Scrub Oak in Transition, September 2024. Image, my own.
Autumn Equinox
there is this balance, this even-keeled consciousness, an equanimity of the breath in the air this time of year, the night and the day coming into equilibrium, living and dying reflected in the vegetation, the need for both action and rest, moving and pause, all things in their time and space
Rubber Rabbitbrush, September 2024. Image, my own.
Evolve -for the elders who’ve shone a light along the way
I’ve been watching the course of Life more closely as I’ve neared ‘halfway’
I’m totally clear, I may die tomorrow of a fungal infection brought on by an errant hang nail
This year, I started to see and understand some parts about this journey called life,
Facets that had never been open to me before, that had never been revealed
In youth. I began to witness the power of personal human evolution.
I’m sure I’ve seen it displayed previously, but now, it seemed closer, more raw and real
The strength, the peace, the solidarity, and grounding that some humans
Offer themselves and others when they choose to live with their arms stretched
Up to the divine, when they’re moving forward in purpose while trusting the
Siren song of the universe to guide them to good ends, and over hard roads, too, don’t
Mistake. I don’t think that living this evolution is simple in any way. To allow the
Lessons that life has offered you to be inculcated into your core, this isn’t a flat
Path, rather peaks and valleys, I see my mother who pursues her passions like watercolor and arts
Grant writing without prompting or celebration, and steadily understands
what she loves, what she holds dear and then lifts up those elements of her
Life, tending to her own garden of desire, she invests her best self in her and us.
All I’m saying is that for a very long time I felt completely perplexed with the recipe of this
thing I was witnessing– evolution– my septuagenarian friends, were practicing this
Art of living with purpose, too, with love and with a fair dose of spicy ironic interjection
Swimming every day, hiking all over the hills and valleys of our home
They were another of my sign-posts. And my uncle, who spoke the eulogy at
My aunt’s celebration of life, a woman who also lived and gave her life over to joy,
He has also chosen to live in the miracle of the era of man, to let life
Be the ocean, the teacher, and he became the student, he’s allowed those learnings
To become part of him in the way he loves his children, the way he acts
In community, the way he carries the knowing that life will always be a question, a universal
Query that we can only answer by living more truly, more soundly, more surely in verity
To that Flame that was lit within us at our birth, the miracle of existence realized, we evolve
Lights. September 2024. Image, my own.
On Being
be who you are and who you can be, and meet those two verities inside yourself with loving kindness and compassion and let it be enough to experience the joy of living as you see fit as you love yourself
Andrew Wyeth Grasses, September, 2024. Image, my own.
Steady in the Fall
the sun and moon move into equilibrium waxing crescent to quarter
peloton of geese ride high in the wide blue sky, calling and answering back, headed south
flowers still bloom, delicate violet saturated yellow, vibrant magenta, as grass fades, sepia to umber
fully bronze dragon fly the size of a silver dollar flickers past in the sun chased by a saxe blue fly the same size
grasshoppers bunch on mustard rabbitbrush in the sway of breeze next to dark-chocolate velvet cattails, stalks steeped in pond-water
cooper’s hawk cries from the brush high and free like an alter ego finding the next rodent in the undergrowth
the air takes on the rush and pulse of crisp wind as the sun’s rays angle longer, cooling field, flower, and fly
Greenhouse Damage, Hail Storm August 2024. Image, my own
Bill Murray
I remember the day I became Bill My heart was breaking and I wanted To save it, so I pulled it out through The intercostal space between my ribs, Right through the cage, Careful not to catch it on my sternum And I put my heart into a glass jar Which I affixed around my neck with A piece of twine, and I clamped the Lid on tight and proceeded to live To take baby steps To walk around town To ride the bus Because I knew that if I could preserve My heart In that jar I would make it I would survive My love would last And others could see and understand What heartbreak looks like And how one lives through it Now I understand about Bob, “There are two types of people In this world, those who love Neil Diamond, and those who don’t”
Composition with Double Line [unfinished], Piet Mondrian
August
Something about August is begging to be paid attention. Be here as the gray storm gathers strength, the dark cumulonimbus clouds billow up to twenty-seven thousand feet, the hail batters the roof like an alien ice machine. Deluge. White pellets of rime nearly round and cuttingly hard tear through verdant gardens and iron city drains, pinking flower beds and translucent greenhouse roofs, pocking every possible piece of outdoor furniture and uncovered car hood.
