A Cat's Forehead

A small space will do. Image by Midjourney.

A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.
— Virginia Woolf

Woolf wrote these words particularly about women, arguing for a woman to be able to create any art, visual or literary, she needed both the space and financial independence to do so. That space wasn't just a physical one, but also a mental and societal one. Obviously, at the time of Woolf's writing, this was much more difficult for women than men. Yet, without trying to appropriate an argument made for female independence, the same is true for any artist. To create something, you need a place to work, time to think and freedom from obligations. I don't just mean financial obligations, but things like familial ones, taking care of kids, cleaning, laundry, buying groceries, cooking, worrying about rent and all the stuff that takes up so much of our time. While Woolf articulated this argument so well, she wasn't the first, nor the last to talk about creativity in that way. To do creative stuff, you really do need the freedom to pursue it. Freedom from errands and tedium of everyday life and from other people filling your time with their opinions. You need the freedom to explore. The freedom to get bored and let your mind wander the way it might in the shower or on a run.

For years when I ran regularly for exercise, I didn't really think of anything, but that was part of the joy of it. The emptying of the mind was some of the pleasure, like a less boring version of meditation. They say you can't run from your problems, which is probably something people who spend a lot of time on the couch say. Of course, you can't run from your problems if you're sitting around on your fat arse, but if you've ever tried it, you'd find there are a great many things you can run from. I'm pretty sure I could outrun a serial killer in a hockey mask who carries a chainsaw. Chainsaws aren't light and old-fashioned goalie masks are notoriously hard to breathe in. I wouldn't need a head start to outrun a slob like "Leatherface". That guy would've died from a heart attack while I was still warming up. Also, bill and tax collectors look equally slow and encumbered by satchels and wool suits. So yes, there are many things you can run from, including the laughing monkey of your own mind.

This is something I really enjoy about swimming. I used to get bored counting laps. So bored that I learned a handful of songs I would recite in my head. By song five or six I was done. Then, I made a wonderful discovery. If you wear a fitness tracker, you can ignore any kind of counting and under the water of the swimming pool, the even blueness and muffling of noise, creates a kind of sensory deprivation chamber, and, as in running, a less boring one. I've found there is something about the repetitive nature of right-stroke, left-stroke, right-stroke, breath in, breath out, that it becomes a task your body can do, while you let your mind wander.

Last summer I bought a t-shirt depicting a cat with the kanji characters that are from the Japanese slang for a small space - neko no hitai (like "knee-ko no-hee-tea" roughly, I think), which literally means a cat's forehead. To the best of my knowledge, it's something said to describe a small space, like a small storage space, a small apartment or a small cozy house. For some reason, swimming, in a way running doesn't, allows me a liminal place, a room if you will, between the very real act of swimming and the very unreal act of imagining. Many times I've explored possibilities, outcomes, questions and directions that I can't if I'm walking on a city street or riding my bike. In the outside world, you've got to pay attention to traffic and too many annoyances to mention but in the water, I am, oddly, safe to ignore everything. Underwater, I'm in a room of my own. It's a room like Doctor Who's physics-defying Tardis that is much bigger on the inside than on the outside. You don't need much space for creativity just something about the size of a cat's forehead.