Mettre de l’eau dans son vin
Mettre de l’eau dans son vin. It’s an expression that doesn’t translate well. Literally, it means “to put water in one’s wine.” The sense of this metaphor is that of a compromise, the softening of one’s stance, the watering down of something to make it more palatable.
In yesterday’s post I alluded to some challenges I’ve been facing of late. I’m wondering, today, if the greatest challenge is to let go of perfectionism… to put some water in my wine.
Today, I haven’t quite felt on top of my game. It’s Friday and though I hit most of this week’s work goals, they won’t all be checked off on the little chalkboard in my kitchen. It’s rainy out, I’m tired of the grey skies, there are dishes in the sink, the dog needs another walk, I miss my lover who’s been gone for two weeks (but will be home on Sunday!) and, naturally, I’m on my period. Nothing terrible is happening, but I’m feeling blue. A different sort of Your Blue Girlfriend.
I’ve been thinking about why I started scribbling these somewhat frivolous and certainly inconsequential essays in the vein (though never à la hauteur) of Michel de Montaigne, who, prefacing his Essais, wrote the following:
“… je suis moi-même la matière de mon livre: ce n’est pas raison que tu emploies ton loisir en un sujet si frivole et si vain.” *
What has compelled me to share what more or less amounts to a collection of morning pages?** There is a desire here to share information and circulate ideas and come proper gardening time, I intend to get down to nitty-gritties and how-tos, and there’s also a desire to infuse the world with a little more poetry, a little more, “Oh me days! Would you look at that?” As Keats wrote in his “Ode on a Grecian Urn”, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." I think he was mostly right about that, but part of me finds it disingenuous when writers and creators of online content whose focus is beautiful things like plants and poetry glibly gloss over their struggles, as if the beautiful things they’re talking about and experiencing have succeeded in vanquishing all of life’s difficulties. Of course there are limits, and this won’t be the place where I dump my traumas (that’s what the journals are for!) but I mean to state my intention with these Daily Musings more clearly…
What differentiates these musings from the journals I keep is essentially an intention to invite readers to think along with me. And perhaps a shared thought here or there might spark a real-life conversation out in the world - who knows? A Blue Girlfriend can hope for that.
Speaking of girlfriends, tonight I’m invited to a Girls’ Night, and it’s already six o’clock and the dog still needs her evening walk, so I’ll have to suspend this post here, hang up my hat, mettre de l’eau dans mon vin and accept that I haven’t really said everything I meant to say. There is always mañana.***
* Translation: “I am myself the matter of this book; you would be unreasonable to suspend your leisure on so frivolous and vain a subject.”
** Morning pages - a daily, ideally matinal, free-writing exercise espoused by Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way
*** Actually, not tomorrow. These Daily Musings will be slung your way on workin’ days. Monday-Friday. Chag Sameach!
