What's in the gallery?
We dissolve stuck and rewrite patterns. We apply radical playfulness to life (when we feel like it!), embarking on internal adventures (credo of Safety First). We have a fake band called Solved By Cake. We build invisible sanctuaries, invent words and worlds, breathe awe and wonder.
We are not impressed by monsters. Except when we are. We explore the connections between internal territories and surrounding environment to learn what marvelously supportive delicious space feels like, and how to take exquisite care of ourselves. We transform things.* We glow wild.**
* For example: Desire, fear, worry, pain-and-trauma, boundaries, that problematic word which rhymes with flaweductivity.
** Fair warning: Self-fluency has been known to lead to extremely subversive behavior, including treasuring yourself unconditionally, unapologetically taking up space, experiencing outrageously improbable levels of self-acceptance, and general rejoicing in aliveness.
What's in the gallery?
We dissolve stuck and rewrite patterns. We apply radical playfulness to life (when we feel like it!), embarking on internal adventures (credo of Safety First). We have a fake band called Solved By Cake. We build invisible sanctuaries, invent words and worlds, breathe awe and wonder.
We are not impressed by monsters. Except when we are. We explore the connections between internal territories and surrounding environment to learn what marvelously supportive delicious space feels like, and how to take exquisite care of ourselves. We transform things.* We glow wild.**
* For example: Desire, fear, worry, pain-and-trauma, boundaries, that problematic word which rhymes with flaweductivity.
** Fair warning: Self-fluency has been known to lead to extremely subversive behavior, including treasuring yourself unconditionally, unapologetically taking up space, experiencing outrageously improbable levels of self-acceptance, and general rejoicing in aliveness.
Delayed Reaction Wish Fulfillment
Delayed Reaction Wish Fulfillment
Monday morning, tail end of May.
Cate and I met up early at the trailhead and walked for an hour, the sun was warm but not too hot, we talked happily and seriously about everything and nothing, moving at a pace that was not slow and not fast, and it was all just right.
How fortunate we are, I said, to be somewhere so beautiful.
How fortunate we are, she said, to know it and witness it and share it.
We saw a lone and very bright white flower in the middle of the field. Look at that brave friend, said Cate.
Edge-spaces
On the drive back to the isolated wilds, I thought about the difference between a trailhead (here are marked paths, to guide you through this exquisite wondrous landscape) and the isolation of where I live, between the forest and the cliffs, edge-space, edge-spaces.
I thought about the time it will take me to recover, because after a hike, even a relatively gentle one like the one we did, I need the rest of the day to do nothing, and the next day to do more nothing.
And how this recovery time is worth it to me, because I feel so peaceful on the trail and so happy and rejuvenated to see a friend, and to be in the companionship of the fields, flowers and trees.
Revival
Walking outdoors through fields of grasses and thriving juniper trees revives me, and that is worth it. Love to be revived. Revival: a word with religious fervor baked in, and also: a coming back to life, a return to vibrancy.
From Old French: revivre. Again + To Live.
Recovery
That’s just how it is.
I can not-exert and wear myself out anyway from anxiety, and the day-to-day things of staying alive, and I can exert (go for a hike, do some yoga) and wear myself out that way, either way, I will need more rest than I think.
It is frustrating to explain chronic illness, traumatic brain injury, long covid life, or how I experience these; difficult to convey that an hour of walking can do me so much good that it is worth two days of staring into space, but also that it doesn’t matter because I will be staring into space for two days anyway.
The well-meaning people cautioning me to conserve my energy don’t seem to understand how I personally am experiencing this new relationship with having/not-having energy (mostly not having it) any more than the people who want me to expend more than I have for them.
Calculations
An hour hike is much less draining for me than a fifteen minute phone call or fifteen minutes at the grocery store or fifteen minutes cleaning the kitchen.
And also: those other things have to happen sometimes, they have to happen eventually, and there isn’t anyone else who can do them for me.
So I do a [something], and then must stare into space for two days, and occasionally the something that prompts this is a fucking delight, like hiking at the trailhead. Again to live! Again to live.
Equinox to Solstice
At vernal equinox, I wrote my spring wishes, and my biggest wish was to become someone who likes hiking. And then for five weeks, absolutely zero hiking happened, I barely went outdoors other than onto my porch at the end of the day for a breath or two of fresh air.
There began to be a monster chorus about how wishes never come true, and what is the point of wishing, when I am the most stuck-in-a-rut person, etc.
And then somehow, the past five weeks have each included one completely delightful and rejuvenating hike that brought joy to my soul.
Delayed Reaction Wish Fulfillment. Ah yes, I remember this from somewhere, from before.
Very Personal
Some of you remember how I used to name wishes here, each Sunday, in the form of Very Personal Ads.
The point was never to get anything, for me the practice of wishing is about revealing what I want. (Which itself is less about revealing and more about being willing to allow a process of revealing to take place, in its own slow time.)
From there, what do my yeses show me about myself or about where I am? How am I orienting myself towards this wish?
Orienting myself towards
Wishing wishes for me is very much not about striving, acquiring, achieving, manifesting, or forcing anything into fruition.
Instead, it’s the intimate and powerful practice of inviting, clarifying, making room for the wanting.
I experience this as a deep inquisitiveness. Can I approach a wish with receptivity, presence and love, making sanctuary for the vulnerability that comes with naming desire.
Remembering
Now I am remembering how many, many times, I would wish a wish and then weeks or months later, some aspect of that wish would pop up like spring flowers.
The timing is the timing for spring flowers, they are there when they are there. Again to live!
Something about patience
I am taking this as a much-needed reminder about patience, and the fractal elements of being in process, whether with a wish, a goal, or something in-between, here’s to all the beautiful gwishes.
It is frustrating (wishing, recovery, hope) to want what you want, and make room for the wanting and the sorrow and all of it, and perceive that no progress is being made.
And yet, progress is maybe the wrong wish to begin with, and none of this is linear, and sometimes something moves from the realm of impossible to the possible, or sometimes a new possible emerges. Or a new wish entirely, one we weren’t ready for earlier!
I rushed myself to make progress on the wish about hiking, and then at a certain point, hiking showed up for me, and I’m just glad it is here.
Perseverance as revival
Can I bring this peaceful steadiness, this Patience + Presence + Process approach to my other wishes for myself, my healing, my body, the property where I live, the various challenges that present themselves?
Can I allow a little time, even when I am perceiving time itself as tight and constrained, too shallow, too narrow, too elusive?
Can I put my wishes in a drawer or seed them in a pot, blow kisses at them, visit them occasionally, trust their process, undo any perceptions of frustration or shame around their timing that is all their own?
Can I do all that (or even some of that) and keep steadily, lovingly, making room for myself to exist in the world as someone who wishes wishes, hand on heart, still here.
We keep on keeping on. Perseverance is the new revival. AGAIN, to live.
Doing or not-doing = doing what I can
Someone said on a podcast, and it stuck with me: DO WHAT YOU CAN, DON’T HURT YOURSELF.
And I am living by that. Irish accent optional but it does substantially improve the wisdom of this, in my extremely biased opinion.
I also have a sticker that says WORK HARD KEEP GOING, and I am living by that too, though sometimes for me “work hard” means feed yourself, clean up after, good job babe, you did what you could.
I am lighting a candle for this, and for everyone reading who also needs extra support in the trusting, the wishing, the keeping on keeping on, and waiting for the delayed-reaction wish-fulfillment, while we are in the process of readying ourselves for whatever shifting is needed, turning ourselves towards the sun…
Wishing
Wishing us the hopeful-hope of new flowers, emergence, a change in air, a delicious breeze, good smells, and the bravery of allowing ourselves to want, to get closer to a clear yes, or a good clue.
Or maybe the good clues are on their way to us right now, with the wishes, the yeses, floating our way.
Let’s keep going and meet them. Let’s take breaks as needed along the way, whatever revives you.
Again to live, making sanctuary space for the hope sparks.
Brave like a flower. Fractal powers. Interconnected bravery. We can do this.
Question
Is anyone interested in some new form of a return to VPAs? X Days of Wishing? Some practice of very personal ads and playing with this stuff? I am thinking about some possible forms to play with….
Come play with me, I love company
You are welcome to play with any of these concepts in any way you like. Come play in the comments!
We are experimenting with experimenting, all experiments are useful experiments! What wishes or themes are you playing with? What would help? As always, People Vary.
And of course you’re invited to share anything sparked for you while reading, or add any wishes into the pot, into the healing the power of the collective is no small thing, and companionship helps.
