January, Fourth week :: 2022

Most of last week I kept a silent(ish) retreat. I didn’t go anywhere, I was just at home, opting out of the extra noise. I kept the phone off except for a few texts with loved ones, no music or podcasts, no television or movies. I wanted space to think deeply, to listen to my inner self for awhile. But my brain didn’t cooperate. It kept churning up weird bits of media I’d previously digested - pop songs, advertisements, movie scenes - like some kind of mental off-gassing. I began to feel uneasy, imagining my neural pathways coated with the greasy streaks of junk food culture. I considered the disturbing question: what if at the end of my life all that flashes before my eyes is an 80’s soda commercial and a scene from an Avenger’s movie? I might laugh about that idea if I didn’t recognize the way my mind latches onto such things, if I didn’t know those things were designed to manipulate my attention and stay lodged in my consciousness.

At the end of my allotted quiet time, I ran an errand and came home to find piles of feathers in the yard. Not the scatter of a sparrow or a blue jay (or one of my ducks, thank goodness); something bigger, different, something I don’t quite recognize. I kept going out to visit these remains, trying to imagine what, who, when, how. Was I asleep in my bed when it happened? At the grocery store? Eating dinner? The thought disturbs me unreasonably: life - or rather, death - occurring right out in the yard where I might have seen it, but didn’t. It tangles up with the week’s earlier feelings of regret: what else have I not seen? Have I missed what’s important? Am I a part of the real world or only the manufactured one?

For the rest of the day I felt the weight of these questions. How much am I shaped by what I truly value - the sacredness of earth and her creatures, my relationships with others - and how much am I shaped by the noise and expectations of a world that dismays me?

I went out at twilight, doubt clinging to my heels, and was startled by a deer, my old familiar, grazing on the pasture. She stood gently, her neck bent to the earth, entirely undisturbed by my presence. Deer have always arrived for me in moments like these; I read her like I once read scriptures. She was there for herself, but in another way she had come to comfort me, to remind me I cannot be ejected from my belonging. It was a grace, and I felt it as such. I called to her, she flicked an ear, we shared the last of the day’s light and then I went back to the house unburdened for a while, determined to stay a few more days in the quiet. I feel a spark of hope that there is something more inside, something else that might arise if I just give it the time - and silence - it needs.

We all know how to turn off screens, at least in theory; here are some other quiet practices to try:

Carry a book of poetry with you for waiting times. Or just look around, observing what other people are doing.

Don’t check news headlines.

In conversation, listen and encourage other people to talk while you say less.

Turn down the lights and sit in the semi-dark.

Welcome boredom and stay with it.

Doze off any time you can.

Sing to yourself.

Practice pranayama.

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Gathered this week:

~ A friend sent me this lovely little dance clip.

~ Your Bubble Is Not the Culture // Even though this article is about popular culture, there’s a lot to take note of in regards to how we perceive the world around us.

~ My family is practicing yoga with Tim these days. He’s got loads of free videos on youtube. He focuses a lot on correct form and building strength, which is just what I need. Plus he’s corny and sweet. (His subscription service is also amazing and well-worth the money - especially if you don’t go to the gym anymore, like us.)

~ I am happy living simply

“I am happy living simply:

like a clock, or a calendar.

Worldly pilgrim, thin,

wise - as any creature. To know

the spirit is my beloved. To come to things - swift

as a ray of light, or a look.

To live as I write: spare - the way

God asks me - and friends do not.”

(Marina Tsvetaeva, 1919, HT: Holly Wren Spaulding)

…

There are a few new readers here (welcome!) so I thought it would be nice to show myself and say hello.

Some things you might want to know about me - just for fun:

*I’ve been writing online since 2005. I’ve changed A LOT in that time.

*I write serious and live happy. Mostly. :)

*Enneagram 1/INFJ (Also a Gemini, which makes no sense to me.)

*I like kindness, fidelity, integrity, and generosity in people and I’m generally attracted to people in the margins.