Splatters of rain signal the reclamation of autumn as the scud clouds break from the shelf of the tumult over Mt. Wilson, tumbling as if they may make contact with the grocery store parking lot lines before turning into a fog that dissipates over the asphalt. The gale winds signal the return of fall in the rising apple-crisp air. Time asks if we’ll watch for a moment from the porch as another wind rollicks, racing through the pumpkin fields, wracking the sticky green vines against each other.
August asks if we can move so much more carefully, thoughtful of each precious moment through transition– lightning strike, cloud fall, thunder call. Glorious weathervanes snapping erratically this way then that, trying to keep up with the on-rushing squall. Can we pause and take in the smell of electricity like ozone and h2o, the brouhaha of late summer air. Drink it in.
Vøringfossen, Norway. July 2024. Image, Carrie Madsen
(Re)claim
the girl who ran in dark canyons and dry riverbeds when she was young she’s there crunching gravel and sagebrush under her feet, up this next steep incline to the plains, the meadow there in the stillness a tiny creek burbles, and a garden shed appears with a low wind chime, that girl, she’s deep as a well wide as an ocean visceral and powerful even then, in her vulnerability, her desire to love, she’ll find that no one can do that for her love her like she must love herself, take that last sprint of the trail right back home reside inside herself
Evening Star, Georgia O’Keefe,
You Know
You know, sometimes as that little girl bucktoothed and freckled you wanted the come-up cause you believed you deserved it
You know, sometimes you’re aware that if you get what you ask for everything will change again. Like Alaska
you won’t be able to return to the halcyon days You know, sometimes you get caught between your growing and your fragility
and, god, the pain of it can crush, squeeze, burn, You know, sometimes everything gets unstitched, unpicked by the universe
and you’re reminded that the old woman at the end of the world must have needed to tend her soup before it scalded she still needed
food, herself, she still knew she would be called upon to (re)stich the tapestry of earth the raven unraveled to feed the world, to tend the soup, we are her magic and stories, too
The first rays of an orbital sunrise break through the Earth’s horizon. NASA iss066e099389 (Dec. 30, 2021)
Friends,
It’s certainly a gift that I feel I can use this moniker to describe each and every one of you. If you don’t feel like I’m your friend, will you please reserve that judgement for hallway talk? Or see me after class so that I can assure you of my care.
Here’s the thing, when you stepped through the doors of this classroom, somewhere around August 17th, 2023, I was already determined and committed to create a space where we can and could all safely explore concepts that require a fair amount of nuance and maturity.
But here is the other secret I happen to already have known: you have the prerequisites to be successful in this kind of open, thoughtful, argument-based inquiry and exploration. You see, everything, at its core, is an argument. Some arguments are petty—not worth engaging in. Some arguments are about cleaning toilets—your choice. But most arguments simply surround the differences of perspective, experience, and ways in which we’d like to control the world around us.
Now beyond argument, there is a field, and I’d like to call this field TRUTH. Many of the arguments we engage in as humans can be extrapolated into our desire to discover, uncover, find, know, and live in Truth. (Something I think is innate to our species.) And truth has taken a real beating in our society and culture as of late. As the information age and technological age have chaotically clashed and melded together, not unlike the birth of a new star, we have a constant stream of data that is both driven our way and so effortlessly accessible at the click of one key stroke or touch digit that we forget how far humanity has come on this examination of truth before you were even a gleam in your parent’s eyes. (You can google that idiom after class if you don’t know what I’m talking about.)
