Great view from here.

Sunday afternoon at a playground is a wonderous event.

Theia climbs to the top of the space ship vehicle which, when spun, can travel into the imagination and land wherever we decide to land.

“Mia, come look at the view!” Theia calls.

I climb up to the top, my legs just a bit trembly when I turn out and face the expanse of the sky, the tall trees, the view.

“Hold on.” I caution Theia.

“You don’t understand, Mia,” she says, “The climber is holding me. Look!”

She’s settled her bum on a horizontal rope, fit her body in between the vertical ropes. She is, as she says, held.

“Yes, it appears you’re safe.” I smile.

I think about her awareness of her body in space and in time. I think about my own awareness, growing steadier and steadier. The more I am with the physical experience of being alive, the likelier I am aware, like Theia, of being held.

Our space ship lands in a wonder land where Mias push girls on swings until they are all swung out, where girls sing songs while they swing, where the sun shines the whole time we remain at the playground.

Sunday at the playground. A great view. Big hearts.

Morning Wandering Through Words.

The Wisdom Engines are tools for “consciousness hacking”. The metaphysical and ontological ideas regarding the nature of being, existence and truth embedded in these drawings has the potential to disrupt and enliven the general field in which they are experienced. This one is called Riverspine.

Story Keepers was made in Murun, Mongolia at the invitation of Land Art Mongolia Biennale 2018.

Written on Skin: Concentric Stories was a ceremonial or ritualistic process of writing 7 stories as offerings to and on the land.

This morning I rise at 7 a.m., just in time to watch the sky lighten from near-light to light. Now, the sun sends long shadows into the yard. The air is a kindly-cool. The promise of yellow leaves on trembling Aspen groves comes with the wind. Among the mountains, the Tamarack and Larch seem to gather for a celebration of cooler wind, longer nights– preparing, perhaps, for the darkness of the winter season.

This morning I read Maria Popova’s offerings about a visual artist from Slocan, British Columbia, a region of the world I’ve visited in the summers, enjoying the heat of the day in contrast to the icy cold water– even at the end of August, I last only a few minutes swimming .

Tanya P. Johnson swims in the waters I have dipped into with tremble and shriek. I’ve only discovered her work today and I’m curious. In her bio she writes of sharing her life with a black dog, and says she is “drawn to the random, is fierce about justice, likes foxes and dislikes locusts, sharks and oppression.”

I viewed the pieces of her work I’ve included in this post with quiet stillness. I noticed a warmth in my belly, a waterfall down my back, a smile in my heart.

I wonder your reaction, dear reader?

I wonder your reaction, dear reader?

I wonder your reaction, dear reader?

***

I read, too, an interview with Elizabeth Strout. I devoured her books, Amy & Isabelle and Olive Kitteridge. Here are a few sentences she spoke which speak to me:

“I love to write,” she says simply. “I want to connect with somebody so that they can see their life in a different way even just for two minutes, or have some momentary sense of transcendence, as though the roof were a little higher for a few minutes. And they can look around and they can say, ‘Oh, right, it’s just life, it’s just life.’”

Intent may be everything or it may be a bit of something which propels, which causes a spiral to begin. It may vary with the intender. It may vary with the attention, the attunement, the awareness of the intender.

I wonder, dear reader, your reaction?

I wonder, dear reader, your reaction?

I wonder, dear reader, your reaction?

Experience.

This morning I rise at 6:30 with Athena’s request (a coughing sound as if she’s trying to find her voice) to get outside and pee. She’s been sleeping in the same room as the granddaughters and now she’s standing next to the front door. I follow her outside. Look out as the day begins.

The sky is dark. A few birds call out.

Back inside, Sloane, 8 and Theia, 7, announce they are still tired and they’ll go back to bed.

In the kitchen, I prepare Athena’s breakfast and offer it up. She eats with gusto. I turn on the countertop griddle. I pour 1.5 cups of buttermilk into the flour/baking soda/salt/sugar ingredients I mixed up 12 hours earlier.

I’ve made hundreds of pancakes in my life. I’ve awakened from sleep thousands of times. I could be on autopilot, really, the way the routine is established.

I notice the sky is lightening. I step outside. The air is fresh. Just a slight chill. Sun touches yellow leaves. The season is turning. I am here.

