1. Truth: This is one of my favorite times of the year, as well as one of the hardest. It’s the busiest part of my whole CSU work year, but it’s also spring — the smell of the lilacs, my irises starting to bloom, buds on my peonies, the trees getting their leaves, the bird song, the promise of a garden and summer, the rain, the rain, the rain.
blergh…
2. Truth: I have Seasonal Affective Disorder. I’m very aware that S.A.D. is the kind of condition that if you don’t have it sounds like a made up thing, but trust me — it’s real. It’s some kind of trick the light and moisture and temperature plays on my brain. And when it’s as gloomy as it has been the past few days (and will be for the next few as well), I just want to stay in bed. I feel like I’m carrying the full weight of the sky and the weather in my body, like the whole thing sits right on top of my head, settles in my chest, and it’s too heavy. Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, I just thought I was a gloomy person. Then I moved to Colorado and realized it was actually the weather.
3. Truth: I’m ready for this semester to be over. I was playing around with my new work camera yesterday, and my friend who’d stopped by to have lunch took this picture of me. It makes me smile because it’s so ridiculous but also so accurate — this is exactly how I feel right now. I have two more weeks of CSU work (fingers crossed that I finish what I have to by then, but even if I don’t my office has to be packed up so they can move it back into our newly remodeled building, thus the chaos behind me in the picture) and three more Sundays of yoga teacher training, and I’m so ready to be done, to rest.
One wish: That even if we are busy, overwhelmed, sad, tired, confused, we are still able to see and appreciate the beauty amidst the mess, still able to laugh. That we do what we can to be gentle with ourselves and others. That even as we surrender to what is, we don’t give up.
If a person has never given writing a try, they assume that a brilliant idea is hard to come by. But really, even if it takes some digging, ideas are out there. Just open your eyes and look at the world. Writing the ideas down, it turns out, is the real trick.
3. A’driane on Chookooloonks. When I get some time, I really want to dig around A’driane’s blog. She’s talking about things that are really important. Really important and heartbreaking on Chookooloonks is Karen’s post Enough. And finally, this from Karen posted on Medium is fucking brilliant, To My White Friends Who Struggle With What To Say.
This is not new. This has been going on for decades. And without making any excuses for criminal activities that take place in these communities, we also know if you have impoverished communities that have been stripped away of opportunity, where children are born into abject poverty, they’ve got parents, often because of substance abuse problems or incarceration or lack of education, and themselves can’t do right by their kids, if it’s more likely that those kids end up in jail or dead than that they go to college, and communities where there are no fathers who can provide guidance to young men, communities where there’s no investment, and manufacturing’s been stripped away, and drugs have flooded the community and the drug industry ends up being the primary employer for a lot of folks, in those environments, if we think that we’re just going to send the police to do the dirty work of containing the problems that arise there without, as a nation, and as a society saying what can we do to change those communities to help lift up those communities and give those kids opportunity, then we’re not going to solve this problem, and we’ll go through this same cycles of periodic conflicts between the police and communities, and the occasional riots in the streets and everybody will feign concern until it goes away and we just go about our business as usual.
11. Wisdom from René Descartes,
If you would be a real seeker after truth,
it is necessary that at least once in your life
you doubt, as far as possible, all things.
13. Wisdom from “The Other America,” a speech by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. at Grosse Pointe High School – March 14, 1968, (which except for a few of the details reads like it could have been written this March 14th),
I’m absolutely convinced that a riot merely intensifies the fears of the white community while relieving the guilt. And I feel that we must always work with an effective, powerful weapon and method that brings about tangible results. But it is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the negro poor has worsened over the last twelve or fifteen years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity.
…we must still face the fact that our nation’s summers of riots are caused by our nations winters of delay. As long as justice is postponed we always stand on the verge of these darker nights of social disruption. The question now, is whether America is prepared to do something massively, affirmatively and forthrightly about the great problem we face in the area of race and the problem which can bring the curtain of doom down on American civilization if it is not solved…
The first thing I would like to mention is that there must be a recognition on the part of everybody in this nation that America is still a racist country. Now however unpleasant that sounds, it is the truth. And we will never solve the problem of racism until there is a recognition of the fact that racism still stands at the center of so much of our nation and we must see racism for what it is…And we’ve got to see that this still exists in American society. And until it is removed, there will be people walking the streets of live and living in their humble dwellings feeling that they are nobody, feeling that they have no dignity and feeling that they are not respected. The first thing that must be on the agenda of our nation is to get rid of racism.
17. Welcome Everybody, “a grassroots, nationwide project to demonstrate our collective strength against the continued attacks on civil liberties around the nation.”
It’s one of the most complex, urgent American stories being told. The cameras might stop rolling, but it won’t end anytime soon. Don’t let it. Keep reading. Keep watching. Keep listening. Keep looking for a way to be a part of the crowd with its hands on the moral arc, bending, bending, bending. However long it takes.
When things fall apart and we can’t get the pieces back together, when we lose something dear to us, when the whole thing is just not working and we don’t know what to do, this is the time when the natural warmth of tenderness, the warmth of empathy and kindness, are just waiting to be uncovered, just waiting to be embraced. This is our chance to come out of our self-protecting bubble and to realize that we are never alone. This is our chance to finally understand that wherever we go, everyone we meet is essentially just like us. Our own suffering, if we turn toward it, can open us to a loving relationship with the world.
1. Truth: This is one of my favorite times of the year, as well as one of the hardest. It’s the busiest part of my whole CSU work year, but it’s also spring — the smell of the lilacs, my irises starting to bloom, buds on my peonies, the trees getting their leaves, the bird song, the promise of a garden and summer, the rain, the rain, the rain.
3. Truth: I’m ready for this semester to be over. I was playing around with my new work camera yesterday, and my friend who’d stopped by to have lunch took this picture of me. It makes me smile because it’s so ridiculous but also so accurate — this is exactly how I feel right now. I have two more weeks of CSU work (fingers crossed that I finish what I have to by then, but even if I don’t my office has to be packed up so they can move it back into our newly remodeled building, thus the chaos behind me in the picture) and three more Sundays of yoga teacher training, and I’m so ready to be done, to rest.
