On Reading as Retreat

Ruptures, rebalancing, and readingWeathering by Ruth Allen.  

When I sat down to write a blog post this week, none of my scheduled content ideas felt right. I was going to write a post in defense of “bad” writing advice, but couldn’t bring myself to write it. Of course, I chastised myself. Why can’t I just stick to my plan? That’s what a content schedule is for, though my version of it is so embarrassingly bare-bones it barely counts. I made the plan! It’s supposed to work for me!

But as I hemmed and hawed over this, I started to wonder what that resistance was trying to tell me... and also, I realized I really didn’t want to write that blog post, and at that point, I was desperate for any revelation that would get me to write something.  

So I sat with this feeling for a little while. I asked myself what I need right now. And the answer was: to retreat. 

We live in an age of almost obsessive focus on output. What will you put out on your newsletter? What book should you write next? What post should you publish next? What do you have to tell people? What will your next take be? What can you mine within yourself for eyeballs? There’s so much focus on what we’re publicly and loudly doing. We forget sometimes that in order to generate meaningful output, we need to nourish our input. We need to take in more of the world before we can add to it. 

This is also why we tell writers to read— read a lot, and often. 

And this is what I needed too, not even as a writer, but as a human. I needed to retreat this week and focus on nourishing my mind and soul. I needed to do the thing we’ve become so bad at doing: immersing ourselves in a new perspective altogether outside our own. 

That, too, is productive. That, too, is necessary. 

So that’s what I did. I took a step back (as much as my work allows me), and I read. I picked up a copy of Weathering by geologist and psychotherapist Ruth Allen because the cover spoke to me, and I retreated.

I’d never had a particular interest in geology. Why hadn’t I thought about rocks before? What do rocks have to teach me? I was intrigued.

And, boy, was it the right book at the right time! I was struck by Allen’s meditations on balance and renewal, and by how her background in geology informs her perspective on human emotionality. 

In one of her later chapters, she writes, “All over the natural world—and observable in rock— a tendency towards homeostasis and balance means that things have to adjust and readjust in order for balance to be achieved.” She goes on to explain how the earth maintains its balance: the earth’s crust uplifts after erosion, slopes eventually give way when they pass their point of repose. 

She then writes, “For balance to be achieved, for a measure of stability to be found in that balance, there must be the recalibrating moments of instability. The everyday failings and returns” 

Around this time of year, my depression typically returns— unsurprising given where I live— and I turn taciturn and melancholy. It gets harder to do things, to follow plans, to be as productive as I aspire to be. It also gets harder to be hopeful.   

But reading Weathering felt like a breath of fresh air. Like an exhale of all that was weighing me down. 

All around us are rocks and slopes and mountains, and they, too, break and fracture. Allen writes, “without them [the breaks, fractures, and collapses] there can be no re-balancing of the system, no new life creeping, and crawling and making home in the freshly revealed crevices.”

I put down Weathering feeling more hopeful and replenished. This is what books can do. 

The right book, at the right time, can do wonders for the mind and spirit. We know this, as folks who work in and around the world of books. I’m not saying anything new in this post. There’s really not much for you to take away from reading this other than an encouragement to retreat. So take this as your reminder to find a few minutes to forget about your own work and read a book by someone else who has something to offer you. 

I did not just find comfort in my retreat; I found something that I’ll carry with me in my life and work, a new perspective I wouldn’t have without this book. And yes, also a ton of fun facts about rocks.