Sloane and Theia move around me in the kitchen. Our patterns intersect with each other. We hug good morning. We talk about the day. I notice their eyes, the sound of their voices rising and falling like little songs, the aliveness of them. I notice a solid feeling inside me: a calm, a settledness.

I am not on autopilot.

Experiment: Details

This is Experiment number 2 of Sunrise documentation.

Experiment #1, Showing Up for the Sunrise, (2020/2021) revealed my capacities for discipline, for deep noticing, for holding uncertainty (when you show up at sunrise, you have no idea what will greet you.)

Experiment #2, Quality of Attention at Sunrise, focuses on how I might attend to the sun rise or the morning hours (if I am unable to walk to see the sunrise because I am caring for someone in my family and my presence near them is needed)

Experiment #2 asks me to consider:

• slowing down, (notice, notice, notice)

• the act of discernment, (to sift or separate what is noticed; to see the parts)

• the experience of compassion, (to hold all the parts as if whole, with kindness, without judgement)

• the embodiment of spacious awareness. (to experience the process of noticing in the body)

Hypothesis: Focusing the quality of attention will lead to an expanded perspective.

Hypothesis #2: The discovery of this perspective will disrupt my relationships with all beings.

Hypothesis #3: This perspective will lead to a deeper understanding of one of the three words I adopted for 2022: Sacred.

Thoughts: I’ve written before about my resistance to the word Sacred. Questions I’m holding in a biased mind:: Are the sacred objects carried by Catholic priests objects of terror? Are the sacred pathways of religion actually dangerous odysseys? How is religion different from spirituality?

Procedure: (in development) Stillness. Listening.

Tools needed: (in development) Protection from the elements. Alarm as needed to wake up.

Preparation: (in development) Set out the walking clothes/shoes.

If you’re interested in some details about the photo above and the way my life has unfolded over the last couple of days:

This photo is sunrise documentation from yesterday, September 22, 2022, the day after equinox, the day so much erupted in my life- for about an hour I lived the dragon-of-sorts survival experience through emotional reaction. I’ve written about this experience. So much happened yesterday; I met with Meg Wheatley in a small-ish group over Zoom, I talked with writers who I’ll be working with soon, I talked with my son, Ben, who is in an educational space which suits the way he thinks, the kinds of curiosities he has in life. When he talks about school, it reminds me of my own passion for learning. All day long, I was engaged in reciprocal conversations. And I tried to comfort my guy, Tom, who is experiencing still-undiagnosed and unrelenting mysterious pain in his calf. And, lastly, we stayed up until late in the night, crafting a piece of writing for Andrea and Hap Wilson from Cabin Falls. It’s a memory document of the last day of our paddle out from our stay at Cabin Falls. Today is the second day of the Celtic new year. I look forward to more beginnings.

Sacred Moment

I rise today with the intent of writing my first thoughts. I pick up Mark Nepo’s The Book of Awakening and the September 22 entry asks me to consider a sacred moment.

I look up the word sacred. Again.

Sacred etymology: late 14c., "hallowed, consecrated, or made holy by association with divinity or divine things.”

I chose Sacred (or it chose me) as one of three words for me to carry through the year. I’ve identified many moments during 2022 where the other two, Discipline and Reciprocity have been realized, recognized, placed inside direct experience. Sacred is tougher for me.

I’ve been worried about the word sacred ever since I wrote it down. The word’s association with the church brings up memories for me. Fear. Anger. Betrayal.

I celebrated September 21, equinox, the beginning of the new year in Celtic tradition, in a glorious mess of deconstruction. I found myself navigating fierce anger, a pulse of fear, the shadow of memory from childhood. I stormed about the house at one point “tidying up because it would give me a sense of control over something.” The flow of anger felt so powerful. I wanted to hold onto it.

Anger: Tight jaw, jutting out jaw. Heat all through my body, pooling in my hands and feet. Face, hot. Face, rigid and set. Eyes, unseeing. Heart, shut down. Hearing, limited. Gut, full of flame.

Did I transform into a dragon-of-sorts, protecting something sacred? What was the sacred thing?

The more I talked, the more confused I became. The anger deepened. I could feel the desire to make strong declarations about you=this or me=this. I knew I was headed for real danger. For the kind of danger where you’re blasting out your fiery breath. I could see who I was in danger of becoming. Suddenly, I wanted the anger gone. I wanted to escape and take it with me. I wanted to run. I wanted to shout, “I’m really going now. I really am. I won’t be coming back.” I kept moving. I gathered things. A bag. A book. I fell into patterns I thought I left behind.