Here’s to locating the supportive rituals, playful experiments & loving compassion we need.
A request
If you received clues or perspective or want to send appreciation for the writing and work/play we do here, I appreciate it tremendously. Working on some stuff to offer this coming year, but between traumatic brain injury recovery & Long Covid, slow going.
I am accepting support (with joy & gratitude) in the form of Appreciation Money to Barrington’s Discretionary Fund. Asking is not where my strength resides but Brave & Stalwart is the theme these days, and pattern-rewriting is the work, it all helps with fixing the many broken things.
Or you can buy a copy of the my Monster Manual & Coloring Book if you don’t have it!
And if those aren’t options, I get it, you can light a candle for support (or light one in your mind!), share one of my posts with someone who loves words, tell people about these techniques, approaches and themes, send them here, it all helps, it’s all welcome, and I appreciate it and you so much. ❤️
Other’s Day
Other’s Day
Some thoughts I had today, on Other’s Day, on making our own feast days, and naming some wishes.
Also I learned from an email that it’s national hummus day, whatever that means, so if you want to opt out of a more conventional holiday and haven’t made up one of your own for the occasion, I’m all for celebrating [dip & spread] life.
Odd and bewildering
It is a bewildering experience to fully contemplate just how much our culture loves othering.
(In general, and also the intense othering of people who don’t do or aren’t a part of rhymes-with-othering, or for whom the day is a source of great pain and grief, truly so many ways to be othered today.)
Deep breaths this morning
Yes, it is a lot. I am again taking time to really think about how we just exist in of a culture that is built around pushing so many people away to purportedly celebrate some, a culture that as a matter of principle seemingly cannot or will not extend compassion, or be inclusive and welcoming, not to save itself and not in the name of kindness.
Today is one of those extra-aware days in this category, here in the United States, as this country celebrates a thirty five billion dollar industry that built itself up around what was originally a feminist labor cause: to recognize, honor and name the work of mothers for what it is, actual difficult labor, unpaid and invisible.
It’s a beautiful and important wish, to honor this work and its complexity and those who undertake it, and also [having a day about it] in the collective brings up big feelings and identity stuff, and sometimes also an enormous amount of trauma, and wow, we have not figured out a better way to do any of this. I hope we do someday. I have ideas!
But here we are
But here we are with what we ended up with, a holiday that induces stress for most and pain for many.
(Oh and it also often generates even more labor for the very people whose labor we were supposedly originally trying to acknowledge!)
And, for whatever unknown reasons, we seem disinterested in rewriting it to make it better, because we could be making this situation better, both for those want a day for celebration and acknowledgment, and for those who dearly need sanctuary space, a safe haven, on or even from this day.
There is certainly more acknowledgment than there used to be of the many small (and less-small) cruelties of the season, but never do we try reinventing new holidays that are loving and compassionate and serve a greater good. I know why, but also I don’t.
Feast Day
You know how I love a feast day, a feast of the small gods, or a week of feast days, or a chrysalis for trying times. A feast of liberations to mark a painful past experience, or whatever we need to mark time.
And also as a way to reclaim the calendar, may it be a safe haven, or at least a place that can be more comforting, loving and supportive than external culture, with its limiting expectations.
Our individual and collective pain memories exist in time, what if we made more room for them and for self-tending?
Other’s Day
Here is what I am doing on this Other’s Day, a holiday that is not for me but exists in the collective:
- checking in on friends who are having a tough time today, lighting candles, sending memes
- baking coconut tahini banana muffins (thank you, Garret, for the tiny toaster oven replacement), because Imaginary Cooking Club is the most predictable way I can center myself
- imagining what a better culture might look like, how might we tend to ourselves and each other if we genuinely cared about crafting a compassionate and just society, not just in this way but in all ways
- extending that imagining to an imaginary farm, if I had friends living here with me in the permaculture / small organic farm / commune of my dreams, what holidays and feast days would invent, and how would we cherish each other in meaningful ways, in a way that can exist outside of the options external culture has given us…?
- vacuuming and dusting, because when in doubt, ritual & repetition, finding harmony, a re-congruencing
- renaming wishes, reading recipes, and of course, rolling around on the floor.
Feast Day as always is a matter of trial and error, and that is okay
At one point I found myself in a state of great overwhelm, and so I sautéed a mess of onions in coconut cream and zaatar, added spinach and then peas, and fried up a pile of spicy potatoes, and made a garlicky lemoney tahini dressing.
Many things can be, if not solved by deliciousness, at least improved.
MORE THAN I THINK IT WILL BUT NOT AS MUCH AS I NEED IT TO!
As with so many experiments, it fell into the confusing category of Helped Not Enough And Not As Much As I Hoped, But Also So Much More Than I Thought It Would.
Yes, hello, my old friend HELPS MORE THAN I THINK IT WILL BUT NOT AS MUCH AS I NEED IT TO.
We have spent so much time together.
So many things in this category, for me
So many other things in this category: yoga, stretching, going for a little walk even though I don’t want to, etc.
I don’t necessarily think this is bad.
We try things, and sometimes they help a little, and sometimes they help later, and sometimes the effect is cumulative, and sometimes the important thing is that we tried and paid attention.
Being a human in a body can be so hard. Noticing what we notice is a practice of love, trying things and then trying other things is a practice of love. Just like a feast day.
Some Other’s Day Wishes
Into the soup pot, or into the wishing cauldron, a wonderment of wishes.
Compassion compassion compassion. Grace grace grace.
Belonging. Sweetness. Warmth. Deep comfort.
Hope, a renewal of hope, and some safety and sanctuary too, in recognition of the tremendous tenderness it takes to allow ourselves to hope towards anything in these times.
More wishes
A dancing procession with tambourines for everyone who yearns for something they can’t have, and also for everyone who doesn’t yearn for the expected things you’re told you’re supposed to yearn for.
May we all be welcomed, thought of with tenderness, cared for and cherished, may we be more than an afterthought or that careless “also you who are suffering”, what if we invented rituals that weren’t suffering-adjacent…
I am also wishing wishes for me about sustenance and sustainability, about Slow Time, and quiet farm life, and community to share it with.
Also I wish I could give you one of these tiny muffins if you wanted one, they are gluten-free and vegan, and also despite the thing I just said, extremely rich, decadent and delicious.
Baking
Baking for me is such an immense joy, love delivered in a temporal offering, a layering of flavors, a gift of all sweetness that can exist in the right here, right now.
It also, like so many expressions of love, takes time, repetition, presence, and a willingness to experiment.
Love
I have an enormous amount of love for you and for us, however you are experiencing this day or any day. If it helps, I am lighting a candle for peace, justice, comfort and a sense of well-being, for wishing our wishes, and imagining our way into something even better.
Here’s to something even better, and all the possibility that emerges from Something Even Better.
Come play with me, I love company
You are welcome to play with feast days and self-tending or any of these concepts in any way you like. Come play in the comments!
We are experimenting with experimenting, all experiments are useful experiments! What wishes or themes are you playing with? What would help? As always, People Vary.
And of course you’re invited to share anything sparked for you while reading, or add any wishes into the pot, into the healing the power of the collective is no small thing, and companionship helps.
Here’s to locating the supportive rituals, playful experiments & loving compassion we need.
A request
If you received clues or perspective or want to send appreciation for the writing and work/play we do here, I appreciate it tremendously. Working on some stuff to offer this coming year, but between traumatic brain injury recovery & Long Covid, slow going.
I am accepting support (with joy & gratitude) in the form of Appreciation Money to Barrington’s Discretionary Fund. Asking is not where my strength resides but Brave & Stalwart is the theme these days, and pattern-rewriting is the work, it all helps with fixing the many broken things.
Or you can buy a copy of the my Monster Manual & Coloring Book if you don’t have it!
And if those aren’t options, I get it, you can light a candle for support (or light one in your mind!), share one of my posts with someone who loves words, tell people about these techniques, approaches and themes, send them here, it all helps, it’s all welcome, and I appreciate it and you so much. ❤️
Easy Mode
Easy Mode
Sometimes my back pain makes it not fun to stand, and sometimes it makes it not fun to sit, and right now (let “right now” = the past couple weeks), sitting is the miserable one.
And so I pace, or find things I can do either standing or reclining that are enjoyable or that pass the time.
I found myself increasingly frustrated by the limitations of pain (a very legitimate frustration, and also the very definition of It Is What It Motherfucking Is), but lately I have been trying to focus on a different approach.