But if there is one thing I am certain of, it is that Truth with a capital T still exists. There is truth to be had and found in the world, and I hope that your research, your writing, your thinking and pondering on the subjects you have chosen this year (including your “self” in your personal narratives) have caused you to invest in this examination of the world with the intent to find truth. Don’t let the algorithm and the horrific car-crash videos you watch take that quest away from you. Don’t let AI rob you of the opportunity to figuratively bend the squishy matter we recognize as brain in coruscating synapses and ever-more lovely electrical exchanges of action-potential through your very own neurotransmitters. Use your sublime brain for your and humanity’s betterment. Promise me.
Things I have learned that don’t matter: being swoll or the hottest person in the room, being cool like above all comment because your persona gives off such a vibe or drip-and-smack that you are inaccessible (most of the time I’ve found that those who are “cool” often remain inaccessible to themselves); being “right”, this one is huge, and there is absolutely no honor in it. There isn’t one correct way to do things, and once you free yourself of this constraint you’ll live much more happily. And living too much in either retrospection—the nostalgia and glow of the past; or prospection—the lust and thirst for a future that hasn’t happened yet.
Live, my beautiful friends, with your eyes wide open in wonder. Live with your arms thrown apart ready to receive both the pain and the joy that life will bring you. Live so that you are constantly, even doggedly, learning more and evolving as a human every. single. day. Live the questions. (That’s Rilke. You can look it up, too.)
Now it’s all well and fine for me to offer you this “advice” but please don’t think I can even live the half of it myself. However, I’ve also learned that the more you practice these modes of living right here, right now, being present, sitting in the packet of time you’re fixed to and watching the experience unfold as you settle in– allowing you to determine how you can love more, reciprocate better, and evolve with grace, and seek that capital T truth– the better off you’ll be. In fact, the some of the best advice I’ve ever received comes from Lori McKenna’s song “Humble and Kind” from her album The Bird and the Riffle. (Also covered by Tim McGraw who is a little more famous.) She reminds, “When you get where you’re going, turn right back around. And help the next one in line. Always be humble and kind.” And then, just like that (snap), it’s gone. And you are moving on to the next moment, episode, or lesson that life offers.
Nothing can make a human feel more small and insignificant that taking just a moment to ponder on the infinite. Or the eventual dissolution of the infinite into entropy (still infinite, I believe). As the physicist and writer Alan Lightman, in his book, The Transcendent Brain, describes, “I believe that the spiritual experiences we have can arise from atoms and molecules. At the same time, some of these experiences, and certainly their very personal and subjective nature, cannot be fully understood in terms of atoms and molecules. I believe in the laws of chemistry and biology and physics — in fact, as a scientist I much admire those laws — but I don’t think they capture, or can capture, the first-person experience of making eye contact with wild animals and similar transcendent moments. Some human experiences are simply not reducible to zeros and ones.” There simply isn’t an algorithm that can capture the human experience.
One day this will all be gone, we will all be gone. Just like Macklemore says in his song (“Excavate”, Gemini). And there will be some kid in the hallways of Wasatch High School, like L. Daines who is looking for herself or himself in the sound of her/his music (also Macklemore), “Because music is a mirror…” Let’s not make our eventual death the reason we live. Instead, let’s live between these two great mysteries within whatever searing, glittering moments we’re presented with. And then turn and give our help, our hands, our brains, and our hearts to those other humans around us who make OUR world go round. That’s it. I think.
Once upon a time, I sat at the California Academy of Sciences in their astronomy hall underneath a false sky filled with tiny pin-prick light bulbs made to resemble stars, and listened to the smooth baritone of Tom Hanks narrate something like the advent of the Universe as though it was a nighttime story. Goodnight Moon, but better. When the camera moved from focus on our Milky Way Galaxy to an increasingly anamorphic lens, I, and the rest of the audience, could see that galaxy after galaxy after galaxy after galaxy… it really did appear to go on forever, infinitely.