And then, I stopped.

I vowed to stay in the spot I was in until the anger dissipated. I became curious about it.

The dragon-of-sorts sought a way through the rough seas, the volcano, the earthquake, the hurricane.

I cried when love broke through the protective barriers I’d set up. When my perspective grew wider, my eyes and ears opened, my jaw relaxed, the heat and tension flowed, I felt my heart. I could communicate again. Through love. Fierce love.

A story of the people and the events might be helpful to illustrate my point, but I also want to point out how narrative can create the conditions for a circling dragon that never leaves. With narrative, I can attach blame or place undeserved disposition (temperament) on a person.

Emotion felt in the larger context is a different awareness than emotion felt in the individual.

I wonder if yesterday, a day for endings and new beginnings was a test for the dragon-of-sorts. Did the dragon attempt to allow whatever emotion existed to be felt, to rise and fall, to erupt and ebb? Is the dragon a reflection of the wider context? And, what is the dragon protecting?

Love? I wonder.

Is love the sacred thing?

Fear. Fear. Fear

1. Here is a fearful moment I captured on video. Athena is the puppy in our team. We are at Lake Superior. She loves to jump. She loves to catch sticks in her mouth, and carry them, and bring them, and find them. We want to be part of her excitement. We seek out opportunities to be triangulated with her love of sticks.

2. Each time I watch this video, my stomach turns at a certain moment (if you watch it, you’ll know which one…)

3. I try to let the fear rise and fall away.

4. My novel, The Arbornauts, is part horror/part psychological suspense. I didn’t know this was the way this novel would go, but I am interested in the continual facing of fear.

5. What is your experience of fear? What do you do to avert fear? How do you face fear? What is underneath fear? I’m asking myself these questions. Today. Often.

Athena grabs stick. Loses balance on the descent.

Fear. Fear. Fear.

The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction

I walked this morning in the early-sun-of-the-day with Lidia Yuknavitch’s voice in my head. And David Naimon’s. They talked about Ursula K. LeGuin’s Theory of Fiction as a Carrier Bag.

So much was said by them, so much has been said by others about LeGuin’s Theory and about form and motivation, and the need to tell stories in different ways. I’m still digesting it all and I plan to offer a workshop or a series of writerly experiments to wend our way through form. I’m interested in feminine forms. I’m interested in non-binary forms. I’m interested in the polyvocal.

I’m intimidated, too, because I feel like I’m late to the party and I have purchased a cheap bottle of wine which I hope is a good value and not over-priced-swill.

Athena wanted more of my attention this morning than I gave her, busy as I was with listening to Lidia and David. And, now, as I write this, she is asking for me to take her for a walk. Asking = occasionally jumping up and putting her front paws on the back of my shoulders. I don’t think this is good manners but I understand the urgency of desire.

So…for now…I’ll leave you with a few explorations and a promise to revisit this topic, again and again. LeGuin’s work deserves the revisiting! Here is a quote from her essay The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction

If it is a human thing to do to put something you want, because it’s useful, edible, or beautiful, into a bag, or a basket, or a bit of rolled bark or leaf, or a net woven of your own hair, or what have you, and then take it home with you, home being another, larger kind of pouch or bag, a container for people, and then later on you take it out and eat it or share it or store it up for winter in a solider container or put it in the medicine bundle or the shrine or the museum, the holy place, the area that contains what is sacred, and then next day you probably do much the same again — if to do that is human, if that’s what it takes, then I am a human being after all. Fully, freely, gladly, for the first time.

LeGuin imagines a novel as a carrier bag. Lidia talks about her work as polyphonic. David brings in all sorts of writers and artists who connect to the idea of what is collected and the shape of the vessel which holds the collection.

I can’t help but think of the collectors I’ve known and what motivates them, what hope they derive from their collecting ways. I wonder how all of this will contribute to my own finishing of a novel I’ve been haunted by for many years, The Arbornauts.

More later. See you soon. Mar’ce xoxoxo

Why I Canoe...