*I dislike arrogance, proselytizing, over-confidence, loud voices, and selfishness. Also, those sheet cakes that come from the grocery store and people who don’t put their carts away when they’re done with them.

*I despise fundamentalism, whether it’s on the left or on the right.

*Part city/part country.

*Glasses, braces, mullet, perm, religion: middle school was hell.

*Definitely swear a little.

*Herbal tea, black tea, coffee with lots of oat milk, and red wine.

*I like talking to people who read here, so please say hello!

That’s all for now!

peace keep you, my friends,

tonia

December, First Week :: 2021

No matter how I try to prepare for it, the transition from fall to winter always manages to stagnate me. I’m perpetually cold, I feel lazy and apathetic, and I can’t even remember the gung-ho October person I used to be. Usually “just put your walking shoes on” is my standard method of getting myself out the door every day, but lately, I haven’t even managed that.

“Maybe,” a friend says, “that’s what this season is supposed to bring.”

Fine, fine, I think, but dragging myself through the grocery store a few days before Thanksgiving I lock eyes with an older woman passing me in the baking aisle. She raises an eyebrow toward my bulging cart and says, “The holidays are different for women, aren’t they?”

Oh yes they are, my friend, yes, they are. No matter how much simplifying and minimalising I do, there is just always going to be a war between the demands of family and cultural expectations and the creaturely, animal part of myself that wants to burrow down and get soft and warm this time of year.

Since I can’t disappear into a den and sleep the next two months, I’ve been making small concessions to this reality - allowing my writing disciplines to slip, doing more yoga and less walking, pushing pause on the long list of household projects, giving in to an impulse purchase here and there. It feels good to be softer with myself, to be human and needy and not always pushing toward a goal. Maybe that’s the gift of entering winter I can embrace.

. . .

Since I haven’t been around much these last few weeks - and I’m a bit out of the blogging habit - a random list of things occupying my mind and attention, just for fun:

• I met this year’s reading goal over the summer. Now I’m at 89 books and hoping to push to 100. Currently reading, Diary of a Young Naturalist and A Place in Time (which I’m going to have to put down for awhile because I just got The Witch’s Heart from the library, finally.)

• This cookbook is absolute magic. I can’t stop talking about it. And baking. And baking.

• Speaking of baking, I hate to say this, but I’ve been getting weary of the “build a skyscraper out of choux pastry” approach to the Great British Baking Show (couldn’t we just have beautiful and edible baking instead?) But this season won me over again. The cast was just SO GOOD! (Although they could use another female host, I think. Am I the only one who feels like the 12 year old boy-humor is getting a little tiresome?)

• Speaking of television, we started watching The Wheel of Time* and I am really enjoying escaping into a straightforward fantasy series. Also, the clothes are so good. Could I start wearing the pants/overskirt/embroidered tunic thing, do you think?

• Totally into handcrafts right now. This sweet video (the basket of scraps and thread, so inspiring!), this mending technique.

• My sister turned me on to a totally irreverent, slightly crass, funny podcast about health fads and the wellness community. This one about celery juice and the Medical Medium had me laughing all morning. I also enjoyed this one about how the wellness community got sucked into QAnon.

• Just going to leave this right here in case you, too, need to tear down some old fantasies/expectations about what it means to be a good friend/parent/citizen/kind human.

There you go: food, books and TV, and nothing too taxing. I hope you are all well. I know there are some emails I haven’t answered and some people I need to reach out to. If you’re one of them, thanks for being patient with my seasonal ineptitude.

If you’re so inclined, share your own winter pleasures and inspire the rest of us!

Note: I’m sorry Squarespace makes commenting such a pain. I know some of you don’t comment because of all the hoops you have to jump through. I’ll do some research and see if I can add a third party comment host and eliminate all that. Later. In the new year. ;)

Much love,

tonia

(*Another indulgence. I usually boycott all things Amazon.)

