best of the books, 2020

Happy, happy new year (AT LAST) my friends! Since I’m not getting any newsletters out right now, here’s a little end of year reading update. I finished 107 books this year which was a pretty good year for me. These are the ones that stand out in my memory (with some of my Goodreads notes included):

Nonfiction:

On Immunity: An Inoculation - Eula Biss - My son gave me a copy of this well before the pandemic arrived, but it’s certainly timely now. Biss writes as a mother, with a mother's perspectives and concerns, in pursuit of understanding the history of vaccination, the fears around it, the science we know and don't know, and the ways our lives are changed because of it. She is empathetic, real, curious, and human in her responses to what she uncovers. The book is not so much an argument for vaccination as an exploration of what it means to be a parent, what it means to live in community, our dependence on each other, and the real challenge of fear. The book is imminently readable and approachable. Highly recommended.

Distant Neighbors: Selected Letters of Wendell Berry and Gary Snyder - Wendell Berry and Gary Snyder have two very different approaches to life (WB is an agrarian in the Christian tradition, GS is an environmental activist and Zen Buddhist) but both men are poets and writers who managed to forge a respectful and affectionate friendship through the years. I was so touched by their admiration and respect for each other's work, for the way they capitalized on agreement and went to each other for understanding their own biases and assumptions. My own affection for both men grew as I read their correspondence, but I was most taken with Berry, whose quiet humility, thoughtfulness, integrity and goodness shines through. What a lovely book for these fractious days.

Stamped From the Beginning - Ibram X Kendi - I don't feel qualified to judge the merits of this book as a history text - as I read I began to think of it more as sitting down with an intelligent, informed neighbor to hear their side of an ongoing story. It was powerful, shocking (not to discover that racism is pervasive, but to realize how much of it I've passively accepted in my life), humbling, and infuriating.

It is a long book, over 500 pages, and densely written. At times, I thought Kendi wielded his labels a little too broadly, but as I said, I considered the book from the standpoint of hearing a version of my history from a necessary and informed perspective rather than a precise history (though, as I said, I'm simply not qualified to judge it on those merits.) Still, it's an outstanding, eye-opening, and disturbing work that I wish everyone could read.

Poetry:

Deaf Republic - Ilya Kaminsky -

"We lived happily during the war
And when they bombed other people's houses, we
protested
but not enough..."

"At the trial of God, we will ask: why did you allow this?
And the answer will be an echo: why did you allow this?"

A parable/poem about a town's response to oppression and occupation. When a deaf boy is shot in the street by a soldier, the townspeople choose to become deaf. A moving challenge to our collective silence and our acceptance of atrocity.

Refugia - Kyce Bello - Refugia are habitats of retreat, where organisms and ecosystems go to try and survive. Kyce Bello takes that idea and explores what it means to be alive now, in a world that is changing, where much of what we love is dying. What does it mean to be a mother now? A child? How do you make plans to survive? How do you bear the weight of guilt? What will carry on? What will be left behind?

An absolutely beautiful and timely collection that has held my hand through all these pandemic days and will go on and on with me through the years ahead. (In fact, I keep a portion of one of these poems in the footer of the blog.)

Fiction:

Less - Andrew Sean Greer - I just loved this. It reminded me of a P.G. Wodehouse novel - if Wodehouse made Bertie Wooster a gay, middle-aged, slightly lost novelist and set him loose in the world without Jeeves. Sweet, funny, and quite brilliant. Nice skewering of the publishing world and writer's egos. It was a charming break from the too serious reading I've been doing.

Weather - Jenny Offill - I kept hearing how strange Offill's writing was, so I put off reading her. My bad. I absolutely loved this, and I love her style. It takes tremendous skill to pull a narrative along in short paragraphs. I thought it was brilliant. And the subject matter - a woman's anxiety about climate insecurity - is imminently relatable.

Writers & Lovers - Lily King - This story of a young woman trying to finish her novel and work through grief is one of my favorites this year. King's descriptions of the inner-anguish of novel writing alone would make this a keeper, but she has also created a protagonist that is easy to like and easy to root for.