I rise this morning wondering what will happen with my day. I was going to be in a canoe today with a new friend I feel I’ve known over a lifetime, but the weather is shaky and she is recovering from a nasty bout of covid. I’m still tired from the canoe trip, too. Not fully unpacked physically or mentally.

This weekend we stayed out at Ghost Lake. Each day we threw sticks for Athena in the icy water and she retrieved them, over and over.

Last night we viewed some of the videos we’d taken during our summer canoeing excursions. Day three in Quetico (August 3), I talked about what I was afraid of (big wind/waves) and all the things I love: mushrooms, trees, water, wind, waves.

Last night I fell asleep to recorded forest sounds playing through my phone. I dreamed of standing on a shore, looking out over an expanse of water. No longer afraid. Now, waiting. I don’t know what I’m waiting for…

Ghost Lake shoreline with Theia.

Why do I canoe?

I ask myself this question often. Over and over I choose canoeing. Why?

I love canoeing so much, I want to “sell it” to everyone else. Why?

Here are some answers:

Level 1: Canoeing is adventure, healthy adventure. #72hoursinnature #significantlyreducesstressmarkers

Level 2: Communication required. Trust. Confronting fear. #healthyrelationships #facingfear #lifegoals

Level 3: Relationships with every thing is possible. #weareallconnected

Level 4: Today’s response: I canoe to make space in my existence for something else. Out of the routine of most of my days, I am in flow with the water, the wind, the land and the sun. In these moments, something else arises. The something else is a deepening relationship with the world. Each of my senses is tuned to capture more broadly, more deeply, the essence of what is. #whatishappeningtome #mindblowing

My context: I’ve spent many years attempting to fix what was wrong: with myself, with others. Self improvement seemed like the educated, eventually happy, woman’s path. Her hero’s journey was improving herself– everyone knew she was a hero just by looking at her: the clean house, glowing skin, fit body, successful children, gorgeous garden. Much of my life has been dedicated to shaping a version of myself others would love, respect, honour. Decades and decades of living, I felt I was being observed and each of my actions evaluated as good or bad. I frequently repeated as an antidote to the frenzied circling in my brain of all-the-ways-I-am-not-enough, “I love you. I love you. I love you.” I learned this from Oprah. An act of defiance against the observer.

Even though I thought saying I love you affirmations were likely bullshit, I didn’t have many other options.

Back then, I fell into bed at night, exhausted from the self-improvement practices, grateful for sleep to take over my mind and find some freedom from the watcher.

In taking care of others, I found an expression of self with the least amount of tension. My self fell away during the times I was needed- cleaning up children’s vomit, listening to a friend’s catastrophic life chapter, pursuing my employer’s objectives to change the world without realizing the falseness of their promise.

During these acts of giving my attention to others, I didn’t think about my stringy hair, my too-thin lips, the changing shape of my body. I didn’t worry about washing the floor each day, eating low fat food, worrying about money. When I was taking care of others, I didn’t exist.

I thought my care of others would lead to freedom.

I feel ashamed to say the truth: I hoped others would proclaim their love and devotion to me, so loudly and so clearly and so unconditionally, I would be able to relax into their love and not have to improve anything. I could simply be.

I canoe because it is a world where I can be without the noise of self-improvement, where the calling to help others quiets. It’s a world where my attention is tuned to the connection between the small me and greater possibilities of existence. Beyond self-improvement lies freedom. I find it in a canoe.

I read the poem Clearing by Martha Postlewaite this morning. I remembered how my need for self-improvement faded away the more time I spent in quiet with myself. I wonder if stillness is a kind of clearing in a forest?

Still in progress, I offer ideas for the reader’s consideration. I don’t know why. I am on the shore, perhaps, or in the forest clearing. This is my song this morning. I don’t need to improve it. Just notice, observe, and move from experience to experience.

Clearing

Do not try to save the whole world or do anything grandiose.

Instead, create a clearing in the dense forest of your life

and wait there patiently,

until the song that is your life

falls into your own cupped hands

and you recognize and greet it.

Only then will you know how to give yourself

to this world

so worthy of rescue.

~ Martha Postlewaite

Writing While Living a Writer's Life

What helps me write while I am living a writers life:

Curiosity helps. Wanting to notice, to observe, to question is like an intention for the day. It’s saying, I’m going to gather what I can from whatever I find growing today.