Let’s Do This Day In EASY MODE.
Like in a game
Like in a game.
Why am I doing things on any other mode? Who am I trying to impress?
Easy mode
Easy mode can look like:
- five minutes of low impact kitchen jogging instead of thirty
- knees to chest instead of yoga
- or: what does yoga look & feel like if I only do standing or reclining poses
- a meal that has three or fewer steps
- what can be done later?
- what is a symbolic way of doing this?
- what does 10% effort look or feel like?
As my dance teacher used to say, DO LESS TO GET MORE.
How can I apply that here?
What is even easier than that?
What is easy?
What is even easier than that?
What is the path of MORE EASE?
Where am I complicating, adding steps that are not needed, or expecting too much of myself?
What happens when I do even less?
An exploration, taken slowly
This is a new form of investigation for me, trying to make room for my frustration, practice acknowledgment & legitimacy, and also turn my attention towards Less & Slowness, towards being deliberate and selective.
Discerning.
Post-
I talked to my doctor about PEM (Post-Exertional Malaise), the medical term for this thing where I do literally anything, and then have to spend days and days recovering from whatever it is I did.
That is not related to the back pain, but both PEM and the back pain are fun aspects of Long Covid that I really was not able to grasp just how much they would impact my life, until I found myself regularly saying things like “well, guess today isn’t a standing day”, or “yeah, I did laundry yesterday so now I need to do nothing for a week”.
Anyway, I was telling this doctor about how I have tried all the suggestions and hate them. Either they don’t work for me, or don’t apply to my situation, or they just make me feel worse.
And my doctor said, okay, new suggestion: ignore all the suggestions. Reduce things that are effortful, to the extent that you can. Make your life easier. Choose ease where you can.
What does it mean to play the day in EASY MODE
Obviously there is an element of monsters (self-criticism voices, internalized cultural expectations).
Obviously there is real-life stress (things do have to get done, I live alone, there is no one else who can get groceries or wash dishes).
And, at the same time, if we ask the ultimate clarifying question, what’s true and what’s also true, playing on any other mode is not working.
Playing on EASY MODE is a form of generosity, permission, compassion, love.
So that’s what I’m practicing right now. More on what I learn and notice later. In the meantime you are welcome to practice with me.
ANNOUNCEMENT! The Brautigan Wing returns!
In October of 2013 (nearly ten years ago somehow), I put out a 77 page ebook called The Brautigan Wing.
My description at the time: a museum of small and big realizations.
In this book, I imagined building a museum exhibit about my mind, based on found post-it notes, with commentary about what the poet (me) may or may not have intended. Maybe there are some good clues for you, or maybe you’ll be inspired to turn your pile of notes into your own exhibit.
Anyway, if you feel moved to give any sum of Appreciation Money to Barrington’s Discretionary Fund, I’ll email you a link to the ebook! I don’t check email every day, but it will happen soon.
Come play with me, I love company
You are welcome to play with any of the concepts here in any way you like. Come play in the comments!
We are experimenting with experimenting, all experiments are useful experiments! How do you want to play on EASY MODE? What wishes or themes are you playing with? What would help? As always, People Vary.
And of course you’re invited to share anything sparked for you while reading, or add any wishes into the pot, into the healing the power of the collective is no small thing, and companionship helps.
Here’s to locating the supportive rituals, playful experiments & loving compassion we need.
A request
If you received clues or perspective or want to send appreciation for the writing and work/play we do here, I appreciate it tremendously. Working on some stuff to offer this coming year, but between traumatic brain injury recovery & Long Covid, slow going.
I am accepting support (with joy & gratitude) in the form of Appreciation Money to Barrington’s Discretionary Fund. Asking is not where my strength resides but Brave & Stalwart is the theme these days, and pattern-rewriting is the work, it all helps with fixing the many broken things.
Or you can buy a copy of the my Monster Manual & Coloring Book if you don’t have it!
And if those aren’t options, I get it, you can light a candle for support (or light one in your mind!), share one of my posts with someone who loves words, tell people about these techniques, approaches and themes, send them here, it all helps, it’s all welcome, and I appreciate it and you so much. ❤️
A map of a place I don’t know
The places I don’t know yet
Maps
A map of a place I don’t know.
Or: a map is a place I don’t know (yet).
A map of a place I don’t know (a map is a place I don’t know?)
Yet
A map shows what is still unknown (yet), and yet, whoever made the map knows more than I do.
The problem with fragments and clues is that I know I made the map, and I don’t remember making it.
I did this before the concussion too, leaving myself clues and forgetting what they meant.
What do I know
I live without memory and also I have too many memories, and while those sound like conflicting pieces of data, both of these, taken separately or together, mean I am forever mapping my thoughts in fragments of words that feel so clear and clarifying in the moment…
I then find these fragments later and have to guess what the poet intended. Surely this was an important thought or I wouldn’t have written it down. Or would I have.
Maybe that’s the poetry in it all.
What do I know about maps?
Maps as a verb
I know that maps is a verb as well as a noun.
The active act of mapping.
I found another note that simply says Charting Despair, underlined three times. Big drama there. If that’s what the poet intended.
And to chart is also to map, a chart is also a map. If I can chart the despair, I can also chart the not-despair, which means maybe I can also chart a channel, find a way through.
Not here and not there
When I was in my first year of university, in Tel Aviv, I was living in a shared dorm room. My roommate was Russian, tough, bitter, glamorous, a few years older than me. She had grown up in St. Petersburg.
I think we were put together because we were both foreign; odd stragglers who didn’t fit in and didn’t make sense, who in everyone else’s mind weren’t really supposed to be there, two difficult people who seemed temporary, who had rudely managed to finagle their way into university without doing army service first.
For this, we were seen by some as sneaky and unlikeable, and by others as cool and reckless, and we did not seem to care what anyone thought about this, which only intensified these perceptions of us on their part, and our own perceptions of not belonging anywhere.
We were mismatched with the world and mismatched (though also well-matched) with each other.
A quick and easy truce
Truly no one knew what to do with us, certainly no one believed we would finish our degrees. Everyone had an opinion, a negative one, and they all went out of their way to tell us that we wouldn’t and couldn’t succeed there, though we did, possibly out of spite.
(I couldn’t tell you where my spite-diploma is though, because once I had earned it, I had to go be spiteful about other things.)
Somewhat unsurprisingly, having had to fight our way into this situation to begin with, we both showed up to this shared living arrangement prickly and uneasy, fully prepared to hate each other, on principle. Though more as a survival instinct by this point than anything else, I think.
But we were at first surprised and eventually delighted to discover that we didn’t hate each other at all, and we became fast friends.
Opposite
She spoke Hebrew with a calm, measured way of speaking, not slowly exactly but somehow studied and methodical, a light Russian accent present though not distractingly so, and then she’d speak in English at a breakneck speed in a sort of clipped British television voice that I loved, and her personality remained consistent despite these tonal shifts that I at first found disorienting and then soon became used to.
She was, at all times, consistently dry, witty, and sarcastic, refreshingly abrasive, and very, very funny. I adored her.
Because we had both grown up inside of the cold war, confused traumatized kids of the ‘80s, I had this idea at first, one possibly rooted in wishful thinking, that we must in some way have had some similar or interrelated childhood experiences, just from opposite sides of the looking glass. She corrected me on this immediately.
Fear and Loathing in Not-Here (and a map of New York City)
“We were so scared, constantly, of being Attacked By The Russians,” I explained. “There was always this imagined imminent threat that any day the bombings could start, and probably would. It was all propaganda of course but it felt so entirely real at the time. Did you feel the same way?”
“What? Never. Preposterous.” She looked at me with the most withering possible expression. “Imagine being scared of Americans. We were so fucking ready to invade you. We memorized maps of New York City, we trained for the invasion, for victory. We weren’t scared of you. We mocked you. We couldn’t wait to take over New York, it was exciting. I can draw you a map from memory. It still comes in handy when I visit friends in Brooklyn.”
Not matching, complementary
And so, as it turns out, we weren’t having similar, oddly parallel experiences, on the opposite sides of a mirror. Our delusions weren’t matching ones, though I guess you could describe them as complimentary in a way.
A co-dependency of false narratives? A canopy of shared illusion and delusion. There’s some poetry in that. There’s always some poetry in being wrong.
Fear and the opposite of fear. The opposite of fear is not courage so much as it is that exact flavor of over-confident dismissiveness, derision. Fear and loathing, there you go.
