.....the party that wasn't

Yogis,
The hype began weeks ago. Everyone itching to shed their masks, restrictions being lifted daily, rentals booked and cars gassed up. This Memorial Day was going to be the party to end all parties! Expectations ran high. Both record crowds and record celebrations of covid freedom were forecast.

Mother Nature had a different forecast. Rain.

See this picture. The welcome to town sign. This is what a typical Memorial Day weekend looks like on the beach. Shoulder to shoulder and impossible not to step on someone’s else’s blanket trying to find a path to the boardwalk for that midday slice of pizza. Now note the temperature.

The temperatures all weekend were record breaking in the wrong direction, but they were only one aspect. Steady heavy rain and of course, wind. The trifecta to dampen any outdoor event. And dampen it did…..literally. What we all wouldn’t give for some dry shoes.

The side streets were still lined with cars, but they never moved. Everyone hunkered down inside playing games and watching sports. Almost as if it were six months ago. Even route 1 which typically would be a bumper to bumper mob scene on a rainy day with vacationers flocking to the outlets, was quiet. Everyone had quickly discovered it was actually physically challenging to be outside, even for a dash from the car.

This morning I ran with Phoebe, raincoat and hood zippered tight. Rain coming in sideways. The only other brave souls were runners. No line for breakfast sandwiches on the boardwalk. No dads on the beach setting up camp early to reserve a prime spot. No families pedaling around on rented bikes. A ghost town.

  

I realized that no late night party goers talking too loudly had passed under our bedroom window on their way home last night. There had been no strolls into town after dinner for an ice cream cone. The sidewalks littered, not with red solo cups or Thrashers fries containers, but inside out umbrellas that simply couldn’t withstand that unexpected 30 mph gust. Even dogs had to adjust.

It all reminded me of one of those New Year’s parties where the hype is so high and you want to be that ‘wild’ but deep down you sort of know it is going to be a bust. It felt like the Universe looked down on all of us ready to burst out and like a parent, suggested we slow down a bit.

Yes, get together with friends and family. Yes, be mask-less with others and hug away. Yes, eat out in a restaurant for the first time. But do you really need to go from 0 to 100 in one weekend?

It would have been nice to sit out on the back deck with a beer in the evening after a long day on the beach. To wash sand out of my ears in the shower or to open an umbrella designed for sun protection instead of rain. But it was what it was and we quickly adjusted our expectations and ended up having a really good time!

It all seemed fitting for the ‘so long’ to covid…… Don’t you agree?

Heated by the furnace, not the sun,
SARAH

......animacy

Yogis,
“Good morning robin! What are you up to today?” My morning greeting to the robin that keeps hopping a few feet forward every time I take a step with the hose as I water the garden. Not flying away but not quite ready to have me in her personal space. She makes eye contact. “It’s ok,” I say.

Its then that I remember the workman from the gas company quietly working a few feet away behind the lattice. Hmmmm….. He probably thinks I’m nuts. Oh well.

You all know that I talk to nature. Trees, squirrels, bugs and the wind have all been acknowledged many times over. The moon feels like a best friend and I recognize individual rocks.  At this point it feels so natural I can’t imagine not letting them know that I see them. Disrespectful. It would be as uncomfortable as the person who passes two feet from me but won’t make eye contact.

So imagine how excited I was to read an essay that gives this not only a name, but an entire world view!

I am still pouring through ‘Braiding Sweetgrass’, a collection of essays by Robin Wall Kimmerer, a botanist of Native American heritage who weaves together the practicality of science with the mystery of spirit in words that read like poetry. It was in her essay ‘Learning the Grammar of Animacy’ that my heart skipped a beat. She says what I feel.

By diving into learning the language of her tribe, of which there are only 9 native speakers left in the world, she discovers that learning nouns, while challenging, is doable. Memorization. Replace our word with their word. But when it came to verbs, a new world cracked open.

She came upon a verb and read the definition. ‘To be a bay’ it said. To be a bay??? Isn’t that a person, place or thing, in that way that we love to neatly categorize everything? A bay, not being human is therefore a thing in English. An it.  She sat there frustrated but the image of a bay suddenly flowed through her. The smell of the water. The rhythm of it lapping against the rocky shore. The breeze. This alive water could have become a river, creek or stream, but it decided to ‘be a bay’.