Stillness helps. Feeling still is the surest way to recover from anxiety about not writing enough, writing that sucks, writing you’re sure is brilliant but will never be published. Stillness is a ritual. To still the body and to rest while still is like laying on your back next to your bestie and staring into the big sky. You can’t help but feel all is okay. Such relaxation allows you to notice the strong evidence- in this moment, you are okay.

Love helps. A heart-felt, open-hearted way of living life helps me write. I no longer flinch at the bad actors I’m writing about. I am not afraid of them. I see them as opportunities for me to explore shadowy ways of living. All experiences are valid. I want to feel all of this shadowy horror through story. Humans, my ancestors, have lived through horror. Their ways of knowing are unknown by me, but I know the scale of human experiences includes war, murder, rape, violence, love, sacrifice, honour, respect. I am not punishing myself. I am not attempting to gain anyone’s favour. I’m doing what I think love does. Through the experience of love we come to know what it is and what it isn’t and how our species is affected by love’s discipline, by reciprocal relationships, by respect, by holding space for the sacred. To tell the story of love is to infuse love into the current of our existence. Currents: Water. Wind. Energy.

Although I rarely allow them anymore, deadlines for producing a specific piece of writing for a specific audience help build momentum for writing. I only allow them as a last resort– a final part of the writing process . I experience life. I notice things. I write pieces of text. I dream. I write pieces of text. One day I notice what I’ve been writing. I see a thread from one idea to the next. I sit down to write- new blank page- and the words fall into sentences and arrange into paragraphs.

Singing helps. I don’t sing while writing. I sing while walking or doing dishes or paddling the canoe. Hearing myself sing helps me get used to the sound of my voice. When I read work aloud, I hear the rhythm when it flows and when it’s stopped.

Experiencing Life. I try to be present to the experience I am in. Deep noticing and observing while in participation with life helps to build momentum towards reflection. Reflection is more about making connections between ideas and experiences and less about trying to remember, specifically, what happened. “Making Connections” is a key element of Maxine Greene’s pedagogical philosophy, Aesthetic Education. I see making connections as a process of noticing the emergence of something, not creating towards a pre-determined outcome.

A note on form: I have noticed the six points I’ve made above all have an impact on the forms my writing takes. I often “braid” or “weave” seemingly disconnected ideas together. Sometimes I write a flow of consciousness. Sometimes I want my writing to sound like a symphony. Deadlines can bring unity and cohesion to my work. I stress at transitions in the final stages of my writing. Is sense-making possible?

Note about photo: Taken from The Cabin at Cabin Falls. A place of wonder. A place of peace. A place of transformation.

Athena. September 17, 2022

This morning I greeted the sun through an east-facing window. From the arbornaut’s Writing Studio bedroom, through the living area, and past the kitchen, the sun glowed an invitation to notice. I pulled the blind, looked through the rectangle of glass. Orange and yellow light spread over the prairie horizon, sloping hills and big skies. Outside the studio with a view of the west, the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains were awash in pink and yellow.. I inhaled and noticed the exhale was longer, deeper, than expected. Relax. Let go.

Thank you.

Later, I remember this moment. Relive it. Add to it:

Welcome whatever comes.

No need to plan.

I am safe. No wind or waves to paddle.

Everyone around me is doing fine.

I am safe.

For how long? For how long?

We take Athena for a walk down to Ghost Lake.

When the wind sweeps west across the lake: I turn away. I stay back from the water’s edge. A whole body shiver runs through me. “It’s cold,” I say.

Athena is in and out of the water, without hesitation. Soaking wet, she shakes after each stick-retrieval and bounds again into waves, undaunted by wind. Soon she shakes and shakes after each retrieval, once near the water, the second time near me. The water feels like little balls of ice when it hits bare skin. I stuff my hands into the pockets of my fleece pants, press my arms close to my body. I’m glad I’m wearing a hat, otherwise my hair would be flying across my glasses, in my mouth, tangling and tangling at the nape.

I notice the mountains now. Like seeing old friends, I smile and nod. The dam seems smaller than the last time I saw it. The wind carries different sounds than I remember, different feelings of cool and aloft-y-ness (the quality of something indescribable in the air. Also, a hovering expression of matter.) I notice I’m at once analytical and appreciative. I wonder why so much thought? Why not experience it and move forward?