Just like those galaxies, star upon infinite star, there are so many things that go into making up one single human person. The innumerable number of atoms, the constantly functioning systems. Just breathing, for heaven sakes, takes… do we know how many systems are engaged in one human breath? None of this has to matter to you. But I do hope that you’ll continue to put your best brain forward in every moment, every breath you are part of.
Today is one ending. You’re leaving, you’re out of here. But tomorrow, a new day will dawn. You’ll have the chance to gaze upon another sunrise. And if you’re not into that, to watch the death of another day as dusk moves us into night. Beautiful, either way. A new moment will rise, and you’ll be given opportunity after opportunity to make the most of your life. I hope you’ll take and treasure each one.
And when you realize that you’re rushing on, your attention is whacky and divided, or you’ve gotten trapped outside yourself and the road is dark and the path is winding, and you don’t know the way home, I hope you’ll consider thinking about the way/ways you can share your gifts with others to reorient your true heart. So I’m going to leave you with this poem. A gift from my true heart to yours. Don’t forget that for each end, there certainly is a new now. A gift of beginning.
The End From the Beginning
Endings, they definitely aren’t my favorite. A bird in the hand… they claim. I’m better if some things never change. A feather in a vacuum, only acted on by gravity Falls as fast as anything. This fundamental of physics makes my head spin. Like that janitor who left all of his fortune to the library where he shined the broken tiles day-in and day-out. Here. Now.
I’ve wanted to write a New Year, 2019, post all January. I want to talk about what I am pledging to do with my time this year, and I want to find out what you have set as your goals or resolutions for 2019. I am realizing that there are many reasons that folks don’t subscribe to the January goal setting frenzy, but I think that because it’s my birthday month I feel additionally on-board with the resolution setting set.
If you abhor resolutions that center around an arbitrary date of the year you may consider this post alternatively titled “Lessons from Dedicating 30 Days to Yoga.” You see, I began this year with many intentions– like bringing more peace and patience into my life, and renewing my commitment to not buying new things. For reference, that didn’t really work out for me as a year-long endeavor. Mostly because I came to the project grossly underprepared to support myself. More on that later.
But this year, I am still evaluating and cornering my spending habits, I’m still seeking to be a parent that speaks more peace to my children, and I’m still trying to be a human that is more patient with her fellow humans at large– in the classroom, on the road, at the grocery store, on the news, and on and on.
Instead of putting immense pressure on myself to be all that I wanted to be on January 1, I decided that I would first engage in a yoga practice that lasts the entire month of January. This was one of the best moves I’ve made in terms of beginning a New Year, and I hope I’ll remember how cleansing, enlightening, grounding, and opening this journey has been.
One of these personal revelations is a two-part story with yet another alternative post title: “The difference between being hard on yourself and kind to yourself (even honest with yourself) is not that you need to stop being too easy on yourself.”
Allow me to explain. Four nights ago I was doing Adriene’s (Yoga with Adriene) Dedicate 30 Day Yoga Journey. Nearing the end of her practice we were lying in a final Shavasana. The practice had been about sweetness and Adrienne was saying, “Sometimes it’s not only about WHAT we do but HOW we do it. Consider that.” Now this is an idea that I subscribe to. We should all think about what we are doing. Why we are doing it, how we are doing it are keys to the ‘what’. Adriene went on, “Are you more in the habit of being hard on yourself or can you get more in the habit…”
My video stopped streaming at this exact moment. And I was left trying to figure out what Adriene was going to say next. The truth is that when I finished her statement the only thing that I could come up with was, “Or are you in habit of being too easy on yourself. Do you need to push yourself harder?” In other words, do you cut yourself a break too often, are you lazy, apathetic, flawed? And on and on and on with the self-denigrating comments. I was ready to get on the wagon and stone myself for being a push over. Why didn’t I see that this was the same thing as being TOO HARD ON MYSELF?
