Practical magic: bearing witness to where you are
Rhythms and an observable relationship with truth
August 3, 2025
As an advocate for slow living, I’m curious about cultivating the energy it takes to be slow. Is it something that’s inherent within our human being-ness, buried over time only to be revealed with thorough excavation? Or is it something we learn? I have a feeling it is both…and. Part of this query is also an investigation into redefining the relationship with disruption or distraction, and how to tap into the energetic wellspring of ‘being’.
I will say that it does take a certain kind of energy to gaze out the window without being consumed by an insatiable urge ‘to do’. I think the art is in the practice itself. Stillness can help. Imagination for sure. Alternatively you can play with expanding your sense of time and space to encourage flow so that energy can move free of constriction, stagnation, or obsession.
It’s taken me decades to re-learn how to simply look out the window with a contemplative cat-like ease. To lie on the sofa without ‘doing’ anything. What would often happen as preparation is that I’d have a book at arms length, a phone to grab, a magazine, anything! Underneath there was always a deep sense of dread, aka fear. I can’t get caught appearing as though I’m not doing something.
This mind of mine, bound and afraid, hiding underneath a layer of scarcity lingers from cultural and familial patterning. It makes me tense just writing about it. At times, where the worst of this plays out, the sentiment of dissatisfaction morphed into a self-directed fallacy: I’m not enough.
Somewhere along the life-line, if I wasn’t up engaged in some form of activity (cleaning being a big one) I felt susceptible to judgement, criticism, or labeled: UNHELPFUL. This harangue that there’s not enough or I’m not doing enough or there isn't enough stuff is exhausting. And at some point I had had enough.
Hence why I’m advocating for window gazing. It's the medicine of subtraction.
I’m not trying to figure anything out or understand it, just be in awe! I call it my time to think and wonder. And it does indeed take a certain kind of energy. Energy that I’ve enjoyed discovering exists. For starters, now I don’t give a damn if anyone notices.
COVID, launching a small consulting and editorial business, and aging into perimenopause has also significantly altered my perspective on slow living. This may seem like an odd list of qualifiers, yet they are examples of impressionable experiences (collective, social, and rhythmically intimate) that have shaped, or better said reoriented my relationship with slowing down.
Now I’m all about slow. Softening has become a little easier. I’m deeply grateful. Satisfied. And it’s great for when I catch myself in the act of flip-flopping between doing and not-doing. I can dismantle the over-thinking and action with a resolve to rest.
Stillness: to be slow while still interacting with the world
As a child, while tucked away in the back seat of our family’s station wagon, I’d happily observe the stars, the landscape, the buildings, or the people going by. Everything or everyone simply making their way. Being in a car gave my perspective an interesting twist. I believe it’s linked to why I enjoy taking walks or drive without listening to music or podcasts. (I resist the urge to fill up every minute with something). It mimics this dichotomy: being still, while still interacting with a rapidly moving world.
Each attempt has brought me face-to-face with patience. Or better said, the extent to which I can genuinely exercise it. Patience is an ability to participate with activities that have a relatively slow feedback loop. Gardening and cooking come to mind immediately. Depending on the dish or season, one onion may take over 80 days to grow from seed to sweet, juicy bulb. I watch. I water. I observe its life cycle and characteristics. Inevitably I slow down. I have to. Immediate gratification, thankfully, is not in the cards. Caramelizing it for a vegetable hash or linguine with onions may take 40 minutes. All of this being said, I’m on onion’s time. Time that is not able nor willing to be anything other than what it is.
Now I recognize that gazing out the window affords a certain level of patience. Even if it’s for 5 minutes. Consider it situational modification or a form of bearing witness: the practice of using your physical environment to affect, even alter, your emotional state. In order to be equal parts content observer and energetic creator, I make regular attempts at looking out my living room window, suspending judgement, incinerating my agenda, dissolving distractions, and turning down the incessant chatter, all in pursuit of hesychia.*
Going back to patience, it’s required if we plan on excavating this vessel of a body we inhabit. With patience, inevitably, worlds I never paid much attention to reveal themselves. Writer, artist, and teacher Cody Cook-Parrot mentioned in one of their latest Monday Monday letters, “The rhythm isn’t about productivity but presence. It’s not about output but about practice.”
Looking out the window can be many things, presence certainly one of them. It’s also a form of rest, a threshold into slowness, and an observable relationship with truth.
Yours, Erin
*Greek for stillness, rest, and silence and a word I’m really into.
IN THE GARDEN
Beauty surrounds you, because we create it.
A little note-if you’ve been here for a while you know there’s been a few iterations of this weekly letter. What has remained true is my devotion to meaningful connection with the natural world, followed by a genuine attempt to share my ever evolving relationship with it.
The Center Piece will continue to be a space around which to gather, reflect, and settle in. However, I sense a rumbling within. I’m not quite clear what it is. At this point it’s only a sensation, like hearing the rumble of thunder in the distance, the sun obscured by clouds, or the smell of rain prior to its fall.
Tell me, why do you read The Center Piece?
What do you get out of these essays?
What themes move and inspire you the most?
I’m paying attention. And will keep you posted. Much love and thanks for being here.