Athena listens when we call her out and away from other dogs, danger, chipmunks, rabbits, people. Mostly. She stops to assess the context she’s in before she responds. (Meaning, she pauses and decides if she wants to come!) I notice I oscillate between my perception of what she might think freedom is: doing whatever she wants when she wants to and what she might think punishment is: being coerced to participate in my way of doing things.

She must ask in her own puppy head, what can I trust? Where am I safe? Am I always loved?

Do I really think I know what she is thinking? This is a projection. These are my thoughts, these are my big concerns. Am I placing them inside Athena’s brain, creating a mirror for this expression of me?

Do my thoughts shape Athena’s experience? Likely? Obviously? Under some circumstances?

I try to let go of my questions. I try to live my questions. I try to figure out what the hell I am thinking and why I am thinking it. And, then, I notice the world around me. The details.

Athena is a gentle canine companion. She calms easily, will remain still amid much chaos. She expresses joy quickly and with great abound– her long body wiggles with delight. She knows how to dance.

I notice I have become more calm and more joyful since she’s arrived.

How do I serve love?

Athena dances like a small horse, planting her front pads into the ground, builds momentum, pushes her weight up and back– she bucks out her back legs, her fancy tail flies. She moves back and forth in this dancing motion. I sing a song, a percussive beat to encourage her: ta dat, ta dat, ta-dat-ta-dat-ta-dat. I remember my mother’s voice, her nursery rhyme rhythm and wonder if she sang this same beat to me?

Athena noses me for treats and I ask her to sit next to me. Treat. Treat. Treat. Consistency. Praise. Reward. Consistency. I ask for her obedience to ensure her safety. We are a team. We look out for each other.

I’m looking for evidence of the kinds of experiences we can do together. Experiences we’ll learn from and look forward to and experiences to help her life feel full of meaning and purpose. (another projection) I’m wondering if she’d be interested in becoming a therapy dog. I’d be interested in spending time with older people. I have dreams about them telling me stories and me writing letters for them to people they love. I don’t know what will come true from my dreams. Many things have not come true. Many things have. I wonder if dreaming is like moving into a field of possibility… I dreamed of living in a house with my daughter/son-in-law/two grandchildren. The house was near nature. I live in the house I dreamed of in January of 2021. On Ghost Lake.

My novel is set here. The Arbornauts, a horror/psychological thriller, is alive each time I’m here. Isn’t Ghost Lake an incredible setting? Just the name! Years ago I wrote a short story with the character who is now the villain, the monster of the novel. His name is Sean. I set the short story on Ghost Lake.

Many people have reason to be fearful of Ghost Lake. Death. Drowning. Life abruptly interrupted.

Ghost Lake doesn’t scare Athena or me.

Trust. Safety. Love. All these things grow here.

Sound

This morning I rise early enough to witness the “big colour show” before sunrise. Orange and yellow deepen and fade, transformed by growing light into gold, gold, gold reflected on the underside of fluffy clouds. The ravens call out at sunrise. The woodpeckers search for food; their percussive-beaking sounds mechanical, man-made. When were humans first inspired by the woodpeckers’ amazing skill? What did humans create from the woodpecker inspiration: what tool to use, what sound to communicate, what art to honour?

I walk with Athena to the little park. She fetches sticks, sniffs the park for signs of friends, of rabbits, of birds. I wander the familiar lawn, the pocket park of trees and bushes. My body is a bit stiff from days of paddling followed by days of driving, and, now, treading water inside the house. I stop and stretch, working on each joint, each big muscle group. My right ankle needs attention, my low back, my right shoulder. I turn on a podcast.

Bjork talks about field recordings on a MailChimp sponsored podcast. The sound of ice breaking. The sound of a volcano rumbling. The sound of a choir of voices shaped by a director with values of rigour and love. They talk about 360 degree sound– placing microphones above each individual singer and positioning larger microphones at the top of an umbrella-of-sound above them. Immersion in sound experience. My heart expands: I identify joy.

I stumble further in the podcast realm to listen to MC Taylor of Hiss Golden Messenger. They have produced a work titled “Ceremony.” Ceremony is the morning sound/song story of Dad and young Daughter: waking up, breakfast, packing a lunch, driving to school. Chatting happens. A lovely melody. An experience of love and care. My stomach carries unease, grief.

