2: Soft Charcoal
Soft charcoal struggles across fresh pads,
winestained with laughter.
Do you have a time in your life where everything just seemed to be on a roll? 23 was like that for me. I was finishing university, had a job that was working out and a great student house with four wonderful people.
This time perfectly overlaped with the return of my best friend to my hometown. A startlingly intelligent, powerfully charismatic man. The kind of person who makes friends with everyone they meet and people ask you about years later after meeting them.
One thing I particularly admire about this person is his constant drive to improve himself. Together, we would bounce between new persuits, picking up hobbies and spending all of our time on the current focus, trying frantically to improve.
In this haiku, we have recently taken up life drawing. We're rarely able to find actual life drawing classes, and didn't have much spare money to pay for them even if we did, so're jumping between YouTube videos or life drawing websites connected to the largest TV we can find.
Here we're struggling with the new charcoal sticks we've bought and we're surrounded by sketch pads of questionable figures and faces. We'd focuse intensely for a minute or two on the pose and then compare our attempts with each other, cheering for signs of improvement in each other's work.
Those days were filled with laughter and partying and in this moment, like many of those nights, we'd bought some cheap wine to wash down our efforts.
Without being too on the nose, those days did feel like a blank canvas. We felt like we could become anything we wanted and so set out to try as much as possible. I can now confidently say that I am bad at very many hobbies, but I know much more about them and trying these things opened up the world to us.
I realised that being bad at something but enthusiastic and welcoming to failure as a path to learning, is one of the most quietly powerful ways to uncover the beauty, skill and genius of people around us. You open yourself to new experiences and friendships you would never have expected. You end up with stories that stay with you - like when this same friend, as a result of our life drawing lessons, ended up modelling at a class where only one other stranger showed up, making an awkwardly intense private drawing session.
And gaining these hobbies, skills and the knowledge of them become a currency of connections with others. They become common ground with strangers who share the same interests. They become stories to share with others.
But the path to all these discoveries was support and celebrating small wins in understanding and ability. These victories are often only real when shared. They only happen when we actively create the space for them.
In this haiku, my friend and I are unknowlingly creating that space, only to realise it years later now we rarely get the chance.
Try things you've never done. Find someone to make that space with. Celebrate any small wins you notice. The world will open up to you, and your days will be stained with laughter.
This is a blog reflecting on haiku I wrote years ago. You can find all of them here as I post them. Here's more about why I chose haiku.