Drawn
Delusions like magnets drawing towards each other, delusions facing the opposite way and push-pulling apart with a thrill of close but not-close.
Draw swords.
Draw maps.
Draw conclusions.
Draw me closer.
Draw me like one of your French girls.
Draw water from the well.
What am I wrong about this time? Everything, probably.
What is consensus reality when there’s no consensus
You could say that while we both grew up in heightened realities (imminent big change on the horizons, personal and political), at the same time neither of us grew up anchored in any kind of consensus reality.
Maybe because there was no consensus reality, our countries and our families were lying to us and themselves at all times.
And now we were in a different country of lies, a country that runs on lies, and there we were, lying our way out of army service as a way of not serving the biggest lie, or possibly instead we were just lying our way into some other, smaller and more convenient lies. Sure. I mean, it’s complicated.
Everyone had a strong opinion to offer on this and every other topic, we were either clever and savvy, or brazen and foolish, we were either working the system (good) or working the system (terrible), and we would either regret it or we wouldn’t. The amount that we cared was, again, almost nonexistent. We had other, more pressing problems to wake up to.
The file
The Israeli government had a surprisingly impressive file on me, I don’t know all of what was in it and I like to imagine that someone just shoved a stack of printer paper in there for the purposes of intimidation, but the person holding it definitely knew some things, or claimed to know things about me, things that I didn’t even know.
To this day I am still unsure if some or any of these things they hinted at are true, and I don’t know who I would ask because there are no reliable narrators left, if there ever were any, and I will tell you about that mystery some other time.
But through luck, luck, more luck and some light lying that was really more like playing along, it all worked out in my favor somehow.
Later when I wasn’t lying, I was accused of lying. There is something a little poetic in that. A bitter poetry.
File that away for later. In the file. A file is not a map.
Nefarious versus inept: the eternal question
Re the file, it’s worth noting that a large file can also be the result of a wildly inefficient system; many things are nefarious, and the rest comes down to everything being enragingly inefficient.
So much time spent waiting for a decision or a piece of information from a person looking at my file or looking for the file or not being able to find the file, or saying something was in the file that could not possibly have been in the file (or could it have), and then having to start the entire process all over again because they needed another document to proceed, and three copies of it.
“Tell me about your grandmother Yaffa,” someone with the file demanded, on one of these visits.
I told them that I don’t have a grandmother Yaffa, and they didn’t believe me and I lost my temper over this and had to leave the office and cry over bitter coffee, but many years later, recently, I learned that I did have a grandmother Yaffa, more poetry.
More poetry
Yaffa means beautiful, and she was.
So many beautiful things to be wrong about.
You’re wrong about this too
Enemies to lovers, enemies to friends, enemies to not-enemies, enemies to the twice-monthly ritual of dinner together at a tiny table in a half-empty cafe, laughing uproariously over something no one can remember anymore, enemies to people who go their separate ways and forget and take selfies in elevators, and that gets forgotten too.
There are many possible options for where life may take you, but start here: X marks the spot.
And. Assume that everything you believed in the ‘80s was wrong.
Victorious before even beginning
On the American side we were kneeling in corridors covering our necks and heads, a duck and cover drill that I think was meant to do double duty for bombings and for tornadoes.
And in what was then still Leningrad, the kids my age were memorizing bridges and subway stations, conquering entire neighborhoods in their minds, mapping out the escape routes, mapping out the certain victories to come.
Wrong about
I was listening to the podcast You’re Wrong About, the episode about the Challenger space shuttle disaster, and both of the wonderful hosts, Michael and Sarah, bless their charming millennial hearts, were too young to have watched it in real time, but one of the myths they busted was one that I fully believed, that everyone in the United States had watched it play out in real time. Apparently this did not happen.
“Nonsense,” I said, out loud, to my phone. “We watched it on television, in fourth grade. I remember the teacher and the student teacher pushing the heavy cart with the clunky television on it, into the classroom and plugging it in so we could watch. Everyone watched it.”
Apparently though, kids in school are the ones who watched the disaster unfold in real time, while everyone else was at work, so maybe young Gen X is still traumatized by that and maybe not. I don’t remember. It’s not like there was a trauma shortage going around.
I remember the television being wheeled in, on the cart. I remember the excitement in the room. And that is the entirety of my remembering.
January 28, 1986
We watched it in real time, and so we must have seen it. 73 seconds of embarking, everything was okay, and then it was the opposite of okay. Wild trails to nowhere mapped across the sky, an awful tragedy. But I don’t remember it.
In fact, I don’t particularly remember anything else about the rest of that day, that week or that year.
How did I feel and how did anyone feel? How did the students in class react? How did the teachers react? What did the adults do? How was this situation treated? How were we treated? Was it treated as trauma and/or did no one speak of it again. I couldn’t tell you.
Another map of New York
A sometimes friend who is a former lover and really maybe more of an enemy than a friend divides their time between New Mexico and New York. And in their New Mexico home, they have a map of Brooklyn on the wall.
I love this map, it is so beautiful to me, it is in part beautiful because it is the only thing in their home that is not-beautiful, does that make sense, and because I always want to be looking at a map.
More pleasurable to imagine
This person invited me several years ago to their home in Brooklyn and I remember looking at plane tickets but then it didn’t happen, for reasons that have been lost to time, probably for the best.
In my mind, in the hallways of my imagining, I imagine that on a wall of that New York apartment is a prominently displayed map of New Mexico, or of the city in New Mexico where they reside when they are here and not there, but I have never asked.
Like many things, it is more pleasurable to imagine. I would be disappointed by a no, but maybe also disappointed by a yes. Many things are like this too.
Many things are like this?
It’s so boring when things are predictable, and so disappointing when they are not.
I wrote that on a note to discuss with my therapist, who will raise her eyebrows meaningfully, while also laughing, and then ask me what I mean, and I will say that I am talking about this map of New Mexico which may or may not be hanging on a wall in Brooklyn, New York, and how I want it to be there and I want it not to be there.
Schrödinger’s map.
And Meirav will ask me what I think it is really about, and I will say that I have an aesthetic craving for symmetry, but also that the truth is, I like it better when something different and unexpected is on the other side.
Everything is about desire. Unknowns > everything.
But also give me the comfort of symmetry, ritual, the known knowns, the known yeses, being wanted, safe, held by a place.
Held by a place
Like therapy, which happens in a room in my mind, because I haven’t actually seen Meirav in twenty five years. Held by a ritual, held by a place.
I am thinking about a rabbi I met in San Francisco once upon a time, how he said that the function of prayer is to be a safe space to have a fundamentally unsafe experience, and this is how I feel about the room where I go to therapy with Meirav.
It is deeply unsettling to be honest with ourselves; in order to map the unknowns, I wish for good company, and a good map of what is already known, or: what is already known to be comforting, trustworthy and supportive.
Mapping my way through
I liked poring over the Brooklyn map in New Mexico, even though I have not been to New York City in a very long time, pre-9/11, back in the before of it all, when I was young and married, on an entirely different trajectory of everything.
Because of my love of food and cooking, and my need to hear voices outside of my head, I listen to a number of food culture related podcasts, which inevitably either center around or continually circle back to New York City. New York chefs, New York restaurants, New York markets.
And so, I have a map that has been mapped in my head. If you say Lexington & 92nd, I say oh, near Kitchen Arts & Letters, close to the Jewish Museum. If you say in the East Village, I think of Superiority Burger and Death & Co, even though these places don’t share space with my actual memories of being there.
Tantalizing
On the framed map of Brooklyn, I orient myself first at The Four Horsemen in Williamsburg, and then my eyes move from there.
I am pretty much always thinking about the beautiful plates of food that I will never be able to taste.
How to orient a disaster in time
The pandemic is a bit like the Challenger space ship disaster, we all saw it happen in real time but then everyone papered over the memory and now they are pretending that it didn’t, or that everything is okay when it isn’t, or that some people were hurt but it’s all okay now. It is not okay now. I am not okay.
You couldn’t pay me to go into space, and the reality is that I’m also not going to eat in a restaurant or get on a plane. Illness has changed the shape of my life, for worse and for neutral, for one way and for another.
And so these too are maps of places I will not revisit. I have been broken by something that somehow seemingly did not break reality for everyone else.
But maybe that’s because long covid and memory loss are a daily reminder of the activities my body cannot participate in and my mind cannot remember, and I do not wish to play with fire. But also, I love playing with fire.
Craving
I have a craving to put up maps on my wall, maps of places I used to know or places I long to visit that I know I will not visit, or maybe even of places that are not real.
