For the Birds: This one's about edges

A study in self: boundary, abundance, limitation

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“While living, be a dead man, thoroughly dead;
Then, whatever you do, just as you will, will be right.

~Alan Watts, Become What You Are

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Edge as a place of consumption—and of boundary

There are dozens of reasons why Bend, Oregon is an extra special city for my partner and I, but I’ll share just one of them:

It was a breezy day last fall (I remember the beanie, and the orange woolen vest). M and I were walking along the perimeter of Drake Park, admiring the ducks that swim right up to the edge of Mirror Pond, unafraid. “I’m so glad I don’t drink anymore,” one of us had just said to the other. It was a relatively new thing for me, not drinking, and M was about a year into his own journey. Now on similar paths, we were bandying around this kind of statement with some frequency.

Then, all of a sudden, I blurted out the following:

When drinking was still an option—a possibility on any evening, and with almost any meal—I heard a constant voice just behind my shoulder, telling me something about how I could feel a little better than I do right now. “Right now” meant being sober; and “a little better” meant being, of course, not.

Before, when being intoxicated was an option, it was a state I could always compare my current one to. Which meant—I was speaking at a rapid pace, in front of M and the ducks and whoever else might overhear us—that every single iteration of how I felt could be summarized as, but not as good as I could feel…

Typing this out here, I fear I might be misleading you: I am not an alcoholic, nor did I drink every day, nor did I ever experience some of the harshest repercussions of intoxication, like blacking out. But I thought about drinking, if not every day, most days, and I knew drinking was a way to loosen something in me that felt perpetually too tight, and I understood, through experience, that it was a fast way to deal with a certain kind of nervousness that has always plagued me.

But on the 10th, 100th, 1,000th day of waking up the next morning and noticing that I, without exception, feel sadder the day after I drink, I finally became willing to reconsider my coping mechanisms, and to maybe stop trading being kind to myself overall for feeling a little better this very moment.

The second these words came out of my mouth, we stopped walking; it was like my brain had short-circuited in response to my own self, and I looked over and saw that M’s had clearly glitched, too. We were stunned—literally halted—by the truth of what I’d just said: That alcohol can so fundamentally change how you assess your own feelings. I couldn’t have thought or written or studied my way into the revelation had I tried to. It was one of those moments, creative in nature, where the insight just shows up; floating through the air, it happened to be in our vicinity, and it happened to need expression, which it happened to do through my own mouth.

A fortunate intrusion—I’d had no idea that any of this was true. Now, hearing myself, I understood that it was.

It became a touchstone moment in our individual and mutual experiences of sobriety: That there exists a perimeter to our feelings, a kind of gated border, one that alcohol can manufacture a stepladder for; how it tricked us, again and again and again and again and again, into assuming that we should always want to hop over our natural edges.

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What even isn’t an edge? (a poetic, etymological adventure)

An edge is the outside of a thing—any thing. The place where greeting transpires. Sometimes it opposes the center; other times, it represents it. How can it do both? Edge as both, pretending to be one. Edge as a sharpened place, a heightened place; place where severity lingers.

But it’s also an action, an activity, a mobile space: I edge my body with clothes and jewelry; I edge toward or away from your line of sight. If I’m on edge, it’s like my biggest feelings threaten to exit the container of me. If I’m over the edge, the threat has turned real, my attention splayed, spilling. Chaos. But if I manage to remain at the edge of my seat, my attention stays gathered, funneled into a demanding point.

Which makes sense, because the word, “edge,” can be traced back to the Greek one, akis, meaning, “point.”

Which also doesn’t make sense, because while tracing the one to the other, I first run into the Old Norse word, eggja, meaning, “egg.”

Just when I thought I was making some sense out of all this, I Humpty Dumpty-ed my train of thought. Accidentally turning one edge into many; accidentally turning all my points into wobbling ovals.

Except just when I thought I had shattered all my chances at making sense or capturing meaning, I’m rescued by all the king’s horses and yet another definition: To egg someone on. To encourage someone to betray their own edges.

(Example: “She used to be egged on by alcohol.”)

I guess an egg is an edge is an egg—some real Steinian shit. Fertile, delicate: both. Both, both, both. The most empathetic word. The most boundary-dissolving word. What even is the difference between creating and breaking?

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Edge as the place where our humanity gets shored up

I want to think for a moment about our perimeters.