September, Third Week :: 2021

The neighbor, we think, has a new gun. A semi-automatic from the sounds of it, as he does target (?) practice (?) in the late afternoons. The stutter of explosions ricochets around our tiny valley doubling and redoubling until the dog tucks tail and runs indoors and we follow suit, ears ringing. We’ve lived rurally for over 15 years now and while I will never own a gun, I understand why other people keep a rifle in the back closet. It’s helpful for scaring off coyotes and cougars, dispatching a suffering hen, or bringing home a freezer full of venison. To each her own.

I don’t feel so gracious about the semi-automatic though, and I confess that my neighborly feelings have taken a hit lately. Every barrage bouncing its echo around our woods seems a reminder of all that is wrong with America; I have to bite my tongue to keep from shouting something rude into the void. Honestly, it’s just one of the many ways I’ve been floundering for weeks. The computer fiasco (that is still unresolved, cross your fingers for me!) combined with upended wedding plans (still waiting on a visa), the emptied house, plus the whole world being broke in all the ways…I don’t even know what to do with myself some days.

My funk these last weeks led me, as funks do, to revisit some old social media haunts. Can I just say that two years out from having my own social media accounts I am finding those places absolutely bizarre and frightening now? I scrolled through pages and pages of people turning themselves into set pieces and still lifes, dousing themselves with cynicism, or swimming in a stream of crisis/argument/drama that never stops. I saw lots of beautiful things and a lot of wonderful people, too, of course, but it leads me to wonder what we are doing to our minds and our ability to process, reason, and think independently. (If you’re so inclined, maybe step back a moment and see how much everything in those places looks and sounds exactly the same depending on which pond you’re swimming in.)

It took me a while to shake off the heaviness of that social media immersion, but I’m finding my energy again and thinking about new routines and rituals. I dragged myself back to the keyboard this week to work on a story. (“Why tell stories? We do it because we’re sick of reality and we need to create what isn’t yet there.” ~ Colum McCann) And I’ve got a spare room now, which I’m making into a quiet space for yoga and early morning meditation to start the day. I find that early morning time essential to recovering my calm and equanimity. It’s a place I can deliberately set down the things that cling to me, like my neighbor’s choices or my self-flagellation over the lost work, or the weight of the world’s calamities, and choose to reorient myself toward the peacableness and gentleness I want to inhabit.

“Because the mind is an important and sacred place, keep it clean and clear.” ~ Ryan Holiday

Next week I have plans for a little Autumn reset, an idea I gleaned from my Ayurvedic counselor. Autumn is my golden time of year, but I often find the transition from summer to fall a little harsh, so I’m going to take a couple of days to eat simply (gentle foods and warming broths) and rest my mind and body around the Equinox.

I hope that will lead naturally into my other Autumn goals:

• retreating from Internet persuasion,

• seeking less commentary and pursuing more deep reading,

• taking in less news and spending more time around a table in conversation*,

• making fewer plans and doing more consistent, patient work on whatever is in front of me.

Plus all the good baking and cooking with autumn foods, leaf walks and rainy days, and the first fires in the woodstove to look forward to.

Do share what plans you are making for Autumn and what ways you are finding peace in the midst of the world’s noise and complexity. I look forward to hearing from you.

xo

tonia

Gathered:

~ Finished the delicious translation of the Reynard the Fox tale this week. Gorgeous Old World storytelling featuring the wily, feral, charismatic Reynard evading the King and his crowd and naturally exposing the hypocrisy and machinations of power. Beautiful interiors, food, and vocabulary (plus female characters who are useful and intelligent!) Such a fun change of pace from my usual reading.

~ The Hawthorns are ripening here so it’s time to make Hawthorn Cordial again. Last year I served this at our Samhain dinner and it was delicious.

~ My daughter is writing the most charming kid’s novel about a girl who moves to France and can talk to animals. It’s absolutely fabulous. (And so is she.) You can find her website here and if you want to cheer her on, subscribe and help her grow a community online. <3

~ Mary Beard’s lecture on the classic myths and how they aid the cultural exclusion of women from power. “The ancient world is preoccupied with gender because patriarchy is never easy with itself.” I’m looking forward to getting her book, too.