I noticed symphonies of sound this summer. I listened for the striations of sound in rapids, in evening song, in middle-of-the-night callings between loons and owls. Arrivals and departures. Over and over.

Grief flowed through me. I don’t know why. Same for fear. Same for sadness. I tried hard not to identify with it, not to create a story to explain why I felt these emotions. I resisted, but noticed, the urge to relate so much with these emotions as to become them.

Love flows through me. I don’t know why. I resist the urge to identify with it. I am an expression of love. Is that right? I wonder… If I am an expression of love, I am also an expression of fear, grief, sadness, anger, joy, longing. What evidence do I have to support this thinking? What is my bodily experience?

More questions. More walking. More sunrises.

Sound, emotion; each arrives and departs. The gifts of aliveness.

The Way to Start a Day

The Way to Start a Day

I rise this morning with the sun. Athena, the much-loved-puppo, stays in bed for awhile and then joins me in the office.

I warm my hands with a mug of hot lemon water, my low back with a heating pad. Such luxuries. Soon, though, hot drinks easily made and electricity at my fingertips will seem common. I may take them for granted. Or maybe not.

Experiments help to keep gratitude alive, to keep life flowing. Is this statement true? If so, how true? If so, for whom? The experimenter? The listener of the experimenter’s story?

In October 2020 I began a grand (as I defined it) experiment- to wake up before the sunrise, walk to one of a few nearby bluffs and to watch the sun rise.

I liked and did not like my experiment. I found it meaningful and not-at-all-worthy. I experienced joy and misery. Eventually, my likes and dislikes, my need for meaning, fell away. I went to watch the sun rise and I felt still. Stillness, as if the sun and me and the wind and the trees and the birds were all witnessing the beginning of a day for this part of the world together.

Soon after the year was up, (and some summer days when sun rise happened before 5 a.m.) I stopped the daily attending to the sun rise and moved on to Other Ways to Start a Day. I have experimented with various coffee rituals, reading poetry, writing morning pages (a practice inspired by Julia Cameron), meditating, greeting the morning through a listing of beings I love, followed by the heartfelt phrase, Good Morning.

My experiments have often been motivated by a desire to “get something correct”, to understand something, to inspire myself towards more deeply felt experiences, to improve my writing. The more experiments I do, the more I find myself delighted by noticing the changes between one attempt and the next.

Today, I read a short story by Haruki Murakami- Cream, from his collection First Person Singular translated from Japanese by Philip Gabriel. In this, the first story of the collection, a narrator describes an experience as an 18 year old– when he encountered an old man in an unfamiliar park under an unfamiliar arbor. (A liminal space?)

The old man says, “In French, they have an expression: creme de la creme. Do you know it?”

The cream, he explains, is the best of the best. “The most important essence of life– that’s the creme de la creme. Get it? The rest is just boring and worthless.”

I wonder if experiments, observing and testing the experiences of being alive, show me the cream of life? Produce the cream of life?

Ponderings today:

• Do experiments, grand or small, frame a piece of experience?

• Are experiments defined by noticing and documenting?

• What experiments are also acts of creation?

• Does one person’s experiment inspire another’s?

• What is the etymology of the word experiment?

  • experiment (n.)

    mid-14c., "action of observing or testing; an observation, test, or trial;" also "piece of evidence or empirical proof; feat of magic or sorcery," from Old French esperment "practical knowledge, cunning; enchantment, magic spell; trial, proof, example; lesson, sign, indication

• What is the etymology of the word experience?

  • late 14c., "observation as the source of knowledge; actual observation; an event which has affected one," from Old French esperience "experiment, proof, experience" (13c.), from Latin experientia "a trial, proof, experiment; knowledge gained by repeated trials,"

This is the way I started a day (September 15, 2022): warmed inside and out, reading a short story, walking under the sun mid-morning at the park with Athena, listening to the trees, watching the pickle-ball players, grounding my feet into the earth, finding a centre, letting go of thoughts and expectations, returning home to write- about what or for whom I did not know.

Resources I’ve found useful:

Extraordinary Routines is labour of love by writer Madeleine Dore exploring how people cope with the ebb and flow of daily life.

The Way to Start A Day, picture book by Byrd Baylor. Some people say there is a new sun every day, and that it begins its life at dawn and lives for one day only. They say you have to welcome it.

