Living Big in a Small Venue

Blogging at its best creates space for dialogue between people.  It invites visitors to step in for a bit, shed their status as stranger, and learn from each other. 

Sometimes blogging leads to extended conversations beyond the post, such as the flurry of email conversations (the deep and profound kind) between Dick Richards, Dan Oestreich, and me, following our recent posts on age.  I have been wowed by the learning and insights that continue from conversations with these wise and soulful men.

Recently I've been gratified to engage in a similar email conversation with Marcy Goldman over the same topic of life in middle age.  Marcy and I have known each other for several years as subscribers to each other's newsletters.  Marcy lives in Montreal and I live in South Carolina.  We've never met in person.  She is a successful pastry chef and baker with several published cookbooks.  Marcy is also a writer whose essays I devour with delight and sinful pleasure.

The title of this post, "Living Big in a Small Venue," comes from an essay Marcy wrote, entitled Go West Young Baker.  I excerpted a portion of this essay below to highlight what we can all learn in blazing our own trails, knowing we can't all be at the top.  Without further adieu I give you Marcy -

There is no middle class anymore –there is A list and the rest of the world – in a manner of speaking. You are either splatted or saturating the media for your brief expose or a larger than life personality (for good or bad) directing the ultimate reality show: This Life, These Times. For me, as a participant who needs to feel like the creative frontier is manageable, this means hacking off a tiny hunk of gold and mining it with the love and care things that are small but precious deserve. It is also a way to survive, but to also thrive and regenerate. Between not making the best sourdough in the world and Pillsbury Dinner Rolls, there are eons of choices and levels in-between. Knowing who and where you are and what makes you happy (which is what makes you successful) is cogent, savvy stuff. It offers me stillness in a racing world.

Similarly, the frontier of self-hood can be overwhelming – the roles we all have, the hats we wear and the techno era has made our to-do list formidable. What’s great about Endless Possibility and Unmet Potential is that it is creative and exciting. What is bad about it is that you never arrive. There is no finish line and that clamor of possibility segues into a contemporary cocktail – that unhealthy mix of two parts chatter of saturation and one part chaos of stimulation overload.

It’s taken me all this time to figure out a personal solution: in order to feel arrived, I mindfully have opted to lasso only half the moon; sometimes, only a fraction of a star. I keep to ‘the program’ whether it is a spat of domestic tasks or writing deadlines. Not always exciting stuff but it does offer the reward of that sense of being finished with something. Completing something, even small, results in serenity which spawns a bit of clarity and focus. This focus in turn offers a bit of new energy. Now order and focus don’t sound like the touchstones of creativity but they are. I do not have to write my novel all today or bake up every Definitive Butter Cookie all today. The bits and pieces I manage contribute to a mosaic, which becomes a mural. In the meantime, I am engaged fully – and revelling in a certain soulful harmony.

I haven’t stopped wanting to discover the frontier. I just no longer try to chase the horizon – lest I lose my energy or discover it to be, which the horizon often is, a mirage – sometimes, not even a mirage of my own making.  

The story I tell myself lately, which is working (lately) is that I have opted to ‘live big in a small venue.’ Thing is, it was never about getting there; it is indeed, about the journey West of my own spirit. No more huge map with expansive borders. It is now about carefully going over where I have been, lovingly coloring in and shading the places I want to tarry over, making art of the details, not enlarging the outline or challenging the borderlands. 

The greater frontier was never 'out there'. There is no there, there. The greater frontier, resides, as it always has, within. It is the landscape of my own passions and those passions, map or not, I can meet up with anytime I like. I know the terrain like the back of my hand.

Here’s to living big in a small venue, inventing frontiers in your own backyard, and forging your own trail. If I see you on the trail west, please wave. I will tip my toque and bid you Godspeed.  Meet you at the A-Ok Corral, where the biscuits are hot, the coffee is scorching, and there is always an extra place set at the table.

[Photo Credit of Marcy:  Mark Fowler]