You might say I want to study maps the way my former roommate studied New York City in her cold war childhood, a study of immersion. This is about intimate knowledge, fully prepared for a victorious landing that will never come to fruition.
I want to pore over maps of the cities I know and the cities I don’t, to throw myself into the process of mapping them in my mind, viewing and reviewing until the synapses start firing, and the connections form themselves.
Mapping familiarity
Sometimes when I get physically lost somewhere, I like to pay close attention to everything around me, imagining that I’m filling in important details for later, mapping a map, drawing the connections.
Do you see? I am making a map for a future self or a parallel world self, so that they can extricate themselves in time (just in time, in the nick of time, within time, oriented in time, not yet out of time) so that they can find their way. Maybe they will feel a flash of déjà vu.
It’s all tantalizingly familiar and unfamiliar, isn’t it.
Study
I want to study maps, not for an invasion though, just to connect the pieces.
Fragments and junctions and connection points.
These are what I want to draw from.
Tending to the animals
Everyone I know is really going through it right now. Personal crises abound. Each of my friends is going through some terrible cycle of One Fucking Thing After Another, and god it is so relatable.
We check in on each other gingerly, light candles for each other, wish hopeful wishes, make sure everyone is eating and sleeping, or trying to. Feeding the animals, one friend calls it. The animals, of course, being ourselves. Gotta tend to the animals.
It’s poetic and tender, and also a simple symbolic step.
Postcards from the river route
I checked in on one friend and she said something like, “Kinda flattened to be honest, but sending love from here in Splatsville, USA”.
This is better than Schrödinger’s map. What I really want is a map of the places we end up when we are not okay. Postcards from Splatsville.
The next time I checked in, she was on The Good Ship About To Pop, and I was hopeful for a moment that the Good Ship had left Splatsville. Where is the good ship off to? Let us embark on a grand adventure.
I think, said my friend, that Splatsville is on the coast of the River No.
Map of the states
That would be a thrilling and/or useful art project, I think. A map of internal states.
I want to make one. I want to see someone else’s. Someday you can show me yours.
Can you feel this vision? I want to make my way down a corridor of art.
Maybe I am in or approaching an apartment in Not-Brooklyn where I suddenly encounter a map like this, a map of Not-New-Mexico, a map of right here right now.
Draw me something true, a map what is known in this heart space, for example.
And not just the pits of despair, show me the passages and channels, the hopeful places, the art of heart-hearth.
Maps
This feels almost like a Yoko Ono instructional art exercise too, instructional poems is I think what she called them, and event scores is the art term, I believe, but these are all good names for a map.
In her book Grapefruit, she has a piece called Tunafish Sandwich Piece:
Imagine one thousand suns in the sky at the same time. Let them shine for one hour. Then, let them gradually melt into the sky. Make one tunafish sandwich and eat.
That’s a map too, isn’t it.
Map Peace (Piece)
And so I give you Map Peace (Piece), which is my attempt at a Yoko Ono instructional poem:
Create two distinct maps of your psyche then burn one,
frame the other, eat a celebratory celebration sandwich
as you trace the map path from one internal state to another.
I have been thinking a lot about maps, can you tell.
Unknowns
I like that a map can contain a heart-truth and also a place called Splatsville, and also a place for sandwiches, for example.
Maps should be surprising that way. Show me something unknown and help me see the known things differently.
A map can be an instruction towards rest and revitalizing (eat a sandwich), and a map can show me something I did not notice before.
Decisions
My friend and I were talking about the past. She said, I have been thinking a lot about: what if I had made different decisions in the past, would I like my life better now? And of course that way madness lies!
Me: haha WHO CAN SAY, and obviously I know nothing about anything but/and also I am so glad you are alive and here and not with your ex, and that you do art every day and that you religiously celebrate movie & popcorn day, I love how you light tea lights and make scarves, and I want to recognize that a lot of what is hard in your life is related to unfair circumstances and our shitty culture and capitalism, and the way that creative souls are punished for not being able to be cogs, and anyway you are a hero for not giving up.
And anyway you are a hero for not giving up
Braver than the marines. Let’s keep going.
That’s also a map.
Poem maps
Sometimes it helps to read a poem, because a poem is a map and not-a map at the same time, and I was in the anxiety and I read a poem called Instructions on Not Giving Up.
You can read it too if you like, right here, though for me all I needed in the moment was the title.
It was right timing because I had just looked at the weather app, and the temperature was going down to 18 degrees Fahrenheit (-7.7 degrees Celsius), in April!
So I was ready to extremely give up and just cry, possibly forever.
But then the title of the poem mapped something else for me. Instructions on not giving up.
A poem unto itself. A Yoko Ono instructional instruction unto itself.
You try things and then you make a sandwich
Here’s what you do, babe. Try this.
A thousand suns and a sandwich, one step and then the next step, not giving up. That’s the most important step, it has to be repeated a bunch of times, but you can do it.
You’ve got this, just follow the instructions, and then map more instructions.
Instructions on writing instructions on not giving up
For example:
write Instructions On Not Giving Up
read them
make a sandwich
eat it while reading the instructions again
this is also one of the instructions
a recursive sandwich of not giving up
There’s your map
There you go, it’s a map that is a poem that is a heart-hearth.
A heart-hearth where you can sit and eat your sandwich and not give up.
Write your own instructions.
Then write them again, or write new ones, as needed. You are the poet and the poem, the map-maker and the map, a thousand suns, not giving up.
Ninety percent, at least
I told another friend about these poem-maps and this friend introduced me to Mary Karr’s poem, “The Voice of God”:
Ninety percent of what’s wrong with you
could be cured with a hot bath,
says God from the bowels of the subway.
but we want magic, to win
the lottery we never bought a ticket for.
(Tenderly, the monks chant, embrace
the suffering.) The voice of God does not pander,
offers no five-year plan, no long-term
solution, nary an edict. It is small & fond & local.
Don’t look for your initials in the geese
honking overhead or to see thru the glass even
darkly. It says the most obvious crap—
put down that gun, you need a sandwich.
— Mary Karr
There you go
Ninety percent of what’s wrong with me can be cured with a hot bath and a sandwich; god and the poet are both correct.
These are good instructions for not giving up. These are also good instructions for where not to look for the map.
Your mileage may vary, but of course you are the poet and the mapmaker, the writer of your own instructions. You might need something other than a sandwich. I bet if you write out your own instructions for not giving up, at the very least you will find a clue.
This might be what I do for April, or for this quarter, write myself a brief instruction packet every day.
The map of not giving up, the map of small symbolic steps, the map of make a sandwich.
London and then Cyprus and then a disappearance
Are you wondering what happened with me and my roommate? We disappeared off the map.
She went to London and then Cyprus and then we both disappeared for a while.
We both disappeared for a while, disappearing into abusive relationships and eating disorders, sometimes alternating and sometimes concurrent but I wanted to name them together because they belong together…
Naming them together because, do you see, I am mapping a taxonomy of the abyss, mapping the off-the-map, the here there be monsters.
I want better for all of us
I am naming the forms both accidental and calculated that some of us enter into and how we lose ourselves, mapping the places where we become smaller and keep going until we are shadows of ourselves, shadows of our shadows, mapped only in elevator selfies, caught in fleeting moments, the moment of being lost.
And I want to remember this so that I can map the opposite, map a passage to something better.
I want better for us.
The act of remembering
I try to remember that we are good at finding loopholes and escape routes, secret passages and not at all secret passages.
No shame and no regret required, not over lost time or lost anything.
A map: YOU ARE HERE. (EAT A SANDWICH.)
Another instructional instruction that is actually a suggestion
That’s feels like a Yoko Ono instructional art exercise too.
I will write it like an instructional poem:
see yourself like a sun
in the elevator mirror, illuminate this moment:
make yourself a sandwich and consume some life force,
gather up strength and keep gathering it,
who knows you might need to conquer New York
or make it down a flight of stairs,
change as you need to, and also remain intact
Map your way to something better, babe.
Small symbolic steps and April wishes
This is what I meant to write about today but then I had to write about maps instead, so maybe next time.
Or maybe maps as a verb and as a noun is my April wish and my small symbolic step.
Small symbolic steps piece
Small symbolic steps is all I want to focus on.
Map some small symbolic steps,
and eat that fucking sandwich already
Sometimes when
Sometimes when I write, I learn what I’m so terrified of and/or furious about.
