February, fourth week :: 2021

I went out for a walk this morning, the first one in a while. The trail is just on the far side of winter now, right on the doorstep of spring. I could almost hear the nettles pulsing their fresh green heads beneath the mud. Another week? Two?

For our Northern Hemisphere ancestors, late February would have been a hungry time, the cold damp deep in the bones, the winter stores gone or withered of their vitality. I imagine some long-ago ancestress scanning the fields and woods for that first flash of green, the first sign that nourishment was coming. I live a very different life, but I find myself harboring the same February ache, searching my own fields for something fresh and life-giving. You too?

I made the rounds the other day online, doing my civic duty to stay informed and aware, and I wondered if the news has ever been such a late-winter place, full of muck and weariness. I came away spattered with our local version, a sneering kind of mud, supercilious and cynical, that clings to the mind long after.

I have to be careful with that kind of thing, because cynicism and superciliousness come too easy to me. Writing has been a way to resist it, to grow, by the force of words, something green and hopeful within myself. I wrote myself a note that day: You are not an outrage factory.

I keep thinking of something Barry Lopez wrote about his friend, Brian Doyle, whose life and work mentors me constantly:

You were … the example that keeps us from despair, cynicism, detachment, and the other poisons bred in the bowels of our complex lives.

You walked in beauty, my dear friend. We all watched.

And now it is our turn.

(So. You are not an outrage factory. You are a lamp, made to be filled with light, a bowl of herbs, pungent with healing, a circle of arms for welcome. Your eyes are made for far-seeing and uncovering hope. This, this, this, is you.)

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A handful of things from the week:

"The Peace of Wild Things" by Wendell Berry is part of our "Poetry Films" series, which features animated interpretations of beloved poems from our archive. ...

H/T: Rachel

~ This post from Susan about where writers work. Some lovely and inspiring photos. (Wendell Berry {happy sigh.} And despite my love for huge bookcases, Nigella Lawson’s space is giving me a bit of claustrophobia!)

~ Saturday’s full moon is the Snow Moon, the last full moon of winter. I’m going to make something simple for dinner, in keeping with the late-winter theme. (Maybe a nightshade-free version of colcannon and some sausages? I might splurge on dessert though.) If the weather cooperates, we’ll spend some time under the moonlight. <3

~ Exploring the work of Caroline Shaw after reading about her in The Atlantic. Here’s a nice introduction.

I’ll leave you with something from Brian Doyle:

The coolest most amazing people I have met in my life, I said, are the ones who are not very interested in power or money, but who are very interested in laughter and courage and grace under duress and holding hands against the darkness, and finding new ways to solve old problems, and being attentive and tender and kind to every sort of being, especially dogs and birds, and of course children.

Let’s hold hands against the darkness, shall we?

tonia

February 18, 2021

I was reading about the Vikings while the snow piled up around us this week. The dramatic weather made it easy to imagine the kind of landscape that would produce such a stout and clever (albeit, brutal) people. It fascinates me to think how nature, place, and time shape cultures. I think that’s why my interest is often drawn toward dystopian literature. Not for the scares, but for the exploration of what happens when you disrupt assumptions about how the world works, when people’s skills no longer match the time they live in, when nature changes its course. I prefer the stories where we rise to the occasion and prevail humanely over the ones where the world goes feral. I hope we’re writing one of those right now.

We were really fortunate to keep our power during our snowstorms this time though many people didn’t (and still don’t have power). And I’m thinking constantly about those of you in Texas and Oklahoma and other parts of the south. The Vikings might have built a society around surviving harsh winters off-grid, but plenty of the rest of us haven’t. I’m keeping a candle lit for those who are cold, hungry, thirsty, lonely, sick, or homeless right now. And one for the hard-working crews who are working to get power back and rescue those who are in need (including the turtles.) <3

This week:

~ My writing streaks have been going so well (67 days and counting!) that I decided to do a yoga challenge. At least 10 minutes of yoga every day for 365 days. (I was inspired by this video.) I’ve done extended challenges in the past and I know that something happens mentally when you do yoga daily. I’m 13 days in and already feeling the shift.