In her Native American culture, the worldview is that everything is either animate or inanimate, and the inanimate is reserved primarily for manmade items. Those without life force. Language then takes that view and gives it voice.

What we call things influences how we think about them.

I am now finding myself imagining the feeling of ‘to be a’ with whatever passes my way. To be a peony…… To be the sky……. To be fire…….. To be a rainbow……

I decide to set my alarm even earlier on Monday to head to the beach and experience the sunrise. There was a slight nip in the air and the sky was clear. Phoebe and I walked and watched. Reds, oranges and pinks streaked the sky to announce her impending arrival. She was stunning. 

To be a sunrise……. Clearly not a noun.

Words are powerful,
SARAH

.....plastic, plastic everywhere

Yogis,
I run my fingers up the toothpaste tube, pressing all that remains up to the top. With a big squeeze it shoots out but as soon as I release it to reach in with my toothbrush, it disappears back inside. Two more times I play this game until finally it lands on the brush. I guess this tube is really done, as I throw it away. I notice an empty one from my husband lying in there too. Sigh. Plastic…….

Every now and then something will snap me back to the ludicrous situation we have put ourselves in with plastic. A few months ago, it was videos of the sea of plastic bottles floating atop parts of the ocean. Last week it was someone stating that each of us consumes about a credit cards worth of plastic each month through our food and water.

Each time I vow to make more changes. I have moved my zip locks to the closet for emergencies only and invested in reusable silicone bags and a variety of containers (slowly switching even these from plastic to glass). Stretchy silicone coverings for bowls and cut vegetables. Reusable green bags for veggies that I use for months before replacing. Yet even these small changes took remembering and getting used to. Plastic has become so inexpensive, prevalent and convenient. A way of life.

I look at the two tubes lying there waiting to go who knows where, and wonder why toothpaste can’t come in glass jars. Better yet why we can’t go to a store and refill our glass jar each time it empties?  That would take effort. A new way of moving through the world. Would we?

Covid made matters even worse. Plastic gloves, plastic silverware, containers for take out to keep us ‘safe’. New ways of packaging that I fear will not die off with the virus. Individual servings and the plastic container the salad is placed in at the deli an hour before we pour its contents into a bowl and throw it out.

And we all do know very little actually gets recycled, right? Hence the credit card in our belly.

Someone sent me a podcast of a doctor who has proven the relationship between chemicals in plastics and our reproductive health. Lowering sperm counts generation after generation. Difficulty conceiving. We were not designed for this type of consumption nor is this earth that holds us. But consumers we are…….

At times it appears overwhelming. Our individual small changes, while absolutely necessary, won’t be enough. The stories we hear are ones of doom and gloom. How hard it will be and perhaps not even possible. The challenges of human nature.

I was tutoring a kindergartener this week and whenever he read the sentence a shining star would appear on the screen. Yes!...he would exclaim with a twinkle in his own eye. How many stars do I have now? I began to think.  We need a new story to guide us to our own stars. Incentive.

A collective story that can turn this ship in a new direction. Help me come up with one! Maybe something like a tale of the young heroine who moves through the world placing any plastic she encounters into her basket and replacing it with flowers, songs, poetry and rainbows. Everywhere her feet land transformed by her simple shift from ‘how can I make this easy for me’ to ‘how can I make this more beautiful for all.’  The animals gather to sing her praises and the children splash in the creeks, while each night a new star shines its light on her hair as she lies to rest.  

What are you doing in your own world? Let’s share ideas and give each other stars. Weaving a new story of a path we can walk together.

Noticing plastic,
SARAH

.....seeing from different angles

Yogis,
Hello ferns! I see you plantain, poke and clover. Wow stinging nettle, you have grown this week!

Phoebe and I are strolling through our woods checking in on everyone. We are almost back up the hill to the grass when I see someone I don’t recognize. Hmmmm…… A memory floods in of me planting some roots here but that must have been four or five years ago.

I pull out my phone and launch my trusty plant identifier app. Right away it knows it is a plant. Ok good start. It then recognizes it as being in the buttercup family, and eventually narrows it to Baneberries and Cohoshes genus. Sometimes this is where the app gets stuck.

Try different angles it tells me as I lean this way and that, zooming in and backing up. At times we never get any further. This time, however, it finally announces her as Black Cohosh. Indeed, the plant I had placed beneath the earth years back. “Welcome! I guess you were waiting for just the right moment.” How amazing nature is.