(This is also why I avoid writing, when I am not writing, to not learn exactly this.)
And what I am learning is that I am extremely mad that I just keep having to be heroic all day every day seemingly forever.
But here is a clue from another poem, a let the calendar hold us, a calendar-as-ship rally clue:
‘All we have to do now is board the ship and allow it to take us all the way. We have nothing else to do but let it take us. We have not to do the navigating ourselves, we have not to labor with the oars, we have not to see where we are going or what distance we are covering: all that is being done for us.’ (Ruth Burrows)
Thank you to Kathleen and the Captain for that reminder.
Not a prompt, but a map or a mapping out
I dislike the word prompt, as in writing prompt, I do not like that word, I do not wish to be prompted.
It makes me think of a child being coaxed into saying their lines in a school play. Do not prompt me, do not send me onto the stage, do not want things from me, do not ask me to repeat, or project, or look out at lights. Please leave me alone, it’s all too much.
I want to be cozy and safe in the darkness, I want to exist in the wings, I will speak if and when I choose to, and if I want to whisper to the wall, then so be it.
I wish to look at patterns in the circles in the water and see where my thoughts go, it’s not the same.
Liberating instructions (that don’t need to be followed)
A map is not a prompt, and also it is. Same goes for poetry.
I guess you could say that Yoko Ono’s instructional poems are prompts in some form but they feel very liberating to me, because implied is the idea that you can do them or not, that the reading might be the doing, that reading is enough in the same way that the title can be enough.
Instructions on not giving up.
It matters much less what they are than that I can remember they exist, and rewrite them as needed.
Then again, I free-associated this entire essay from a fragment of a sentence about maps, so you can say that the word map itself was a prompt, a clue, a first step into a spiraling labyrinth made of smooth small stepping stones.
A map of a place I don’t know / a map is a place I don’t know. The map is where I begin.
A sandwich, the dream of a hot bath, instructions (reminders) to write instructions (maps), and the liberating knowledge that they will write themselves.
Even, especially, in the burning
A friend sent me to the poem Why Write Love Poetry In A Burning World, by Katie Ferris.
It made me cry. So fair warning, a map of maybe: tears. I will read it again and keep being reminded of why to write anything in a burning world, but especially-especially love poetry.
This is a sandwich that is also a love poem. This is a map that is also a love poem.
I love you. Let’s keep going.
I love you. Let’s keep going.
I love looking at a map
Like the song says…
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin.
(But also the Muppets take Manhattan, so let’s not take anything too seriously here.)
And as the map says, YOU ARE HERE.
We are here
You are here. I am here.
Here for small, symbolic steps, and playful remappings and reimaginings, here for poetry and intention, for the many internal states and for remembering they can shift and change, here for the unexpected and the surprising, and also for the comfort at the hearth.
Speaking of small, symbolic steps, Yoko Ono says: “Think of all the things that happened in there, and the many miles you walked inside the rooms. Be kind to yourself this evening.”
Let’s map it all as we find it. Let’s keep going.
Let’s keep going. ❤️
ANNOUNCEMENT! The Brautigan Wing returns!
In October of 2013 (nearly ten years ago somehow), I put out a 77 page ebook called The Brautigan Wing.
My description of it at the time: It is about a museum of small and big realizations.
But as a commenter on a recent post pointed out, it was also a collection of intriguing scribbled notes to myself.
In this book, I imagined building a museum exhibit about my mind, based on these found post-it notes, with commentary about what the poet may or may not have intended. Now it is a glimpse into the museum of my mind from ten or more years ago. Maybe there are some good clues for you, or maybe you will be inspired to turn your pile of notes into your own museum exhibit.
Anyway, if you feel moved to give any sum of Appreciation Money to Barrington’s Discretionary Fund, I’ll email you a link to the ebook as a bonus thank you! I don’t check email every day, but it will happen!
Come play with me, I love company
You are welcome to play with any of the concepts here in any way you like. Come play in the comments!
We are experimenting with experimenting, all experiments are useful experiments! You can brainstorm your own wishes or themes you’re drawn to play with. What patterns are asking to be rewritten and what would help? As always, we remember that People Vary.
And of course you’re invited to share anything sparked for you while reading, or add any wishes into the pot, into the healing zone, as a friend said, the power of the collective is no small thing, and companionship helps.
Here’s to locating the supportive rituals, playful experiments & loving compassion we need.
A request
If you received clues or perspective or just want to send appreciation for the writing and work/play we do here, I appreciate it tremendously. Working on some stuff to offer this coming year, but between traumatic brain injury recovery & Long Covid, slow going.
I am accepting support (with joy & gratitude) in the form of Appreciation Money to Barrington’s Discretionary Fund. Asking is not where my strength resides but Brave & Stalwart is the theme these days, and pattern-rewriting is the work, it all helps with fixing the many broken things.
Or you can buy a copy of the my Monster Manual & Coloring Book if you don’t have it!
And if those aren’t options, I get it, you can light a candle for support (or light one in your mind!), share one of my posts with someone who loves words, tell people about these techniques, approaches and themes, send them here, it all helps, it’s all welcome, and I appreciate it so much. ❤️
Three months later we meet again / the ongoing experiments / vernal equinox 2023
Some words before the other words!
What is this called? A pre-something.
Pre-
A lot going on these days in the world. A lot going on that makes it difficult to focus, to keep on keeping on. I want to glow extra love (boundless & bountiful love) for all trans friends, I want a better and kinder world, an inclusive and welcoming world, but most of all a safe world for you, may justice and sanctuary prevail, I also know that glowing love is not enough, it is just a beginning point for everything that needs to change.
A heart-breath for dreaming and scheming (in a good way) towards these wishes of sanctuary, a safer world where you are loved and treasured and thriving. May it be so or something even better. ❤️
Three Months Later (hello again)
An unexpected seasonal crumpling
The time change this month hit me like a ton of bricks, I am imagining the last straw on the proverbial camel’s back but each straw is somehow also a ton of bricks.
All my beautiful well-cultivated habits crumpled immediately.
And I can’t even say why I didn’t expect it. It’s in the calendar! It happens every year! This felt different though.
As if I was under siege, as if time itself had launched a wily and multi-pronged all-fronts attack on both my nervous system and the system of my daily routine, exposing how these two systems are entwined. When things are working, they support each other. When the light is wrong and the time is off, they both short-circuit, along with my brain.
Is this a lot of metaphor-mixing? Sure, possibly, yes, however, in my defense, I was already not doing well and then the time change has not helped, so this disjointed report of my current state comes from within the unraveling, and if that is reflected in a cacophony of disharmonious metaphor, I am okay with that.
When the light is wrong
I hadn’t realized until the time change just how many things were working for me, and had been, all winter long:
Early to bed, closing my eyes for X Delicious Hours, the steadying comfort of morning bobcat time (gentle yoga, slow stretching, big cat yawns), making my pot of ginger chiltepin hot chocolate, padding around my tiny kitchen in my warmest socks and fuzzy slippers. A routine.
A routine is a lovely thing, or it can be
You do one thing and then do the next thing, and it is, if not automatic, then at least a familiar and reassuring sequence.
But it’s been two weeks and I am only just now beginning to find my bearings again.
For the first week I couldn’t fall asleep at night, couldn’t wake up in the morning, couldn’t remember what I am supposed to do next, or what I need to try when nothing makes sense.
So I just stayed in bed for hours, unable to remember the sequence of getting out of bed and starting my day, I stopped stretching and forgot to make a hot southwestern desert beverage or light my candle or hum my morning hum.
And even once I remembered the sequence, it had zero appeal. I couldn’t remember why I used to do those things, for what purpose, or how to begin, but also couldn’t think of a new way to coax myself into the day, into being brave enough to just try.
It isn’t just me though
Anne Helen Peterson asked on March 16, on Twitter:
Is there an explanation for why Daylight Savings hit everyone I know like a semi this year (I’m talking more than usual, more than I can ever remember)
Her question elicited an enormous number of responses. Predictably, there were some annoying ones from men in suits who magically remain at ease and unbothered no matter what the happens in life and intensely need to brag about it given the slightest opportunity, but the majority agreed emphatically with her premise.
Even people who said they normally don’t notice it reported getting absolutely flattened by it this year.
I thought the best (or most useful) response came from Kathleen McLaughlin, @kemc, who said, “We are all just cracking under the weight of three years of way too much every-fucking-thing. I think. Any little shift is now big.”
Yes. Any little shift is now big. So there’s that.
