As this latest virus begins to wane, I am coming back to things. I feel like I’ve been away for many months even though it was only a week. There is something about fevers, the middle of the night, and the sensation of not getting enough breath that leaves me unsure on my feet. Or maybe that is just this moment?
This morning after I wiped the milk, the snot, and the trail of an apple that was scrubbed across the counter down I did some more more unpacking. And as I often do I listened to ten minutes of the news.
Ten minutes is enough.
I heard the election results from yesterday and felt some relief at this country’s strange moment.
And then I heard the rest of the news about the ongoing invasion of Gaza, the way life is abstracted into a set of numbers, strategic events, whether something is humanitarian or not.
And then when I tried to breathe deeply I coughed and coughed and coughed some more.
I called my reps again. I signed what I could find to sign. And I sat down and thought about what it felt like after the World Trade Center attacks, how abstracted and monstrous it was. I thought about how a few times a year I still hear people tell the story of where they were around September 11. Many of them New Yorkers. Many of them with lives that intersected immediately with those buildings.
I don’t know about you but I am grappling with where to find footing. So I thought that would be what I think through with you today.
Because I am so lucky to know so many of you deeply-valued people I have watched and participated as we struggle towards the worlds we imagine. This moment is here for that too. Let’s do what we can here. We surely need it. And let’s find ways that it weaves us together as inhabitants of a world with varied and nuanced histories and imaginations for the future.
So to get tangible:
Look forward and backwards. Place yourself in your lineage. And see what that can offer to this moment. Find out who your kin are and what power they bring to things. Acknowledge and recognize what harm has been done and where you and your people are in that trajectory.
Be curious and generous with where people are coming from in these tender and heightened times. Be with nuance and subtlety.
Take care of yourself and those around you. Keep those masks on in big crowds so all of us can show up healthy. Eat food. Sleep. Touch and be touched. Let both the jokes and the tears happen.
Let what you do be part of your action. Farmers bring food. Artists do your creative work. Writers write. Children play. Let it help us know how to be whole.
Next week, we’ll have the chance to get together to discuss Ross Gay’s,Inciting Joy. This book has everything to do with the list above it. Can’t wait to spend some time with you all!
Book Club is 5:30-6:30 PDT, November 15
And…in the next few weeks you’ll see my books open up for energy work. Winter is great time of year to do quiet, subtle work. More on that soon.
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Reading:
The Story of a Poem- by Matthew Zapruder
this book is cracking me open, it's somehow about how poems are made and how to be a father of an autistic son
Inciting Joy-by Ross Gay
Listening:
…still Helado Negro
This La Dame Blanche song
And crows because its November!
Doing:
Looking for the first of the seasons mushrooms
Getting ready for a weekend of nourishment with all these visionaries