*Ivan Illich: “Learned and leisurely hospitality is the only antidote to the stance of deadly cleverness that is acquired in the professional pursuit of objectively secured knowledge…I remain certain that the quest for truth cannot thrive outside the nourishment of mutual trust flowering into a commitment to friendship.”

a list of things to keep, for the Solstice

Sunday morning we got up early and went for a walk to watch the (near) Solstice sunrise. The sun was hiding behind a solid bank of stainless steel clouds, so it was more like an awakening than a rising, but we were glad to be out of doors to welcome the turn of the year anyway. It had been raining for hours by then and the path was littered by the last of the fallen leaves and long pink earthworms drummed up from their hideaways; egrets made patient stalks of the farm fields, arrows of geese passed overhead going north and south and every direction in between. I try always to be out in nature near the Solstice. That’s when the carnival of my mind can settle down and I can start thinking about the new year ahead and what I want to bring to it.

I’ve had so many conversations with friends lately trying to make sense of the world as it is, going over and over the possible whys and hows and wondering if it will ever be healed, but this morning watching the light on the winter grasses, I thought how weary I am of the striving, how ready I am to move forward. Not just from 2020, but from a lifetime of carrying too much weight that was never meant for me. Perhaps you can relate.

The lovely Niamh at Fairlyand Cottage posted a video yesterday about the 10 habits she was going to keep in the new year, and it just fit my mood. Let go the striving and focus on carrying good things forward. I thought about it quite a bit last night and made myself a list of things I have been consciously working on and want to continue in the new year.

Here it is.

I want to continue:

• moving away from a culture of suspicion and distrust and into my more natural state of openness, belief in the goodness of others, and hopefulness.

• releasing myself from relationship and association with those who want to stay in that culture (this is boundary setting for me, not a prescription for anyone else)

• releasing myself from dogmas

• healing my relationship with the feminine by cultivating friendships with women, removing internalized patriarchy, and believing myself

• finding middle ground. Avoiding bandwagons, slogans, labels, and easy jargon. (Work In Progress, for sure)

• not internalizing judgement or criticism from people who are not in relationship with me or who have not taken time to understand me

• cultivating generosity through deliberate giving, deep gratitude and presence, and a mindset of abundance (another very much Work In Progress)

• celebrating the ordinary year with small observances (the Wheel of the Year follows the natural world and makes it easy to be present to the time and place I’m in)

• nurturing myself through

  • daily yoga (I’m doing yin yoga every other day and it is life-changing)

  • walking (I’d like to double my mileage this year)

  • herbal infusions (which help balance hormones, mood, and energy levels)

  • Ayurvedic practices like abhyanga

• making small, daily efforts in writing (I’ve tried a lot of schedules, but this is the thing that works best for me, and it’s how I’m jump-starting my practice again after a long Covid-hiatus)

• building efficient and sustainable systems in my home and work (more permaculture principles, less waste, less consumption, more focus)

• beginning the day with poetry (I copy one poem by hand and read at least one other)

• learning new skills (currently: knitting, sourdough, and herbal studies)

• delighting in whatever feels magical to me: stories, music, art, nature, friendships, and more

• growing flowers everywhere

• challenging myself with books and movies that force me to pay close attention, be patient, and stretch my understanding and comfort level (with lots of room for entertainment too, of course!)

• working on an ebook version of my first novel to share with everyone

It was such an encouraging practice to sit down at this turn of the season and think about what is already working for me and see that I have actually put many good things in place. I don’t really need to make aspirational lists for the new year. I just need to carry on, a little bit every day. What a good feeling at the end of a year that often felt really bad!

I’d love to hear from you too. What is working for you? What good things have you done and want to keep doing?

Sending my heartfelt wishes for a lovely Christmastide to you all.

Happy Winter!

tonia

Writing soundtrack for this post: Henryk Gorecki, Symphony No. 3

Synchronous:

“My work: to do more than reproduce the toxic stories I inherited and learned…My work: to write poems that make my people feel safe, seen, or otherwise loved…”

Jose Olivarez - Ars Poetica