Spreading our Seed

 

I love spreading plant seeds by blowing on a dry dandelion head or setting off an exploding impatiens seed pod. But my own seed I never wanted to spread. Too many examples of poor parenting in my immediate family for me to feel even remotely qualified to be a parent myself.

That said, seeds are really important: seeds that grow into produce, plants that shed oxygen, and plants that give fiber for clothing. And more metaphorical seeds of information, art, and inspiration.

Let us all spread our seeds freely, and hope for a good harvest.

A Room of One's Own

 

A Room of One’s Own

Virginia Woolf wrote “A Room of One’s Own,” an essay about how women writers, just like men, need a place to retreat away from the demands of their daily life, to be free to concentrate on their writing.

I’m retired, and have few claims on my time and energy. So why am I not writing up a storm? Creative nonfiction is my genre, so I can’t just whip worlds out of my imagination – which is no great shakes anyway. What I often lack is something I want to write about.

Turns out, adversity is a profound trigger to creativity. Think breakup songs and protest songs and novels. So, Trump 1.0, Covid, and 2.0 have all been very helpful for creativity.

In terms of protest writing both content and distribution need to be considered. For example, the content needs to be suitable to the planned audience. And the content needs to provoke the actions I hope the readers will take in response. Actions such as voting, at the bare minimum.

More effective responses seem to be needed, because our opponents stop at nothing to get what they want (or think they want, until the tiger they voted for starts to eat their faces).

Possibly more effective responses might include contacting our members of Congress, boycotting big companies, and attending demonstrations (hopefully without violence or arrests).

What other actions will be required to save America and the world?

Everywhere There is Beauty

 As I sit down to write and cast about for a subject, my eyes are caught by the cover of this journal. The intricate pattern of silver and copper lines shifts colors as I move it and the sunlight from the window strikes it at different angles.

I bought the journal for its beauty, but other beauties come into my life unsought: the sunlight after rain, the plant life in my neighborhood, the textures and colors of a small purse that turned up in my bureau long after I’d forgotten how it got there.

Beauty is nearly everywhere I look if I’m of a mind to see it – or hear it, taste it, feel or smell it, or even read about it. Like a shy pet, it waits for a moment of calm, a sliver of attention, a hint of openness.

It’s easy to block beauty out. I can be all wrapped up in something else: a grievance, fright, or worry, a painful juncture in a relationship, or some issue with my body. Life is full of distractions from beauty, even if they are chores or other matters that must be attended to. By all means, we take care of the needful things. But then we can look up, or take a break, and see, hear, feel, taste, or smell something that feeds our soul.

Creativity and Me

Creativity is the holy Grail of writers and all artisans. In fact, we're sometimes called "creatives." However, creativity comes with being human; it is as inherent as our ability to breathe. In the beginning, God created humans in the divine image. All we know about the divine at that stage of the story is that it creates. Ergo, what we humans share with the divine at the very core of our being is the ability and urge to create.

Fine, but tell that to the empty page that sits there smirking at me. Tell that to my legs that take me away from that page more often than not, Tell that to the perfect blank that appears in my mind when I reach for the pen.

Well, creativity can be drummed out of us or suppressed, or ignored because it doesn't feel right, because it comes at an awkward time, or because it doesn't seem good enough.

How to encourage myself to just write something? The word "discipline" comes to mind, but I immediately push it away - it just makes me sad. The concept of motivation works better for me. I find that I am motivated to write by a group of friends who are expecting me to write something to share with them next week. Best of all is sitting down with a group of friends and writing with them. Their creative energy mingles with mine, and it's magical.

Darkness at Noon

 Although I use blackout blinds in my bedroom, I can tell when morning has come by the light entering at their edges. If I can’t see the lines, it’s still night and I can go back to sleep. Wednesday morning, though, I couldn’t see the lines but my body was telling me that my sleep was complete. I looked at my iThing, and it said 8:30am. That seemed weird. I went into the back hallway, and it was still dark out, but the sky was poisonous shades of orange. I checked the clocks in the kitchen, and they said 8:30. I was pretty sure it was not evening, but not sure of anything else. Finally, I checked my wristwatch, and it agreed on the time. Looked specifically for the “a.m.” on my device, then grudgingly decided it was indeed morning. But what a damn weird one! The sky was wrong, wrong, wrong.

This whole year is an adventure in wrongness: plague, economic collapse, racial strife, wildfires, and now something took away our morning! I was freaking out. I wanted to talk with another human being and see if she also noticed how weird this was. I contacted a friend, who kindly heard out my venting and confirmed that it was weird out there. This calmed me enough to seek enlightenment on FaceBook and check my email. FB was full of pictures people had taken to share how dark and orange the Bay Area was this morning. It was very comforting that others had experienced the same apocalyptic vibe. Then I opened an email with a satellite photo and explanation. A major pall of wildfire smoke had arrived in the Bay Area. At the same time, Mother Nature’s Bay Area air conditioning, the marine layer of fog and cloud, had come in overnight. It scraped the air clean near the ground, pushing the smoke and ashes up into the sky, where it filtered out the sun and all colors but the orange. So, it looked like midnight on Mars out there, but the air quality where we stood was not too bad. Goody.

