Happy birthday, Wendell Berry! Read something of his in honor of the day. Maybe an essay like “Thoughts in the Presence of Fear” or maybe the poem attached, from A Timbered Choir.
Anna Havron has a really wise post today on how to function in a crisis. I’m not in a crisis right now but I am in what I have discovered to be a regular, low-energy cycle. My main struggle in cycles like this is putting aside feelings of guilt for not doing … whatever. For example, we’ve now experienced several days of reasonable temperatures and I just couldn’t muster the energy to go outside after work.
Also, I’ve also just come out of a time that felt intellectually creative (new books, new ideas, increased writing in response) and that seems to have just collapsed in the last few days.
Another thing: Over the past few months I’ve been listening mostly to folk and Americana style music. That’s also shifted recently, as I’ve been listening to more heavy music and rap. Weird, that shift to more energetic music when I’m feeling less energetic. Maybe a spot of yang in my overall yin.
The cause of this is, I think, that I’m very busy at work along with it being the dog days of summer. It’s okay. As Anna says and as I’ve experienced over the years, these times pass.
As in other low-energy cycles, I am again drawn to those who talk about the wisdom of withdrawal and silence. I’ve been thinking about Bill Porter’s Road to Heaven again and might re-read it.
In any case, thanks to Anna for the post. And to echo her, when you’re in a crisis or just a time of low-energy, be patient with yourself. Everything moves in cycles.
Andy Couturier, The Abundance of Less:
“This is the same fire that burned with the blast from Hiroshima,” Masanori Oe says to me, pointing to a small brass lantern on a table in front of us with a tiny flame burning inside.
“This very flame?” I ask, taken aback somewhat.
“Yes. It has been kept burning, passed on from person to person to help us each remember what happened that day, and how it must not happen again.” He explains that in August of 1945, a woman who lost her son in the bombing went to the city while it was still burning and, believing that the spirit of her son was inside that flame, captured a bit of fire and brought it to her home a hundred miles away. She kept it burning for more than twenty years, and then passed it on to a Buddhist priest, who decided to make it a symbol of peace, and took the flame on a walking pilgrimage across Japan, burning in a lantern, and passed it on to others, lighting new lanterns for those who would take the flame. “We have it here for some time before we pass it on,” Masanori says.
I don’t listen to a lot of hip hop but, when I do, it’s usually someone from Rhymesayers. Today, Sa-Roc is blowing me away. 🎵
I’m thankful that the heat wave seems to have broken. It’s a beautiful morning out there right now.
A friend sent me a link to the No Labels organization and asked if I had any thoughts. I replied:
Personally, I’m a leftist so I’ll never be particularly interested in such a centrist organization. I can appreciate what they’re trying to do—ignoring partisan divides by taking mediating positions on issues—but my feeling that ours is a time of great change. No Labels is trying maintain the old order, to play it safe. I’m interested in what’s on the other side of the crisis.
To elaborate on this (and to make a point larger than reacting to No Labels), I do feel like we are in a time of crisis. We are already living in a post-apocalyptic world and none of the usual rules seem to apply. And for that reason, there’s something of the inevitable about all of this.
As Bayo Akomolafe says, “what if the way we respond to a crisis is part of the crisis?” We are told, for example, that we must take part in street protests and direct action; yet those very actions often entrench the opposition and become tools used against the protestors themselves. The levers which we have used in the past appear to be broken.
What if the crisis that is upon us is one in which humanity is being told to sit down and listen to teacher? That it is precisely our usual reaction—reaching for levers with which to work our will on the world—which is the source of our problems and what we must unlearn?
Spending the evening at a DIY music festival, listening to a bunch of local folk musicians. The cicadas are playing a set while the humans set up for their next performance.
Rachel is already planning for 2024. This will more than fill out the backyard, a.k.a., Green Man’s Grotto. Then we’ll start working on the little strips of yard on each side of the house. In a few years, we and the beings living here will have transformed this tiny city lot into an island of life.
It’s hot today BUT we’ve seen a hummingbird and a monarch butterfly in the Grotto.
