August, First week :: 2021

Seems like every afternoon lately, Laika and I have been up on the pasture for a few hours.  I write, or read, she stares at the blackberry hedge waiting patiently for the ground squirrels to make a dash for the compost bins or scuttle back to the safety of their dens.  A band of coyotes has moved onto one of the empty lots around us and we can hear them witch-howling on and off throughout the day.  It’s an eerie soundtrack to write by (perhaps that’s what has inspired my latest short story about a woman whose monthly cycle is…transformative.  It’s been a hell of a lot of fun to write and imagine.) 

I’ve made some peace with this, my least favorite month.  As you might have learned if you followed the PNW heat dome news, most of us don’t have things like air conditioners here.  August is a month to be endured before we get back to our lovely temperate weather.  Or that’s how we used to handle it, anyway.  Summers are hotter now overall, of course, and I despair a little at the thought that this is only the beginning of increased heat, but there is little to be gained by fretting about it.  Best to just lean in and enjoy what is here now.  Long afternoons in the shade writing under my beloved Grandmother Maple, the wild sweet peas climbing the hill, blackberries scenting the air, apples slipping from their branches and landing with a soft thud in the grass, the local osprey calling to her mate over the treetops.

I’ve been guarding my time diligently lately.  I’ve discovered a secret about my creativity – it’s thirsty for silence.  I’m cushioning my days with the quiet, leaving my phone untouched until late in the morning, eschewing tv and movies or youtube videos in the evenings.  Books are what I crave, poetry and mystery and beautiful language.  And nature, long draughts of sky and grass and cool darkening evenings.  That’s where the stories live, whispering to me, calling like the late-summer crickets, a song that lives just under the noise of the busy, busy world.

 . . .

Last week I was going through some boxes in the attic and found one I’d saved from high school.  I was a sentimental girl, I kept papers from all my classes, every note I’d ever received, a packet of my first attempts at poetry.  I only got through about a quarter of the box before I had to walk away.  That deeply earnest girl, desperate to find approval in a dangerously religious school and church made my heart break.  I’d like to set her free from the stifled years ahead, the agonizing grind of trying to fit into a space she was never made for.  I wish I could whisper to her that she would be happy one day, that it was okay to trust herself.  I put the box back in the attic, but I have plans to get it out again around Samhain (Halloween). Last year we began a tradition of burning the year’s ghosts and regrets in a bonfire and I will put much of that box into the fire and release it.

I remember a time when it was hard to imagine letting go even of the things that brought me pain. I thought I might need to hold onto those reminders so I could see who I was and how I got there, but I’ve reached a place now where I’m comfortable with just being who and where I am without needing to retrace the journey over and over. What a relief.

I hope wherever you are this August is not too hot (or too cold, for you Southern Hemisphere folks!) and you are finding your own rest and inspiration and freedom. I’d love to hear about it if you are. Your notes and comments help me feel like I’m not writing into the dark, so thank you for the times when you have those moments and inspiration to chat. I appreciate you!

Peace keep you, friends.

Gathered:

:: This excerpt from L.M. Sacasas’ amazing newsletter, The Convivial Society.

 [Ivan}Illich understood what I think most of us are unwilling to accept. Endless wanting will wreck us and also the world that is our home. By contrast, our economic order and the ostensible health of our society is premised on the generation of insatiable desires, chiefly for consumer goods and services. Your contentment and mine would wreak havoc on the existing order of things. “That’s enough, thanks,” is arguably a radical sentiment. Only by the perpetual creation of novel needs and desires can economic growth be sustained given how things presently operate.1 So just about every aspect of our culture is designed to make us think that happiness, or something like it, always lies on the other side of more.

:: Last week I was talking with a young guy at the coffee shop who told me that he found it ridiculous that he was expected to have opinions on so many things when he hadn’t experienced enough yet to build an opinion. I wanted him to repeat that louder for the rest of us. What a refreshing idea: “I don’t know enough yet to have an opinion!” In the same vein I’ve been thinking about how so many of us keep our emotional equilibrium by avoiding the news. I need to do that, though it creates its own cycles of guilt and angst. I want to stay informed and I really want to know how to respond to the needs of the moment. Lately I’ve been taking a page from Ryan Holiday and leaning back into history instead of forward into the constant doom-reports. I can learn just about everything I need to know about race or gender, the pandemic response, and why political parties can make such agonizingly self-absorbed decisions just by going to the past. And I can skip the hysteria of the local newscasters or twitter feeds telling me what to think. That’s a win.