It all got me thinking.

I think it is safe to say that more than half of people walking through the woods see a sea of green plants. So why when I walk through a lawn am I seeing the violets, dandelions and spring garlic so distinctly? Why as I drive do the mullein along the side of the road yell ‘here I am‘ to me?

My eyes are no different than yours and it has nothing to do with intelligence. It’s only that I developed a passion for plants and have chosen to pay attention. To spend the effort to see each one as an individual. Recognize its unique gift which then leads us to a relationship.

Maybe for you its birds, where you can’t fathom how anyone could confuse a house wren with a carolina wren. Or your ears know within a few notes whether it’s Mozart or Beethoven. Aware of the stunning differences between the two and the gifts they offer. Or perhaps its trees, or artwork, or how your tongue instantly assesses which spice was used in the sauce.

Those areas where your life app knows not only family, but genus and bores right down to the individual. Unfortunately, we don’t always do this with each other.

How often it is that we classify a group of people by their nationality or color of their skin. Labeling the ‘family’ or maybe down to ‘genus’ and then applying sweeping characteristics to the whole group. Staying up at that surface level where we can convince ourselves they are all the same, like a sea of green. Blinders on that they even all begin to look alike. Prejudices love this easy path in.

When we live here there is no hope of relationship. What if we could make our eyes as determined as my plant app?

Each time we pass a person, after the usual assumptions of who they were, we would be reminded to look from different angles. To zoom in and step back. To open ourselves to witness the subtle. The curve of the jaw. The way a hand lifts to smooth back the hair.  How one side of the mouth lifts higher than other as they smile. Boring down to the myriad of intricacies that comprises an individual. Unique. Unlike any other with a gift they want to share. Now a relationship begins.

As I stand up from the black cohosh, my phone passes over Phoebe. ‘Mammal’ I am told.

Seeing others from different angles,
SARAH

.....re-entry

Yogis,
Ready or not, here it comes!  Re-entry………

I knew eventually this day would come, but now that it’s here I am not sure I’m ready. Fourteen months snuggled in quietness suddenly coming to an end.

Yes of course there are things I am looking forward to. Walking along the canal without a mask and clear sunglasses, and not having to shout to the cashier to make my muffled voice audible. Being able to walk into friends’ homes, having the family together for celebrations that were put on hold and an island winter vacation.

Yet there are many aspects of ‘returning to normal’ that have me hoping the shift will take its sweet time.

I am reminded of going to the movies. Do you remember going to a matinee? Two hours of sitting quietly in a cool dark room absorbed in a story. The mind and emotions transported to another world. At the end the credits would roll and any voices were kept to a hushed whisper. The lights lifting only enough for a safe navigation of the aisle.

In those days you didn’t go back through the lobby. At the bottom of the theater next to the screen were doors that led outside. As the usher opened them you could see the stark contrast between the dimly lit theater and the bright sun of the outer world. And stepping through that door, eyes blinking and mind trying to adjust, was incredibly jarring. Horns honking, people talking, bikes flying by….as if nothing had changed. Yet I felt changed.

I am finding even the thought of re-entry jarring to my system. For introverts, empaths and those who were searching for peace before this all began, much of this past year has offered many blessings. But re-enter we must. But how?

The other day I was driving on a local highway and found myself sandwiched between two eighteen-wheelers, with someone so close behind we should have just driven together. All of us going 65 mph. I felt myself cringing. My hands gripping the steering wheel. Breath shallow. I remember this now. Two steps back…..

The planes are overhead and stores more crowded. You can feel the energy shift in the air. Soon there will be gatherings and the calendar will begin to fill. I already miss weekends with no guilt over moving slow. Of no plans. Of time spent with one person at a time where conversations felt more meaningful.

Discussions have begun of when and how my in person classes will start. I look forward to moving and breathing together but still can’t visualize exactly what that will look or feel like. I think back to how it was before, but it’s almost as if I am watching someone else. I trust that what it is supposed to be will be shown to me when the time is right. Baby steps forward……

I know not everyone feels this way. Some of you can’t wait to jump back in the saddle of life, but for me the thought of it all feels exhausting. My re-entry will be more like the pony ride at the fair.

I am not the same person who went into lockdown last year. I am changed. Please be patient with me as I navigate this re-entry.

Quietly happy,
SARAH