My video eventually reloaded and Adriene said, “Are you more in the habit of being hard on yourself, or can you get more in the habit of finding practices that help you, get you, in the habit of being sweet to yourself. EVEN WHEN YOU MESS UP.”
Stunned silence from my mat.
Can you be kind to yourself? Even when you mess up? Can you? Can I?
This brings me to my next story. Hang with me here. There was once a girl who couldn’t spell. That girl was me, I’m still that girl. And I don’t know when I began to believe or it was pointed out to me that I could not spell. (I hope at this point you are already seeing the irony of this reality as I am an English teacher. An English teacher who can’t spell.) Apparently, not even being a school Spelling Bee champion served to solve this self-image notion.
But this not-being-able-to-spell thing has been something that has haunted me for my entire life. Not just academically, but not being able to spell became something of a self-forecast for all of my failings, all the stuff I couldn’t do. It became a sign that I wasn’t cut out for success.
Well from this girl– me– came a sweet little boy– P. As it turns out, he showed some of the same phonetic unawareness that his mom had/has. That mom– me– told this little boy– my son– that he “could not spell.” Just like that, “You can’t spell.” Just like I had been told.
Now I tried to forecast some solutions to this problem by explaining that he could memorize words and thereby overcome his failing. “We can’t spell.” I kept telling him, like we were rowing this boat called “Can’t Spell” together. Fast forward to Parent-Teacher-Student conferences 2019.
As we concluded our meeting, my son’s sweet teacher asked if I had any questions for her and I felt that this would be a great time to bring up the spelling thing. I explained, “I can’t spell. And I’m worried that this might be the case for my son. It appears that he doesn’t have phonetic awareness.”
His teacher stoped me in my tracks and said, “Oh! That sounds just like me! Your son can spell, he just needs to practice with different variations of each phonemic pairing. It wasn’t until I was a teacher that I realized there were certain vowels and sounds that were patterned through language. But you know what? (She turns to my son.) For every one of these patterns there are times when the rules apply and there are times when the English language breaks those rules! You CAN spell!” She declared with certainty.
Just like that. “YOU CAN SPELL!” With all of the vigor and certainty of a seasoned educator who knows that as she bolsters students to believe in themselves they will fulfill those prophecies and SPELL.
I was stunned into silence again. Here I had been telling myself (for years) that I couldn’t spell. I had been telling my son that he couldn’t spell. I had been practicing this can’t over and over and over. My son’s teacher continued, “The wonderful thing about spelling is that you do need to memorize how to spell words. Once you can recognize different patterns like ‘r’ controlled vowels– er, ur, ir, or– then you can begin to memorize which words use which patterns.”
I nearly fell off my chair. More than that, I was ashamed for telling my boy that he couldn’t, that he didn’t, that he wasn’t able to. Nothing better than strapping yourself to your failings and then just clinging to them! In that moment I remembered my yoga, the moment that I was so certain that my instructor was going to tell me that perhaps if yoga wasn’t working for me or working a change on or in me I was being too easy on myself.
I realized that I am constantly falling into this belief that if I will just push harder, do more, press into my present with more resolve, then– and only then– will I come out conqueror. But in those moments, on that mat and in that classroom, I realized that I need to be a whole lot kinder to myself and to those around me.
You, my beautiful friend, thank you for reading this post. I’m learning, slowly and steadily, to pass on the power of believing in yourself to my kids and to my deeper self. You, me, we all need to be more kind to ourselves. Happy 2019!
With all of the back to school excitement happening around our house– mom going to school, little brother going to school, big brother going to school– I couldn’t help but post my Back to School outfit.
I don’t know that I’ll be wearing this on my first day back with students, but gosh I love a good stripe, and this dress is just about as perfect as they come! I’ve shopped a few similar striped dresses below.
The addition of a leopard accessory, oversized sunnies, and a red lip only serve to increase outfit interest. If you’re in a wardrobe bind or stuck in an outfit rut, I’m telling you, pick up a striped dress in your favorite silhouette and you’ll have many happy returns.
Refined + Rugged 