I just finished Heather Cox Richardson’s How the South Won the Civil War, which has the fascinating premise that Civil War ideologies about white male power and property were transferred to the West after Reconstruction and emerged in the mythology of the Cowboy. Ayup, I can see that. Let me know if you have any favorite history authors or sources. I’m not a huge fan of biographies, but I love to read the evolution of ideas and events. If we get a good response, I can post a list of resources here!

:: This time of year I try to sleep out on the deck at least one night. Call it a micro micro adventure. There’s no shame in wanting to be out in nature while also being close to comfort. ;) This year we slept under the full moon and woke with the sun, did some yoga in the cool air, then climbed back in bed to read and drink coffee until it got too hot. That was a pretty good day. I hope to fit in another night out or two.

 :: Lastly, this quote from James Baldwin, whose birthday was yesterday. It’s giving me life right now as I constantly grapple with the fine line between appealing to readers and being true to myself.

 “A writer is by definition a disturber of the peace. He has to be. He has to make you ask yourself, make you realize that you are always asking yourself, questions that you don't know how to face.”

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

May Day

May 1st is one of my favorite days. Not only is it the beginning of the most beautiful month here at Fernwood (thanks to the former owner who planted for spring) but it’s also my husband’s birthday and May Day/Beltane. So many lovely things to celebrate all packed into one day!

“Now is the moment to flourish and thrive: to open our hearts and welcome meaningful connection with nature and with each other, and to revel in the joys and blessings of being alive in this beautiful world. It's no easy task at such a difficult and uncertain time, but if anything the spirit of Beltane is an important reminder to seek and offer support wherever we can, and to find beauty and contentment in the simplest of things.” ~ from the Folk + Field newsletter  

I have plans to gather some hawthorn branches and make some bouquets, plant some potatoes and sunflower seeds, and of course there will be a special birthday meal, and if the weather holds, our first outdoor fire. I find these little rituals so helpful in transitioning to a new season. (And we are on the cusp of more than just summer as we begin to enter a new phase with the pandemic. It feels more important than ever to ground and center, doesn’t it?)

Here at home I am leaning into some new writing rhythms that are working well and I have a head full of ideas. I just need more time (and er…discipline) to translate them to the page, but it’s hard to be disciplined when Mama Earth is being so beautiful and showy right now! I’ve learned though, that creative work is not just about the number of hours you force yourself to work but the amount of time you open yourself to life, to allowing the beautiful and the difficult things to work on your spirit and sharpen your senses. We live in a time of striving for notice and a certain type of accomplishment, but there is a lovely synergy and freedom that happens when you let that go and spend that striving time caring for your soul instead.

My Beltane prayer for you:

Peace to your heart.

Peace to your mind.

Peace in the letting go.

Peace in the receiving.

Peace in the being, just as you are.

Just as you are.

Peace, peace, peace to your soul.

<3

I’ll leave you with these little glimpses of home:

on my work desk.

dreaming of next spring….

daily harvest

kale magic

patience….

rewarded.

Oh my Heart. <3<3<3

Happy May Day, my friends.

So much love.

tonia

initiation

Rode my Bike to get a few Groceries (and flowers) last week.

Hello friends,

It’s week 3 of isolation here and it seems like we’re in a new rhythm. Maybe we’ve worked through all the snarky first days of inhabiting the same space and trying to figure out how to honor each other’s fears (masks or no masks? Wipe down the groceries? Leave the mail on the back porch for two days? Weekly or bi-weekly grocery trips? Who ate all the nuts?) or maybe it’s the week of sunshine coinciding with the time to plant the garden which provides the feeling that we are doing something worthwhile with our time. Whatever it is, we seem to be less anxious and laughing more, which is a relief.

I read a short piece by Martin Shaw yesterday about whether or not this time in history is an initiation - a word I understand to mean a ceremony or event that ushers us into a new phase of life. Shaw made the point that if it is, our initiation has been organized by the Earth herself, and that is something worth pausing over. (i.e. It’s time to grow up, humankind.)

Whether or not it’s a global initiation (and I’ve big doubts about the receptiveness to such an initation for certain parts of the population) I’ve got my list of ways I want to mature, many of them around respecting the resources we use and creating a more community-centric sufficiency. (My friend Lesley asked recently what it would be like if we acted as though we lived in a small village that provided all our needs?) I already tend towards being a chipmunk and keep a well-stocked pantry (or larder, as the Brits say) at all times, but now our conversations have turned to the next level. Could we grow greens in cold frames? Harvest and freeze a year’s worth of berries and fruit from local farmers? Would it be possible to reduce our dependency on the grocery store by 50%? Install a rain-catch system? Only have toilet paper for guests? (Bidets are on the list of things to explore.) Things we’ve talked about in theory for years suddenly seem possible, doable, and even necessary.

