August, First week :: 2021
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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.”