Three Months Later…
Three months ago (and change), I wrote about my practice of interacting with the year in quarters, equinox to solstice, solstice to equinox, and how deeply I adore the television drama trope of Three Months Later, Dot Dot Dot, typed on a card, to indicate to us, the audience, that a substantial period of time has passed, and things are different now.
And just like the time change hit different this spring, this winter quarter (or these winter quarters, if you, like me, prefer to imagine time in space, time like a living space…) felt very different to me compared with previous years.
*I say WINTER from here in the northern hemisphere, and at the same time I don’t want to exclude friends and readers in the southern hemisphere who are summering their way through the end of summer, so please translate as needed based on your location, and know that I am thinking about you as well, drinking iced beverages and napping a lot, I hope!
Whether your equinox is vernal or autumnal, we head into the next Three Months Later either way…
Time is confusing
Time is confusing and I have questions!
For example…
How did the Three Months Later of this winter go by so fast???
But/and also: How was The Endless Winter so very long and seemingly unending, my friends in the midwest are still getting snow in late March, and even here in sunny southern New Mexico we had hail and some flurries last weekend, the mornings still cold and bitter.
And apparently three months ago is when Elon Musk did his fake poll of “I will step down if the people want me to”, but that feels like at least two years ago, so make it make sense, I find myself so confused by the passage of time and also confused by my confusion.
A confusion of sadness
On equinox I sat down to write my wishes, and began by rereading the wishes I wrote for winter solstice.
This is usually a grounding and helpful way for me to begin the vulnerable thing that is the process of wishing wishes and daring to let them come into the world in the form of words. It is revealing.
Except I was absolutely devastated to confirm that all my wishes are exactly the same as they were three months ago, which very easily morphed into a very familiar self-criticism narrative or monster story about how Nothing Has Changed, There’s No Hope and What’s The Point because It Will Never Get Better.
What’s true? What’s also true?
And so I am trying to play the game of what’s true and what’s also true, to see to shift my focal point.
What can I notice, what can I bring my attention to that is different, to counter my impression that nothing has changed.
What is useful in encountering the same wishes, three months later? If they haven’t changed, have I changed?
And: if noticing the pattern changes the pattern, what changes when I notice (in a neutral way, without judgment) the re-wishing of past wishes? How do they change when I rename them or re-invoke them?
What is different now? How is this equinox different from last solstice?
What is different, other than things related to light and temperature and length of days?
My hair is three months longer.
I cry a lot less. To be clear, I still cry a lot, I just mean that am no longer crying multiple times a day, and as of this past two weeks, I am no longer crying every day, so that’s a shift, a huge one, and it counts.
Related: I think in general I am a lot more angry and a lot less sad, so that’s something?
I don’t know if it’s a good something, but it does indicate that things are moving, and I believe movement is good, and also we are countering the narrative that nothing has changed, because here’s something pretty big that has changed!
The First Rule of Cooking Club is Think About Cooking Something
I now make a big batch of soup each week, which is a delight, and I got really into Cooking Club, which is imaginary, but it does its job, aka it helps me focus on batching food and keeping myself fed.
These are both important because I have very little appetite most days, and often no energy, and some days even standing is too much work for very long, so I need to make eating both easy and appealing, less of a chore.
Three months ago this was one of my biggest challenges, and there’s considerably more ease there now, though this is also one of the helpful habits that got rattled by the time change.
What else?
I started celebrating days by naming them and doing one thing to commemorate each day. Marking? Celebrating feels like a very strong word here, it might be doing too much work. We mark the days.
Maybe nothing was particularly celebratory but what I mean is associating something good with the day, like Taco Tuesday! Who doesn’t like tacos.
But specifically for disabled life, rural trailer house on the edge the forest life, a life that runs on slow time.
Happy Blursday
Sunday Spa Day is not actually a spa day but I make sure to do one symbolic thing like shave legs or give myself a kitchen facial with hot towels, or a small diy pedicure.
Monday Strike Day is for being on strike and not doing things that stress me out. This is how I avoid what some people call the Sunday Scaries, the existential dread that accompanies knowing you have a long list of things waiting for you on a Monday. Screw that. Monday Strike Day! WE STRIKE!
Zhugsday is for making zhug.
When the time change happened, these all fell apart, but I kept naming days: Woeful Wednesday, Things Are Off Thursday, Fuck It Friday, Sleep In Saturday, Surly Somnambulist Sunday. We keep a sense of humor around here even when things are falling apart.
What can I find to be proud of, looking back on these past three months
Let’s see…
I kitchen-jogged every day,
did more yoga,
learned to bake without baking when my beloved tiny toaster oven broke,
made myself a birthday cake,
survived a poisoning,
lit a candle every day,
and I am thinking about different things now than I was then, and that’s also something.
Though also who cares? And I mean that in a good way, not in a critical way…
Not: Who cares (derogatory)
But: Who cares (liberating)
Though also who cares
What I mean by this is that even if nothing changed at all that I can name or point to, and even if my wishes and desires are the same as they were three months ago, and even if my perceptions of zero progress are correct which I don’t think they are…
None of that matters because that’s not the important thing. The important thing is actually that I made it through the long, hard, cold winter against all odds, and honestly the odds were kind of grim.
So sure, there’s no linear “progress” on anything I can point to, but I made it through. The rituals held me and healing is happening.
The rituals held
The rituals held and healing is happening.
The rituals held in the sense that they did not break (at least until the time changed), like a protective barrier, a levee, and they held me in the sense that they were my comforting ground, they made my days make sense, they carried me from winter solstice all the way through to spring.
Those things matter. They matter a lot, actually.
Against the odds
Here’s what I was up against this winter, in addition to the usual winter things of cold and dark.
My hot water heater is broken, as you know, and no one will give me a clear answer on the kind needed to replace it, so I have to heat water in the kettle to wash hands and wash dishes and wash myself with a washcloth. I get to shower a couple times a month if the mountain roads aren’t covered in snow and ice, which they mostly were.
The drafty single pane kitchen window which wasn’t doing a great job keeping the cold out to begin with has taken to flying open at a gust of wind. It was an especially stormy winter, colder than last year, more snow, more wild winds, more intensely gloomy than I remember.
There’s no central heat and I can only run one space heater without blowing a fuse, which means that each day I need to decide if I’m going to be in the front room or the bedroom, and just stay there.
My toaster oven broke, and I had to stop making many of the warm cozy baked goods that got me through autumn.
One-two
Long covid and a traumatic brain injury continue to be a one-two punch. I can’t do very much because of the misery of neck and back pain, or the excruciating tinnitus, or the devastating depression or because I am basically Drew Barrymore in Fifty First Dates and can’t consistently remember what I’m doing, sometimes even while I’m doing it, sometimes even with a written reminder.
And the loneliness gets to me. It does. Somehow in the winter it is harder.
In the three months between solstice and equinox, I had seven conversations. There were days when I listened to podcasts just to remember the sound of someone laughing.
All the many forms of grief and despair, all the many forms of shattered hopes.
So hey, you know what, if I made it through the bitter cold of winter, the intense solitude and the pounding of wild winds on the roof, if nothing too important broke and I arrived here, into spring, then who cares if anything else happened?
Still here
Braver than the marines. Tired, scarred, still here.
I am the hero of my third pandemic winter which, despite all these obstacles was also, in some ways, less depressing than the last two. Still here still here still here.
Still here, baby.
Grieving my lost hope
I found a bottle of grief tincture in my cabinet, I’d hidden it away after discovering that I did not enjoy learning just how much grief I have, but something has shifted or maybe it hasn’t but I was feeling brave and took a dropper-full.
Then I got on the floor for fifteen minutes of very slow, very gentle, cautious movement, and what came up very strongly is that I AM GRIEVING MY LOST HOPE.
Grieving my lost hope.
What restores hope?
Or is that even the right question…
What can I love right now?
The startling clarity about my grief and my lost hope was startling and clear in a way I did not find helpful in the moment.
But from the perspective of a few days later, I can see that the answer is more along the lines of shifting my focus to Things I Can Love Right Now.
What helps? What is hopeful?
Tending to the tending
Like I said, I am crying less, maybe that’s because the sun is back and the bunnies are back, and, in very exciting news, I was finally able to get to a shower after three long weeks.
But there’s also something about how even though grieving lost hopes was one of the challenges I faced this winter, I think I might be getting better at the grieving process, the acknowledgment & legitimacy, the layering on of safety, the slow and patient work of self-tending.