In some ways, being forced to stay at home, dealing with the sudden disruptions in buying and consuming, is just what I’ve needed to push me forward.* I’ve spent a lot of time sitting outside just watching my world, suddenly aware of its tremendous abundance. (Consider the lilies of the field, they neither toil nor spin: a quiet cure for the panic I felt when the store was empty of so many things and I realized my survival skills are basically zero.)

Right at the beginning of this strange time, I signed up for an introductory course on Honeybees as a way to keep busy and distract myself from my fears. Our teacher shared the most beautiful quote at our last class:

“Every single bee relates to the other, and works for the whole of the hive. All is shared. All that is brought into the hive - nectar, pollen, propolis, water, is for the good of all.”

~ Heidi Herrmann

That spoke right to my home-keeping heart. “For the good of all.” I feel the invitation to make that a life’s goal and cause. Whatever comes into or goes out of my home, I want it to be nourishing for the whole community, from the Earth herself to the neighbor furthest down the supply chain.

In his article, Martin Shaw says,

“…if the initiatory experience doesn’t in the end become a gift to others, then it’s malfunctioned. Look for largesse. Look for gallantry…”

It would be lovely to emerge from this time with a feeling that it has not been wasted, wouldn’t it? That we’ve decided to make a better world.

I’d so love to hear what this time is speaking to you. Does the idea of initiation resonate with you? In what ways?

I hope you’ll share.

Thanks for always being here in this little community. I appreciate you so much.

pax,

tonia

A couple of links that have been meaningful to me this week:

Hearth: A Thesaurus of Home by Jay Griffiths. A four-piece meditation on what home means from a few years back.

Creatures of Place A short film about a family living a “radically simple permaculture life” on a 1/4 acre lot in Australia.

*I fully recognize the privilege and luxury of my position. Just trying to do the best with what life is giving me. <3

the first days of March

A little Ellis, because, LOVE.

The pasture is usually home to only grass and blackberries (and wild sweetpeas in the summer), but this morning I saw two yellow daffodils nodding their heads at me as I headed back to the house after my chores. I squealed a little, then felt sheepish, even though no one was around to hear me but the poultry. It must be the aftertaste of this cynical world - this feeling that wonder and joy are only for children and not for grown humans. I marched on down the hill and found another daffodil clinging to the stone wall along the garden and appreciated it loudly, just to make up for my earlier cowardice. The revolution will not be wonder-free.

I had plans to be working on a new novel right now, but I haven’t even begun thinking about it yet. I’ve been taking in the wisdom of Ross Gay instead, who insists that writing “comes from our bodies.” I’ve been deep cleaning, organizing, painting, getting the garden ready, baking; working more with my hands than just my head. I have to say, after several intense months of writing, this feels wonderful. It’s a good reminder that I am at my healthiest when body and mind are both active. And I know that while I clean and putter around, words are churning quietly somewhere inside and they will let me know when it is time to put them down on paper.

I’m glad to be busy with physical work right now for other reasons too. It keeps me from being too worried about things I can’t control, like elections, and finances, and the fact that we are supposed to go to Europe in six weeks to see our daughter and the whole world is sick right now. Ora et labora is my current motto: pray and work. That’s old wisdom, right there, from monks who lived in the Middle Ages and knew a thing or two about having to wait and trust God that everything is going to work out fine.

Someone asked me the other day what I do for a living and I fumbled around as usual and tried to figure out a way to put it into words, this hodge-podge life of writing, and nurturing, and availability, and home-making. I never know what to say. Sometimes the words fall on sympathetic ears, as they did this time, and I can feel the warmth and appreciation of a kindred spirit, but many times they don’t. I am finding more confidence now to let that disapproval and misunderstanding go. I know what I believe, that if we are going to hold together at the center as communities, there have to be people who make beauty, who tell the stories, who have time to lend a hand, who set a table for fellowship. Fortunately, it seems like many of the people who are most sympathetic and open to that idea are young people. I love our young people; they are so bright and smart and determined and open. I’m always listening in, trying to understand how they see the world, how they think we can change it. I hope I am always flexible enough to hear and understand.

Well, I should wrap this little ramble up. There is more work to be done today, (“I’m blessed with work!” Bonus points if you can name that movie). Hope you are all finding daffodil-surprises and celebrating them shamelessly.

Peace keep you,

tonia

P.S. I’m in the mood for some good farm life/homemaking books. Fiction, preferably, so send me your favorite titles. I love Miss Read and Gladys Taber (not fiction, but she makes the cut), Elizabeth Goudge, Rumer Godden. All those 40’s and 50’s authors who write so beautifully about making homes. Swoon!