next?

Does any way a relationship ever ended need to guide how your relationship is now?

“To lift the siege, we do best for our children, but then, at the right time, send them off with a blessing, no matter their perilous direction,” writes Whyte. “We run a business while remembering, as the overhead grows, how the enterprise was originally our doorway to freedom.”

Another horizon beckons, and if you shed the old stories and you see with fresh eyes, you realize that we have to start over—many times over.

Stand in the breach—it’s where hope and beauty live

In Boundless, I got good at starting over. Its original title was, “You’ve Gone Too Far,” which could mean several things: 

1. Amid the onslaught of perils, I felt besieged. Too many violations, too much stripping away of my identity—it had all gone too far. 

2. Or, it could mean, that having burned away the outer layers of my identity, I knew my True Self, and when I looked at going back, I realized I’d gone too far. I was beyond that old False Self.

We can only find that in the midst of things, or nel mezzo, as Dante said. We don’t find it by holing up or hunkering down. We don’t find it by standing outside with protective objectivity and making a to-do list that will save our old selves so we don’t have to start over. We have to stand in the breach. That is where we create new hope and beauty.

What’s saving my soul right now

Poetry. Unspeakable beauty. Letting life touch my bare skin.

You’ll see I mention the poet David Whyte early and often. That’s because he is the best thing going on Substack. So check it out, and think about coming to his next Three Sundays series in May, “Breakthrough: Finding the Narrow, Creative Road Between Crazy and Brilliant.”

How can you learn to be boundless?

What is besieging you? What new horizons are calling you? What is keeping you tethered? Let’s expand the conversation. 

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1AV_Z4yOdLOep5w_0-tUU5x4Nz04-osiRcUiKkG6xajI/edit

Join my pre-order list to be the first to find out when Boundless is available by signing up for my mailing list at www.carolynflynn.com.