~ Installed Freedom on my phone (I already use it on my laptop for writing sessions) which has been the happiest event this week. My phone works like a phone for most of the day, not a computer. I love it.

~ From Austin Kleon’s Steal Like an Artist, a quote from Andre Gide:

“Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.”

(See? We do need your voice!!)

~This mesmerizing Luca Guadagnino video for Sufjan Stevens.

Listen to The Ascension here: https://sufjanstevens.ffm.to/theascensionDirected by: Luca Guadagnino with the collaboration of Alessio Bolzoni & Celia Hempton...

Wherever you are I hope you are warm and healthy.

A blessing as I go, from the precious John O’Donohue:

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.

And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.

February 11, 2021

Winter tea: Hibiscus, Elderberry, rosehip, Ginger

The temperature’s dropping here as we wait for our annual snow day. We’re supposed to get a couple of inches so our whole area is making plans to pretend we can’t drive anywhere and are stuck at home. I’m super excited. The library even cooperated by providing me with the next book in my mystery series in case I’m forced to sit by the fire and read all day. Yay winter!

The last few days I’ve been thinking about this Chinese proverb: (HT: Lesley )

“Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are.”

As soon as I read that, I remembered an older woman I spent time with when I was in my twenties who took a look at my handwriting and my charm-school posture and told me I had some issues with trying to be perfect. Well, yeah. The whole first half of my life could be defined by the word: tension. (I could easily have written that article.)

The good news is that I couldn’t maintain impossible-to-maintain-standards. Eventually I just got tired and started figuring out that while I was a pretty capable person, I was not a very happy or fun one. That was in my 30’s. I have a lot of relaxing to make up for, you guys. I’m going to enjoy Part II so much.

(Btw, I just looked it up and they are still selling that book. Insert horror emoji.)

Things I want to remember from this week:

My inner smart girl has been squealing over all this:

Rep. Stacey Plaskett

~Please, please let me live long enough to need a cape-dress like Stacey Plaskett. What a QUEEN. During yesterday’s trial she was poised, articulate, confident, and in command. So impressive.

~ Speaking of queens, I finally finished The Queen’s Gambit. I have no interest in chess, but I’m obsessed as always with a pre-smartphone era. In their downtime, peopled were reading books and playing chess. Alone, if they had to. I can’t get enough of it. Also the clothes.

~ This has me longing to see a murmuration. Murmurations work because starlings coordinate by “rapid transmission of local behavioral response to neighbors.” Each bird is not keeping track of the whole group, just the seven closest neighbors to herself. Locality, intimacy, neighborly awareness. Huh. More here.

~ I finished this beautiful book a couple weeks ago, but I keep picking it back up to reread passages. It’s the loveliest writing and the most powerful exploration of parental grief and love I’ve read.

“She, like all mothers, constantly casts out her thoughts, like fishing lines, towards her children, reminding herself of where they are, what they are doing, how they fare. From habit, while she sits there near the fireplace, some part of her mind is tabulating them and their whereabouts: Judith, upstairs. Susanna, next door. And Hamnet? Her unconscious mind casts, again and again, puzzled by the lack of bite, by the answer she keeps giving it…”

~ Lastly, some folk music and poetry for a snowy day : A MidWinter Miscellany

Wishing you all snowflakes and good books and warm hearts and homes.

tonia

February 4, 2021

The birds were singing when I went out this morning and the bulbs I rushed into the ground in November are poking their heads up, but we always get a false spring in February and I’m refusing to be drawn in.  I know Mother Nature has 8 more weeks of drizzle and grey skies for us here.  I don’t mind.  I’m pretty fond of winter.

 I’m up to my ears right now in 7th grade algebra.  Square roots and the distributive property, sigh.  I’ve got a couple more weeks to take my math placement exam and as I’m hoping to do the least amount of math possible over this degree I have to study hard now.  I’m just calling this humiliation month.  I’m thinking that maybe some really nice pencils and a good pencil sharpener would help me enjoy this better.  (Check yes if you agree that good writing supplies always improve a situation.) I ordered a new fountain pen and the yummiest, smoothest ink a while back and that has been making me happy pretty much every day, so it follows that new pencils will make math easier, right?  I’m all about textural pleasures.