It’s not like I’m good at it. It’s just that I can automatically turn towards the tending now, instead of blaming myself for needing to be tended to in times of grief.
Making do part deux
I was going to say that back in the fall, I wrote about making do. But I looked it up and it was actually in the fall of 2021, so a year earlier than in my memory. It figures, time remains elusive and confusing. The essay was called Use What You Have.
Anyway, I was challenged to master a new level of Use What You Have recently when the tiniest toaster oven that was already making do in place of a regular oven, or even a regular sized toaster oven for that matter, gave up the ghost halfway through winter.
I learned how to make raw cakes and cookies. I started baking (or actually not-baking) skillet bread which is actually cooked — yes, in a skillet, hence the name, instead of baked.
And I missed my mini toaster oven dearly, but in some ways focusing on missing a toaster oven was easier and less painful than missing the person who loved me deeply until the day they exited my life without warning (I wrote without WARMING, which is also true).
Missing an appliance is just so much simpler than missing the mysterious disappearers from my past, or missing pre-pandemic life, or pre-pandemic me for that matter.
Nostalgic
Ah, my pre-pandemic pre-concussion self. I am not sure if I miss that person or not, but mainly I try not to think about it because it’s painful to remember.
Pre-pandemic, pre-concussion, pre-long-covid me who had energy, focus and joie de vivre. A playful approach. And hope. Those were the days.
But we are here, now, and it is spring, and we lived to tell the tale, quite miraculously in fact.
Just some light poisoning
Long-time readers may know that I have a birthday curse, and so on the day of my birthday I am very careful to do nothing at all, particularly nothing celebratory, because the best possible way my birthday can go is uneventful.
REMAIN INDOORS! DO NOTHING! This is my birthday approach, having run many experiments and learning the hard way that the only way through is to keep a low profile.
So in honor of my forty sixth birthday, I gave myself the gift of the most uneventful, normal day imaginable. I did my kitchen jogging and my slow cat-like yoga. Made sure I ate. Stayed offline. Moved slowly and carefully. Did zero cooking. Nothing celebratory. Nothing out of the ordinary. Don’t tempt fate.
And it worked. For the first time in memory, nothing bad happened. To be fair, nothing good happened either, but the bar is low, and zero disasters is honestly quite impressive.
Unfortunately, this is also how I got cocky. I didn’t wait long enough for do-overs.
Do-overs
As you know, I am devoted to the concept of Do-Overs Forever, and so, in a way, I celebrate my birthday (in a top secret sort of way) throughout the year, because I know the day itself will be rough. And usually, I don’t do this too soon after my actual birthday.
But because there had been ZERO injuries, mishaps or other disasters on the day itself, I mistakenly thought it might be safe to attempt some low-key celebrating the day after, and make a birthday cake, sans baking.
It was a raw chocolate lavender cake, with the culinary lavender that I bought at the lavender farm last summer when I intended to make this exact cake for Concussion-Anniversary Day but never did, and it was gorgeous.
Celebrate good times COME ON (very quietly and in secret)
And I can’t tell you how this cake tasted, since I only had the tiniest taste of the frosting when my throat began tightening dramatically and my throat glands felt like painful golf balls, and that, my friends, is one way to learn if you are extremely allergic to raw lavender.
I’ve used it in stews and for a lavender rosemary simple syrup for example, and that’s never caused an adverse reaction, but apparently this quantity of lavender in uncooked form is not awesome for me, which is information that I would rather have than not have.
But of course it’s hard not to interpret this as yet another sign that CELEBRATING is not something my body or the world will agree to, apparently, the nature of the mysterious birthday curse.
I am far from town so did acupressure on myself until it felt like I could take full breaths again, and had a very miserable, painful sore throat for a few days, and It Is What It Motherfucking Is.
Anyway, that’s the story of how I poisoned myself on my birthday but really the day after, and someday when I am feeling brave, maybe it will be time make another raw cake with only known safe ingredients.
Three months later / next time around
What worked this year in winter?
- cheery things
- yellow things
- noticing: often these are the same: lemons, bananas, tall candles, a beeswax tea light when i’m having a bad day, I learned that like bright yellow dish cloths, so really: cheery, yellow things
- laughter (other people’s, listening to podcasts to have laughter in my house)
- having a schedule for Cooking Club
- making a note for the next day about what I am excited about / why to get out of bed, for example there is pudding for pre-breakfast
- making do, and being creative with Use What You Have, innovation as a superpower
What is good? What can I appreciate right now…
Eight robins in the field outside my window.
The bunnies are back, in full frolic, doing their little cool flips and playing statue next to my car.
A solid roof over my head reminds me of sturdiness that was not available for me in past difficult times, a reminder that Now Is Not Then.
Every single version of the song I Can See Clearly Now, but especially the Holly Cole version right now. I can see clearly now, the rain is gone / I can see all obstacles in my way. I keep reminding myself that this is what hope sounds like, it’s gonna be a bright bright bright sunshiney day…
A literal perspective shift
I moved the bench in my kitchen from one side of the table to the other, and now I have a different view.
A literal reminder of Now Is Not Then, and now is also not three months ago, and even if my wishes are the same or appear to be the same, I can look at them with a different perspective.
What else can I move around, physically or otherwise, in service of exactly this?
What do I want to keep in mind for next year?
Some of my equinox rituals really worked for me!
I took Star Car to get an oil change & checkup, and there was a cute girl working there who flirted with me outrageously, which is definitely the best thing to happen so far in 2023, bless a good sunny spring day flirtation. Also spa day for Star Car!
And I made the bed with fresh clean sheets and lit my favorite candle and made spicy chocolate pudding.
The thing I wanted most (either a hike or a visit to hot springs) did not happen because of weather and circumstances, but it was a beautiful wish, and I can appreciate that and re-wish it for next time.
May I stay flexible and determined, in equal amounts.
Equinox wishes
I think for now I want to return to my solstice question of what wants to be eliminated versus what wants to be illuminated, and how can I take small steps in service of both?
Feeling some good Spring Gleaming energy whooshing in now that the fog of the time change is lifting, a pull towards rearranging and reconfiguring.
I wish for steadiness, focus, and the warm, sweet, loving clarity of Holly Cole singing. I can see clearly now means I think I can make it now.
It’s gonna be a bright (bright bright bright) sunshiney day. This is what hope sounds like, even when I forget.
Let’s keep going. ❤️
ANNOUNCEMENT! The Brautigan Wing returns!
In October of 2013 (nearly ten years ago somehow), I put out a 77 page ebook called The Brautigan Wing.
My description of it at the time: It is about a museum of small and big realizations.
But as a commenter on a recent post pointed out, it was also a collection of intriguing scribbled notes to myself.
In this book, I imagined building a museum exhibit about my mind, based on these found post-it notes, with commentary about what the poet may or may not have intended. Now it is a glimpse into the museum of my mind from ten or more years ago. Maybe there are some good clues for you, or maybe you will be inspired to turn your pile of notes into your own museum exhibit.
Anyway, if you feel moved to give any sum of Appreciation Money to Barrington’s Discretionary Fund, I’ll email you a link to the ebook as a bonus thank you! I don’t check email every day, so give me a couple days but it will happen!
Come play with me, I love company
You are welcome to play with any of the concepts here in any way you like. Come play in the comments!
We are experimenting with experimenting, all experiments are useful experiments! You can brainstorm your own. What are some equinox wishes or themes you’re drawn to play with! What patterns are asking to be rewritten and what would help? As always, we remember that People Vary.
And of course you’re invited to share anything sparked for you while reading, or add any wishes into the pot, into the healing zone, as a friend of mine said, who knows, the power of the collective is no small thing, and companionship helps.
Here’s to locating the supportive rituals, playful experiments & loving compassion we need, or something even better!
A request
If you received clues or perspective or just want to send appreciation for the writing and work/play we do here, I appreciate it tremendously. Working on some stuff to offer this coming year, but between traumatic brain injury recovery & Long Covid, slow going.
I am accepting support (with joy & gratitude) in the form of Appreciation Money to Barrington’s Discretionary Fund. Asking is not where my strength resides but Brave & Stalwart is the theme these days, and pattern-rewriting is the work, it all helps with fixing the many broken things.
Or you can buy a copy of the my Monster Manual & Coloring Book if you don’t have it!
And if those aren’t options, I get it, you can light a candle for support (or light one in your mind!), share one of my posts with someone who loves words, tell people about these techniques, approaches and themes, send them here, it all helps, it’s all welcome, and I appreciate it so much. ❤️