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead - Olga Tokarczuk - A strange little murder mystery with a grouchy, complicated, astrology and animal loving protagonist. (Somehow connected in my mind with Ottessa Moshfegh’s Death in Her Hands, which I also enjoyed a lot.)

Black Sun - Rebecca Roanhorse - Fantasy set in pre-Columbian America? YES. Fabulous world creation, characters, intricate and interesting plot, great writing. Crows. Amazing. Can't wait for the next installment.

I’d love to hear any of your favorites, so please feel free to share! (I also love to hear about books you hated and why. Unlike last year (I’m looking at you, Where the Crawdads Sing) I had a pretty good run and don’t have any books I want to burn in the New Year’s bonfire, but if you’ve got one, do tell! )

a list of things to keep, for the Solstice

Sunday morning we got up early and went for a walk to watch the (near) Solstice sunrise. The sun was hiding behind a solid bank of stainless steel clouds, so it was more like an awakening than a rising, but we were glad to be out of doors to welcome the turn of the year anyway. It had been raining for hours by then and the path was littered by the last of the fallen leaves and long pink earthworms drummed up from their hideaways; egrets made patient stalks of the farm fields, arrows of geese passed overhead going north and south and every direction in between. I try always to be out in nature near the Solstice. That’s when the carnival of my mind can settle down and I can start thinking about the new year ahead and what I want to bring to it.

I’ve had so many conversations with friends lately trying to make sense of the world as it is, going over and over the possible whys and hows and wondering if it will ever be healed, but this morning watching the light on the winter grasses, I thought how weary I am of the striving, how ready I am to move forward. Not just from 2020, but from a lifetime of carrying too much weight that was never meant for me. Perhaps you can relate.

The lovely Niamh at Fairlyand Cottage posted a video yesterday about the 10 habits she was going to keep in the new year, and it just fit my mood. Let go the striving and focus on carrying good things forward. I thought about it quite a bit last night and made myself a list of things I have been consciously working on and want to continue in the new year.

Here it is.

I want to continue:

• moving away from a culture of suspicion and distrust and into my more natural state of openness, belief in the goodness of others, and hopefulness.

• releasing myself from relationship and association with those who want to stay in that culture (this is boundary setting for me, not a prescription for anyone else)

• releasing myself from dogmas

• healing my relationship with the feminine by cultivating friendships with women, removing internalized patriarchy, and believing myself

• finding middle ground. Avoiding bandwagons, slogans, labels, and easy jargon. (Work In Progress, for sure)

• not internalizing judgement or criticism from people who are not in relationship with me or who have not taken time to understand me

• cultivating generosity through deliberate giving, deep gratitude and presence, and a mindset of abundance (another very much Work In Progress)

• celebrating the ordinary year with small observances (the Wheel of the Year follows the natural world and makes it easy to be present to the time and place I’m in)

• nurturing myself through

  • daily yoga (I’m doing yin yoga every other day and it is life-changing)

  • walking (I’d like to double my mileage this year)

  • herbal infusions (which help balance hormones, mood, and energy levels)

  • Ayurvedic practices like abhyanga

• making small, daily efforts in writing (I’ve tried a lot of schedules, but this is the thing that works best for me, and it’s how I’m jump-starting my practice again after a long Covid-hiatus)

• building efficient and sustainable systems in my home and work (more permaculture principles, less waste, less consumption, more focus)

• beginning the day with poetry (I copy one poem by hand and read at least one other)

• learning new skills (currently: knitting, sourdough, and herbal studies)

• delighting in whatever feels magical to me: stories, music, art, nature, friendships, and more

• growing flowers everywhere

• challenging myself with books and movies that force me to pay close attention, be patient, and stretch my understanding and comfort level (with lots of room for entertainment too, of course!)

• working on an ebook version of my first novel to share with everyone

It was such an encouraging practice to sit down at this turn of the season and think about what is already working for me and see that I have actually put many good things in place. I don’t really need to make aspirational lists for the new year. I just need to carry on, a little bit every day. What a good feeling at the end of a year that often felt really bad!

I’d love to hear from you too. What is working for you? What good things have you done and want to keep doing?

Sending my heartfelt wishes for a lovely Christmastide to you all.