My email also revealed that my doctor’s office had received this year’s flu shots, and I could drop in to get mine. My interior committee weighed in: the majority opinion was that I should get back in bed and stay there until true daylight. The minority had it that hiding out from the weirdness wasn’t worth screwing up my sleep cycle; I should just suck it up and go get my flu shot. So I did that very thing, walking a few blocks to the office on 24^th street. The last time I remember leaving my home in the dark, I was headed to a medical building for a sleep study.

It was very strange. Cars had their headlights on; streetlights were on. Lights inside buildings made it seem like late evening. The people I encountered in the office and the shops all commented on the apocalyptic look of the sky. Plague, famine, fire; every time we think we’ve hit bottom, things get worse.

Best to stay in the moment, and not borrow trouble. But the crepuscular world out there is awfully damn creepy!

A Covid Introvert (?)

When the Covid lockdown began, I thought that my introverted self would be happy and relieved to be ordered to stay home instead of being guilted to get out already. In fact, staying home is now my civic duty—to protect myself and others from this plague.

My BC (before Covid) habit was to attend events every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Nowadays, my formerly built-in excursions have turned into Zoom sessions.

Thus, I have to take responsibility to make plans if I want to get myself out of my house. Because of my introversion, laziness, and tinge of agoraphobia, I need motivation to leave the house. Towards the beginning of shelter-in-place, I was going into my backyard to harvest fragrant lilac blooms. Since then, I made arrangements to meet a friend who lives nearby to walk around our neighborhood once a week, and I’d usually pick up some tasty food while we were out and about.

I tried to satisfy my need for connection by driving to another neighborhood and walking six feet away from another friend. Then I met two more friends on one’s back deck, but couldn’t bring myself to eat, drink, or remove my mask.

After three months of sheltering, my hug hunger has grown immense. I happily chanced upon a New York Times article about how to hug safely in a pandemic: outdoors, wearing masks, pointing your faces away from each other, and briefly.

Shortly thereafter, I went to meet members of my Tuesday brunch group on a patio outside the Randall Museum. We bought coffee and pastries inside, then went to eat them on the patio. For the first few months, my mask stayed on, even outside. I raised the bottom just far enough for each bite and sip through a straw.

I saw and hugged friends I hadn’t seen in person for three months. The first drops of rain hitting my dessicated ground were ecstasy.

It’s a shame that something so nourishing is still risky, but the risk is very much worth it for me. I tell myself that this nourishment builds me up, making me less depressed, less apt to fall sick, and more willing to reach out and encourage these women and other friends who are suffering in their own ways from the plague.

What’s surprising about this? Maybe how the calculus of risk versus benefit kept me alone at home for so long, and has now begun shifting towards acceptance of more risk as we elders settle in for the long haul.

 

Carousel

According to Holly Near, Merry-go-round gonna make you smile. Hot clam chowder gonna drown those sea bottom, you got ‘em, blues for a while. Go to the slide, dime for a ride, and slide, slide, slide. Playing at the pier, the Santa Monica Pier.

I spent lots of time at the pier when I visited Santa Monica as a child. My favorite spot was the penny arcade, but I also rode the carousel’s brightly painted horses, sea creatures, and carriages. Some of the animals moved up and down while the platform circled; they were the only ones worth getting on, even with the seat belts to keep their little passengers safe. A marvel of mechanized instruments produced jangly music redolent of cotton candy and sun tan lotion.

Family lore was that my grandparents had a connection to the owner of the carousel; my cousins were allowed on special occasions to ride for free. There used to be a dispenser of brass rings suspended above the ride, and catching one would entitle you to a free ride. My cousins’ ride was already free, but they kept grabbing for the ring to show their prowess. I don’t remember the rings, and wouldn’t have been able to reach them with my stubby little arms anyway.

I could have reached the rings if the horses were like those in Mary Poppins that broke away from the carousel and cantered off into the landscape. This doesn’t happen in real life.

Carousels entertain by moving in circles without going anywhere. Our planet also moves in circles. The seasons cycle through and all of us travel through space only to return to roughly the same place a year later and a year older. Things that happened before happen again; the same, but a bit different. As they say, history doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes. We address the same situations and problems over and over and over again, but each time with a little more experience, a little more perspective, a little more wisdom.

That’s what I think on a good day, anyway. May it be so.