Strawberries from our garden

1. Truth: I am in a strange fugue, a liminal state. This happens every summer vacation, for at least the first two weeks, but if the year was worse (like this one) it can linger. I’ve made the to-do list — things like painting the house and cleaning out the garage and buying new bras and getting a haircut — but only a few things have been done and crossed off. This summer it feels particularly strange because I know when I go back next year, it will be my last (had I told you that yet? It’s not official, but it is for sure), and I already am really clear about what I’m going to to next but can’t start yet. It’s a weird place to exist.

2. Truth: I’m not purposely trying to bum you out, it’s just that everywhere I look things are bad. I can see the good too — I mean just look at that bowl of juicy strawberries that came out of our garden — but I refuse to deny the bad just because it’s difficult or uncomfortable or fucking depressing. The reality is both — tender and terrible, brutal and beautiful. I feel myself tipping towards the dark, feeling the overwhelm of the awful, but I haven’t given up and it doesn’t keep me from seeing the good.

3. Truth: Tomorrow I’m taking my first swimming lesson. Not the first of my life. I took swimming lessons when I was younger, but was a scared, timid, nervous kid who was tormented by teenaged instructors who thought, for example, that it was funny to push a kid who was crying and afraid to jump in the deep end into the water from behind or to meet fear with anger and bullying. I sort of learned to be in the water, but more so learned to be terrified. I’d like to change that, and tomorrow I’m going to start trying.

One wish: That no matter where we find ourselves, we can keep our head above water, keep swimming, keep trying.

A flume bridge built by a sugar beet company in Fort Collins to dump waste on the other side of the river, image by Eric

1. Truth: The Universe is pulling me in another direction. It’s the strangest thing to be living your life as usual, pretty much the same as it’s been for years, but to feel a change pulling at you like a strong wind or current in a river. Sure, you can try to go against it if you’d like, but it might pull you apart or even drown you if you do. And the moments that I give in to the pull, allow myself to be carried along by it, I feel a sense of ease I haven’t known in a really really really long time.

2. Truth: My Something Good lists are something else entirely to me. They are a record of all the things I want to dive into more deeply, research and think and write about, but because I don’t have the time or energy for that right now, I share the lists, save the rest for later.

3. Truth: I’m not going to focus on the positive. At a poetry reading I attended last week, poet Ross Gay described joy as something that allowed room for grief, and said it was a practice. I have very little patience right now for those who would have the rest of us ignore the brutal, the terrible in favor of sunshine and puppies. I love those last two things as much as the next person, maybe even more so, but I can’t ignore the suffering that exists. I can’t lie about it or look the other way. Even though it’s tempting, my goal isn’t to feel better or be more comfortable. My mission is to ease suffering, in myself and the world. For that, I have to keep my eyes and heart open, make room for all of it, and help when and where I can.

One wish: May we fully listen and be present for suffering, and do what we can to ease it.