Happy Winter!

tonia

Writing soundtrack for this post: Henryk Gorecki, Symphony No. 3

Synchronous:

“My work: to do more than reproduce the toxic stories I inherited and learned…My work: to write poems that make my people feel safe, seen, or otherwise loved…”

Jose Olivarez - Ars Poetica

the dark beautiful

I’m drawn to these burrow-down weeks, their shrunken hours, the sunlessness that parentheses the days. My animal-self curls inward and rests. I’ve always been drawn to the dark - not the darkness of demons or evil intentions - but the female places, womb-like and secretive, where seeds go to work, where death is turned back into life.

I love all the seasons, truly, except maybe the fierce, draining energy of high Summer, but these weeks of Advent, these slow unspooling days when we whisper our way toward Solstice and the light’s return are surely some of my favorites.

I’ve borrowed from the Waldorf tradition in planning the Advent observations this year, with its focus on the natural world. Nothing obtrusive, just some candles and whatever beauty comes to hand when I am outdoors. If this year has done anything for me it has worn away any remaining affection I had for the artificial and disconnected. In these Winter days I will find the dark beautiful, the aging leaf, the barren and the damp, the biting morning air, as well as the warm and secure house, the candles and lamps, the stocked larders, the loved ones, that make finding such beauty possible.

I wonder if my welcome of the darkness is exaggerated by the intensity of the year we are leaving behind. I read my journal entries from early 2020 like they are from a stranger’s diary. Who was that woman so confidently and blithely moving forward? These long months have scoured away the last of my pretense - and strangely, much of my anger. I don’t understand the world I live in, I am not as strong as I thought I was, I have given my allegiance to unworthy things. And yet what emerges is not despair or frustration, but peace.

Just recently I have woken in the mornings with words on my mind. I’d thought, maybe, my identity as a writer was dying with this painful year, yet another old skin I was discarding. But of course, like all beings, our creativity must welcome its own winter, its own dark womb of regeneration, in order to keep living. I already know it will emerge changed; I can wait.

I’d love to hear what these Winter days before Solstice are like for you this year. Are you able to welcome the dark hours? Or does it feel too much after all we’ve been through these months? I hope you’ll share.

Soundtrack for writing this post: Olafur Arnalds, Some Kind of Peace

Synchronous: from The Paris Review 234/Fall 2020 John Lee Clark/Line of Descent

“…she

called herself the Black Turtle Lady

because the race is not to the swift. It is to the

slow and sure, certain of who we are.”

future reapers

Hot days give me a headache. Literally. I am not a big fan of ye olde summer, but it will keep coming around annually. The other day I went up into the loft of our garage/barn/shed and smacked my head on a low beam and banged my teeth together so hard that one of my front teeth cringes every time I have a cold drink now. Also, I hurt my wrist doing yoga and haven’t been able to down dog for a month. I could really use some yoga about now. Especially with the Federal invasion in my hometown streets and so many more presidential months to endure.

On the other hand, the poppies I planted a few years ago have self-seeded all over and keep surprising me with their happy little faces in unexpected places, the peaceful goddesses are rising, and hot days are also an excuse to lie in the grass and stare at the underside of trees.

Everyone I know is bent close to the earth with a lens, looking for something, anything, beautiful to focus on. “Look at these pictures of foxes!” someone posted online, desperation in the giving and receiving. I poured over them eagerly. Yes, foxes still exist. They are still lovely. So many lovely things still exist.

I’ve been trying to pay attention to my dreams lately, hoping maybe my subconscious (or perhaps the Divine) might inspire me while I sleep, but my dreams are painfully utilitarian. Recently, I spent an entire night cleaning a dream house. Once I registered an unknown child for school. Maybe that’s the kind of things dreams are made of in a dystopian year. Sparkling windows and fresh linens, the smell of carbon-paper enrollment forms.

I’ve been thinking of something Donna Cates said in her post this week: “the future unrolls from nothing other than the entire material of the present, like a roll of fabric unfurling.” I’m looking at the fabric in my hands wondering what I am weaving into the future. Do you see this thread that I spun from my fury? Here is the one where I walked away. Here is a cord made of poppy and nettle, a twist of rabbit fur, an image of a fox; I held it for awhile in my cringing teeth.