So many of us, myself included, dedicate a portion of our time and energy to learning the expansive network of our internal, emotional needs, pursuing therapy and other healing modalities in order to get to know our wisest, gushiest, most tender insides. It is such necessary work. Hard, valuable.

Do you know what else is valuable? The edge of your hands. The amount of rocks you can hold in your two palms before some of the rocks start tumbling back to the ground. How your legs greet the lawn beneath you, and where your legs stop being legs, and where the grass begins to be grass. Edges! They’re the first place where any relationship begins, starting with our relationship to the outside world, and including our relationships with each other. It’s so important that I stop being myself—that there is a place where I, my agency, and my responsibility end—so that you (any you: a friend, a bug, a plant, a dog, even a cloud) can begin.

What would it look like to devote ourselves to our vast internal landscapes and, with the same amount of enthusiasm, to our edges?

Or to stop assuming that our limits—those neutral, constantly evolving edges of our ability—can only be sites of failure?

When we read our limitations through the oppressive lens of quality and assessment, we shut down the relational possibilities that exist there. Like our relationship with receiving help. Like our relationship with sovereignty and freedom—our own alongside that of others. Like our relationship to ourselves: How any limitation of our ability is always preceded by some type and some amount of ability.

What would it look like to devote ourselves, with kindness or at least curiosity, to our perimeters? To value our limits because, if you think about it, they define our humanity. (I was never going to be perfect, no matter what choices I made!)

To see our edges not as interruptions of who we are, but as contributions. To see our starting and stopping as equal, reciprocal actions, both necessary for sharing space with others, not to mention for apprehending our earth-bound selves. That I begin, with love. And that, with compassion, I end.

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Good things to know about!

• If the idea of reframing your limitations sent a healing jolt through your body, consider listening to Episode 13 of the Full-Time Weirdos podcast. Cecily and I walk through five hefty, radiant questions sent in by our listeners, including a beautiful one about limitations, self-compassion, and Anais Nïn. It’s a rich, complex episode that I’m really proud of. Give it a listen! We’re on Apple, Spotify, and wherever you go for podcasts.

  • Thank you, friends, for your five-star ratings and reviews!

Ways you and I can work together!

• Starting in August, I have some availability for new 1:1 coaching relationships! My favorite thing to do, as a mentor / steward / guide / and fellow creative human, is support others with getting clear on their creative strengths, goals, and what excites them most about making art. In a slowed-down, trauma-informed space, and over the course of multiple sessions, we excavate hidden superpowers, dismantle old definitions, and work to build a creative practice that is sustainable and values-driven. Lots of new writing and making tend to happen, too.

  • Holding these spaces with and for others is magical, life-affirming work. Clients leave our sessions knowing more about their creativity, having more compassion for how they work, and feeling more empowered to create on their own terms.

  • If this sounds like the kind of support + magic you want in your life, email me at sarah.teresa.cook@gmail.com so we can chat about working together! You can also visit my website to learn more about 1:1 coaching containers—we usually start with a 3- or 6-month commitment, though nearly all my clients renew at least once—as well as my short-term offering, a “Creative Wayfinding” package.

    • Clients who sign up or renew for a 6-month container get a free 90-minute natal chart reading with one of my favorite astrologers, Mal Hasty! Learn more about that here.

A (writing) prompt for you:

• What do the edges of your creativity look like, anyway? What struggles to live there? But also, what thrives there? Spend a page or two—or a solid 15 minutes in your relaxed, cozy mind—exploring your creativity through the metaphor of noticing its edge(s).

• Separately, I invite you to notice one limitation of yours, creative or otherwise, that you struggle with accepting. (My own answer might be, “my inability to write a sustained narrative without resorting to fragments,” or, “how bad I am at taking a bird’s eye view of things.”)

  • Now find the center of that edge by looking at what you CAN do that precedes the limit in the first place. (“I can write! I can articulate the fragmentary nature of Truth! I can zoom in so closely on any single thing!”) Spend some time practicing—this is a practice, which means it responds well to patience and devotion—seeing your limits as the human edges of your capacity; is our individual humanity something we can accept? Honor? Celebrate?

Tell me what the prompt brings up!

Or what inspired / challenged you while reading today’s letter. I love hearing from you! If you’re on the site or in the Substack app, you can hit the “comment” button and share publicly. If you’re reading this via email, hitting “reply” keeps the conversation one-on-one.