What does it matter?
What does it matter?
if it matters at all.
I took myself to the bottom of this
to find what really does.
And what I found, if it matters to you,
is that nothing really matters at all.
But if you want it to matter
just so that something matters,
it first has to matter
to you.
I can barely see.
The sky is so blue and the sun is so blinding on the snow that my eyelids instinctually restrict my visibility to just between my lashes.
The snow beneath my snowshoes is the kind that has softened in the sun but hasn’t yet been crusted over by a north wind, the kind that feels like wet sand.
I fall to my knees dramatically, and they sink deeper than I thought they would.
I am a child again. I used to do this all the time. I seemed to succumb to exhaustion before the other kids who ran back up the sledding hill. The cold air tightened my lungs and my legs would ache so I would fall to my knees, solo, scoop up a mittenful of impeccable, sparkling flakes and hold them close to my face so I could inspect them one by one.
It all matters. And it doesn’t matter at all.
It doesn’t matter. And it matters more than anything.
I have been repeating this to myself for weeks. It rolls around the inside of my head like a gumball in my mouth that I haven’t yet opened my jaws to crack. I am just getting to know its size, its shape, its flavor.
It is true. I had to get to the bottom of “matter” in order to find that it doesn’t. I had to realize that for a long while, I only tended to concern myself with what mattered to some unseen perception outside of me. That what I did, that the way that I moved in the world had to matter to someone else or a group, or the world for it to really matter.
Then one day, I stood in the middle of my kitchen. The floor covered in dog hair and crumbs. The cabinets overflowing with untouched food stuff that I promised myself in the new year I would throw out. I had just left the couch, a worn nest where I spent doomscrolling on my phone because I felt low and flat and tired and had no energy to do anything else.
I had arrived at “nothing matters.”
I was living in “nothing matters.”
I had spent so much time in “nothing matters” until it became absolutely unbearable.
It was here that a switch flipped. It was from here what mattered began to take shape. First, it took shape in the form of self-respect, of care, of compassion for myself. From there, I recognized it taking the shape of desire, of curiosity, of wonder. Which expanded into inspiration, creativity, and me, moving, doing, what mattered, to me.
In order for something, for anything to matter again, it had to start with me. It had to come from me. From selfhood. From my center.
And I still don’t have any proof, of course. That what I paint or write or say makes any difference. When I release my thoughts or my art out into the world, I don’t know how or where it lands.
What I do know is that I am grateful for the creations that others have put into the world. Especially the art and writing that found me when nothing seemed to matter in mine. Knowing that someone maybe felt the way I did or saw the world the way I did, made things a little less dark, a little less bleak.
So I am sharing this with you today, simply because it is on my heart, because it is what I carry, and in hopes that it finds someone that has been to the bottom of nothing matters. To remind you, that it does and it doesn’t, but if it matters to you, then it matters.
So, I’ve been writing…
I realize that a lot of you are here for the art, and I promise you, I’m still painting, all things art are still in the works, it’s just winter and things are gestating and I believe in following ones creative impulses passionately and reverently.
I wanted to create a place where I could write as my whole self — artist, homeopath, human who loves the wilderness and is healing herself. So if you’d like more of that, you can find me on Substack! I am brand new here and still learning the ropes but I am loving the experience and I feel like it’s the beginning of a very exciting adventure. If you’re interested, you can follow me here for more!