Then again, Jay Griffiths asks, “Would society be different if its profoundist models of time were not structured in a past-to-future narrative at all, but if time were seen as an unarrowed thing - if, for example, the Bible began with the rhapsody of a psalm and ended with the sashay of the song of Solomon?”

Perhaps I should imagine a garden, where my life is the fruit planted by gardeners long-dead, where others will one day reap the harvest planted in my body. (Forgive me, future reapers, there is still poison in my veins, but I have swallowed rhapsody for you as well.)

Last week, I found an old frame in a trunk. It enclosed two perfect butterflies mounted on paper. A google search tells me they are common to Asia, particularly India. Their antennae are delicately intact, a single one of each pair curving softly toward the right, like tiny signals from a dying hostage: “The way out is over there,” or perhaps, “Remember the way the sun glints on the Ganges.” I do not know, but I put them on the shelf in my office, where I can stare at them and wonder.

a late-June note

The New Moon has come and gone, as has the Solstice, and I am no closer to getting a newsletter out to you. I seem to be feeling the cumulative stress of these last strange months all at once. New food sensitivities, brain fog, fatigue, racing heart, apathy. I barely recognize myself. And this week, which I set aside specifically for writing, got sidelined by a family member in the hospital and a few days of really emotional decision making for one of my children (mamas, we feel this as if it were ourselves, don’t we?)

To help myself calm down, I put my loved ones on notice that I do not want to hear ANY news this week or any updates on anything that are not of an immediate life or death emergency. This is harder said than done! I have become profoundly aware of how much information our psyches are subjected to everywhere. It’s almost impossible to avoid stimulation. (I am thinking especially now of my dear ones with anxiety or panic attacks, addiction recovery, and auto-immune disorders that require a calm nervous system. <3)

Monday morning, just before the messages started arriving about my family’s needs, I was at the duck house doing my usual chores, head down, fiddling with water buckets and feed dishes, when I had the strong urge to look up. I did, and there, across from me was a doe, staring intently. I’ve written before that deer are indicators of the presence of God for me, so I stopped what I was doing and stared back. We kept eye contact for several minutes and I welcomed her as a God-message. She just stayed right there, holding my gaze and I stayed and drank it in. Then she casually left, and I went back to the house and the week fell apart. But every day I have revisited that gift of calm energy, that preemptive sense of comfort and with-ness.

During these days when I have tried to mute the world around me, I have been thinking about all the little practices I have been developing over these years. Things like leaving social media, non-violence, receiving the gifts of nature, meditation, learning to listen to my body, changing my spiritual communities, and others; things I worried over and felt self-conscious about, things I struggled to explain to others. Now I can see how vital these things are to my continued health, and how my intuition knew well before my head and intellect what would be healing and right for me. I am amazed by it, truly amazed.

Everything from religion to education to advertisements constantly tells us we can’t learn, we can’t know without their approval and expertise, that we can’t trust what is inside ourselves to be sufficient. Like most people, I have believed that all my life. But discovering that I can trust my inner knowing, that the path that seems right to me when I am listening and at peace is nearly always the right path, that Love is all around and in and through and always guiding, that is an amazing joy.

In the garden this morning, I noticed the cool-weather crops have been lingering around longer than usual and the summer plants are still small and unsteady, different than other late Junes - but not surprising for this cool and rainy one we’ve just had. There is no sense of frustration there, no anxiety vibrating off the tomato leaves. I want to live by such confidence, content with the sun I am given, and the rain when it falls, taking what I can and growing. I admit I am not there yet. A part of me is disappointed that I haven’t got a newsletter out for you. It’s been a year since I started writing about cultivating a quiet life, and it feels like a failure to break the string even for a short time. But I think, this too, is part of my healing and coming to be myself. This is not a commercial space or a business. I am not a machine that can pump out content. I am something more than that, of earth and blood, with all the wild sensitivities and rhythms of stars and planets and bees and rivers coursing through me. And so are you.

Be well, my friends. I’ll be writing again soon.

Peace keep you.

tonia