1. Morning walks. I’m there, I take the pictures, and yet sometimes when I get home and look back at what I captured, I can’t even believe it’s real. This week the light and how everything was turning golden was epic. On the morning pictured above, a dad and his about nine year old daughter were both out with their cameras attempting to capture the glorious sky. His camera was super fancy and complicated and she had a small digital point and shoot. At one point, they were both crouched down taking a picture of the way the light was hitting a foggy field full of grazing cows when she looked at her preview screen, leaned towards him holding out her camera so he could see too, and said, “I got a pretty good one.” It was so sweet! On that same morning, we met up with a dog we’ve seen a lot on that particular trail. He’s a bit older and bigger than Ringo with a big blocky wrinkly head (my favorite). He’s always off-lead (it’s on technically private property so that’s “allowed” or rather not regulated) but so sweet and Ringo likes him, so we always stop, say hello and play a bit. This time his person was on the phone, but once she got off the call, I asked her, “do you realized how awesome your dog is or do you just think he’s normal?” She responded, “oh, I know exactly how great he is.” His name is Diego and I love him.
2. Wild writing with Laurie. Our fall session started this week. It was so good to be back with the group, even as I missed those who weren’t there and the one who isn’t joining this time around. I love that practice so much, love doing it with a small group of the same good people. It’s magic and medicine.
3. Texting, family and friends, books. That may seem like an unrelated list of things, but as a highly sensitive introvert who leans towards agoraphobia, they are all the things that keep me connected in a gentle but constant way.
4. Ringo. This bed used to be under my writing desk and both Dexter and Sam would use it when I was writing or on the computer but Ringo was never interested. I took it to a friend’s recently to see if her dogs would want it but they didn’t so it rode around in the back of my car for a bit. When I finally remembered to bring it back in the house, I dropped it on the floor in a random spot while I unloaded groceries and just never got around to moving it. Ringo has added it to his living room lounging rotation so it may live here now. Even though it can drive me crazy, I love how he is never anyone but himself, doing things his own way in his own time. He has a sort of confidence in who he is and what he wants and what he won’t tolerate that I’m jealous of, even though I sometimes think the very same makes him a real jerk.
5. My tiny family, tiny house, tiny life. Everything I need and want is right here. It feels way more full, much more spacious than “tiny” implies.
Bonus joy: peaches and vanilla ice cream, grapefruit bubbly water, dinner and then leftovers for dinner the next night from Mt. Everest Cafe, vaccines (got my bivalent booster last week, the first day they were available), true crime (although I may be watching and listening to too much of it, as I explained to my brother after he finally texted me back after the text I sent him this morning that I needed to know he was still there, still alive because he hadn’t texted me back yesterday and he usually texts right back), reading, writing in the morning with a cup of hot coffee (+cocoa and tiny marshmallows), my weighted blanket, down pillows and blankets, my Oovoo slides which are my “house shoes, ” good neighbors, hanging out with Mikalina, other people’s kids and dogs, clean sheets, dog rescues and fosters and adopters, sunshine, the meadowlarks and chickadees feeding on our fading sunflowers, the seed pods on my golden raintrees that look like tiny lanterns, twinkle lights, origami cranes, that picture of me in my straw cowboy hat holding baby Dexter in our backyard with Obi photobombing us, listening to podcasts, watching good TV, reading in bed at night while Ringo and Eric sleep.
1. The Thing Is, a gorgeous poem by Ellen Bass. It’s not new and I have shared it before, but Sharon Salzberg posted it on Facebook and it reminded me how much I love it. It also seems to be a poem that gets more and more relevant the more time passes.
“to love life, to love it even when you have no stomach for it and everything you’ve held dear crumbles like burnt paper in your hands, your throat filled with the silt of it. When grief sits with you, its tropical heat thickening the air, heavy as water more fit for gills than lungs; when grief weights you down like your own flesh only more of it, an obesity of grief, you think, How can a body withstand this? Then you hold life like a face between your palms, a plain face, no charming smile, no violet eyes, and you say, yes, I will take you I will love you, again.”
8. Reading Pathway: Kelly Link’s Short Stories. “If you’re a fan of the weird and strange, the melding of genres and the meddling with reality; if you cite Karen Russell, George Saunders, Aimee Bender, Donald Barthelme as a favorite writer; if you love fairy tales, sci-fi, and fantasy whipped into your reality and baked into an unrecognizable, totally fresh dish: read on. There is a Kelly Link story for everyone; I’ve highlighted a few favorites and categorized by genre appeal. Bonus: most of them are available for free online.”
9. Dear Ani Trailer, (video). “More than 20 years ago, an aspiring songwriter began a creatively obsessive correspondence with music icon Ani DiFranco, believing the replies were encoded in her song lyrics. Dear Ani is an odyssey of music, art, and mania.”
12. AOC’s Fight for the Future. “Almost four years after her improbable arrival in Washington, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has become the political voice of a generation—and a cultural star whose power transcends politics. Now, as the country hurtles toward the midterm elections, AOC opens up about the battle over abortion, her own shot at the presidency, and why it’s critical that men step up now.”
13. Interview: ‘Spirit Rangers’ Creator Karissa Valencia. “After nearly a year and a half in development, Netflix’s new Native-themed animated children’s program Spirit Rangers will debut on Oct. 10. The show is part of Netflix’s Representation Matters Collection, which consists of movies and tv series focusing on storylines about and by people of color. The show follows three Indigenous siblings (Kodi, Summer, and Eddy) who are secret Spirit Rangers and protect the national park they call home. The premise is influenced by showrunner Karissa Valencia’s childhood experiences exploring her tribal territory with her sister.”
14. Project 562. “Created by Matika Wilbur, Project 562 is a multi-year national photography project dedicated to photographing over 562 federally recognized Tribes, urban Native communities, Tribes fighting for federal recognition and Indigenous role models in what is currently-known-as the United States, resulting in an unprecedented repository of imagery and oral histories that accurately portrays contemporary Native Americans.” She also is releasing a book based on the project.
23. Javier Zamora Carried a Heavy Load. He Laid It to Rest on the Page. on the New York Times. “Decades after traveling without his parents from El Salvador to the U.S. as a 9-year-old — a journey that almost killed him — Zamora describes the experience in a memoir.”
31. How to Meditate Every Dayon Lion’s Roar. “Diana Winston on committing to meditation practice. Featuring her ‘Ten Suggestions for Having a Regular Daily Practice Even if You Would Rather Be Thrown into a Shark-Infested Ocean.'”
33. Deep Adaptation, “a concept, agenda, and international social movement. It presumes that extreme weather events and other effects of climate change will increasingly disrupt food, water, shelter, power, and social and governmental systems. These disruptions would likely or inevitably cause uneven societal collapse in the next few decades. The word ‘deep’ indicates that strong measures are required to adapt to an unraveling of western industrial lifestyles. The agenda includes values of nonviolence, compassion, curiosity and respect, with a framework for constructive action.”
37. America Is a Rich Death Trap. “It’s not just the pandemic. For citizens of a wealthy country, Americans of every age, at every income level, are unusually likely to die, from guns, drugs, cars, and disease.”
41. Ambient playlist. 23 hours of music, “It is the music of the ether, the sound of dust that lingers in the air. Or it’s super boring. You choose. Ambient music, or whatever variant name you want to dub it has risen from the backwaters of academia and the curiosities of wayward pop savants to a global theme, interacting with the way we live in everything from ‘elevator music’ to ASMR.”
Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray) 