On listening to new and old places
As soon as I have my authors copies of my new chapbook I’ll be having a release party! There will be one online and one in person! Come to both if you want! I’ll make sure you know when and where.
To continue celebrating the chapbook release, I'll be continuing to run a sale for the newsletter! For paid subscribers you will also be getting a copy of the Home of Milk in the next few weeks in the mail with other special things! Become a paid subscriber today to support this on-going work and get a chapbook in the process!
Another thing is happening! After a long while I am finally getting these creative practice workshops going again. For many years of my life I have returned to creative practice as spiritual practice as aliveness practice as remember practice. It has allowed me to work with the medium of my life as a place of continual inspiration and return.
This workshop series is about how to do just that with simple ways of engaging that allow for this kind of fascinating exploration. I am starting a seasonal workshop series about creative practice. This will be free for paid subscribers, info will be sent to you soon! And for everyone else, consider becoming a subscriber or sign up here!
This winter after last years big move across states I planted trees…I think it was fifteen of them give or take a couple. Olive, magnolia, citrus, plum, pear, peach, maple.
I pulled them out of pots, dug deep holes, mixed compost, whispered love notes, and set them into what used to be a driveway, a sheep pasture. There was rusty metal…I pulled that out and one day D and I removed rusty barbed wire from the falling over juniper. We call them rat hotels but this day we didn’t find any rats tucked inside.
This is the process of arriving.
And I am learning to listen to being here. Somewhere that is familiar but I don’t know it well yet.
Because listening is arriving.
Because listening is practicing in each place.
Grey dove. Grass drying out, different more brittle than yesterday when it was greener.
The slam of the door as the offshore breeze rattles through. It begins consistently at noon this spring.
Each morning my neighbors bundle leaves for their business selling greenery for flower arrangements. They sit on upside down buckets under a flapping plastic tarp binding together bunches. One of them whistles all day while he works. There is a garbage can with precisely smashed soda cans.
I feel like I am still moving. I wake up most days gasping at the reality that it is morning. Sun, the wafting jasmine, air moving through the house like uneven breath. I get up and do all the things. I am tired and buzzing with it. I make lists. I make more lists. I call orthodontists, doctors, change insurance addresses.
I make steps to call the new place home. One vase that found its home. Light spreading across the pile of books next to the bed.
And one of those is writing. Writing names what is happening. It doesn’t do it gracefully or offer easy steps but it and many other creative practices allow me to listen, to sense, to know aliveness in change. To call myself home in many ways as many times as it takes.
I look at the trees and I think about the horrific images of war I saw yesterday. I watch the eucalyptus wave in the spring wind. I ask for help to be able to listen to hear when it can all feel unbearably noisy. To be able to move slower. To let the feeling of spring’s lushness fall over me. To call, to show up at actions, to work for the liberation of all. One solid and small step at a time.
I do this with measure because this is the work of calling ourselves home.
❤️❤️❤️