A few things I want to remember this week:

~ I came across this advice from Jerry Seinfeld in a newsletter I follow this morning.

LEARN HOW TO ENCOURAGE YOURSELF

Oof, I needed that.  I’m still way too dependent on the approval of others (or flustered by their disapproval).  Insecurity and shut-down women run in my family like water through a hose, but hell if I’m going to join them.  This is the year of doing hard things, of finding the guts to speak and live on my own. (Eleanor approves.)

~ Speaking of going solo, did you see this post on the realities of Instagram engagement?  I hope no one is actually buying into this. In case you are wondering, it’s been a year and a half since I left social media and I have no regrets.  I still check in occasionally on a few people whose content enrich me and I’m grateful for people creating beautiful posts, but I do have a secret hope that we’ll move on some day and the corporations can figure out how to make money by doing their own damn work. 

~ appleturnover’s channel is a gift.  Such beautiful little films about a small-scale regenerative homestead. 

~ Adrienne Maree Brown on the founding wound.  Woah. (Worth reading the whole thing if you have time.)

things are not getting worse
they are getting uncovered
we must hold each other tight
and continue to pull back the veil
see: we, the body, we are the wounded place

 ~ And this, from last month, but still making me cry.  I’m so thankful for the people in my life who have allowed me to change and still love me as myself.  A couple of friends in particular - you know who you are! But mostly my husband, for whom I feel such deep, deep gratitude. 

Until next time.

Peace keep you.

patron of the new year

Hello friends,

I was working on a post for this week, but then Wednesday happened and now I just keep staring at this screen wondering what I’m supposed to say. Currently, I feel angry. And more angry. And impatient with people who are shocked and bewildered because what did you think we’ve been saying for the last five years?! (And that makes me feel humbled and small all over again because of all the Black, Brown,Indigenous, LGBTQ and other marginalized voices who have been telling us this for much, much longer. I’m sorry and thank you for your endurance.)

National traumas leave marks. Emotions take up space and time. That’s where I am.

~~

The only escape I’ve managed from the news cycle the past few days is working on my first novel, The Spaces Between. Because it was under an agent’s contract for so long, I haven’t actually spent much time looking at it critically for a few years. Reading it now is like visiting a younger self. There’s the story on the page, which is entirely fictional, and there’s my memories of where it was written and how it felt. But there is also the memory of my internal struggles hovering like shadows around the words. I can trace my maturing through the lines. Maturing as a writer, of course, but also as a woman. I’m no longer writing for the critical voices in my head. So much of the work I did before was an ongoing argument between those voices and the self that was trying to break free. It makes me grateful that this book was never published, because when I wrote it I didn’t understand what it was to write out of truth. I didn’t realize it of course, but I was writing and living from a narrative I internalized but didn’t believe. Now I am writing as my true self; I have a strong sense when I am going against my own nature and purpose and I recognize the joy that comes when I’ve been the most honest. It’s a good place to be.

~ I’m forever on the lookout for symbols or imagery that will help me live into the stage of growth I’m in and last week I stumbled across Eleanor Roosevelt. As soon as I saw her picture I felt that she was going to be my patron (or guardian spirit as Austin Kleon would call her) for this part of the year.

Here she is gracing my journal with her bright common sense and strength.

“Do one thing every day that scares you.”

“Do what you feel in your heart to be right - for you’ll be criticized anyway.”

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

“Be confident, not certain.”

Eleanor makes me want to stand up straighter and get to work. So despite the rocky start to the year and the current state of my emotions, I have a lot of plans for 2021, including some good changes to my day-to-day life (which I’ll share more about later.) Next week, unless some other catastrophic thing happens, I want to share the first chapter of The Spaces Between with newsletter subscribers, so watch for that! <3

In the meantime, take good care of yourself. Be real. Be passionate and angry when you need to, but grab a bag of White Cheddar Hippeas and some Netflix when you need that too, k? Also naps.

Thanks for listening.

peace, friends.

tonia

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Soundtrack for this post: Vaughan Williams, The Lark Ascending from The Lark Ascending Collection

On repeat for comfort and inspiration: Paterson (Jim Jarmusch,2016)