From cavemen, to the Aztecs, to the ancient Egyptians, Baylor Bird describes the ways that people throughout history and the world celebrated the dawn. By the end you may be inspired to create your own song for the sunrise.

Copyrighted image from The Way to Start A Day. Screenshot from Amazon.ca Illustrations by Peter Parnall.

We are here.

I rise with the sun today.

Move slowly. Stretch gently. Talk quietly.

Carrying words and songs, we returned to Calgary last night.

This morning, the house braves the evidence of our journey, the markings of an epic tale.

It’s a real mess. Piles of essentials and non-essentials we squeezed into the Subaru: sleeping bags and inflatable mattresses, clothing for car travel, canoe travel and the outside world; plastic zip bags labelled with the names of our dehydrated-from-home dinners: thai curry, yellow curry, spaghetti, mexican.

Powdered oat milk. Powdered coffee. Powdered peanut butter. Cravings worthy of twenty-plus portages.

Two bags of art tools and materials: an audio recorder, paper, fabric, beads, thread, watercoulours. Also, memory-objects of my family (stones, bracelets, a small wooden carved owl, books, a poem copied from John O’Donohue.) All the kids are represented by an object, my mom, sister, brother, friends old and new: I brought them with me to help me keep my promise: create, moment-by-moment, through love. I call my summer process: Experimental Documentation of Experiences. The gathering before the telling.

This is a tale of warriors and brave knights, modern and ancient. I smile at the feeling of one story ending and another starting. What calm. What wonder. What peace.

I didn’t know what to expect.

I’d been asked to document the journey.

“I’m wondering if you’d contribute a piece to the Danger or Not-Danger theme…” The invitation came days before leaving. The knot in the thread I pulled through the past seven weeks came from the publisher of a forth-coming compendium I describe as: Life Experiments, inspirations and invitations.

Danger or not-Danger. I sensed danger before I left. I dreamed, over and over, of our canoe tipping in high wind and tall waves. I dreamed of Athena swimming, terrified. Of me trying to help her, terrified. Of not being able to find Tom. My dreams, it turns out, were not prophetic. At least not of this trip. We didn’t tip. Other things happened. Painful things. Worrying things. One day we got lost in the land of the beaver and had to muck our way through it. Lilies bloomed around us, until we accidentally stepped on them, trying to keep ourselves from sinking in past our knees. Before we turned around, re-paddled our route, lifted the canoe, again, over two beaver dams and barely a trickle of water, I contemplated how things might get worse. I had dozens of possibilities. None of them happened.

This morning I sit in my writing chair, an antique-Ikea Poang chair. My back rests against a sheep skin. I pick up Mark Nepo’s book, The Book of Awakening:

September 15

Questions put to the sick- III

“When was the last time you told your story?”- Question put to the sick by a Native American Medicine Man.

Mark Nepo writes about fear, open hearts, wisdom, and pain– 365 experiments in experiencing the depth and vastness of aliveness. He compares his invitations to glistening rocks he’s picked up along the way. Glistenings. Experiences. I’ve heard something like this before.

“Glimmers. You’re trying to be aware of glimmers,” Cheryl Strayed said in a workshop I took at the Esalen Institute in 2016. The day before, memoirist and essayist Pam Houston, invited the writers in our small group to make a list; any list, any title. My list was Things I Would Like to Forgive. My final line, as I remember it, was “The Fear.”

Here is Nepo’s first paragraph of the September 15 entry: Questions put to the sick- III

“When was the last time you told your story?”- Question put to the sick by a Native American Medicine Man.

Stories are like little time capsules. They carry pieces of truth and meaning over time. Whether it is a myth from 4,000 years ago or your own untold story from childhood, the meaning waits like a dry ration; only by the next telling does it enlarge and soften to become edible. It is the sweat and tears of the telling that bring the meaning out of its sleep as if no time has passed. It is the telling that heals.

I’d been telling and retelling stories from my life during our whole journey, especially in the waters near Michigan where my ancestors lived- my mother’s father’s people- the Sauve’s, long ago associated with healing. I practiced forgiveness. Letting go of the narrative. Living from one experience to the next. Letting go. I was often afraid, agitated, confused. I also felt great joy and aliveness. I remember both at the same time.

A day is unfolding right now.

I welcome stillness. I sit, with feeling. Forgiveness. Healing.

Athena noses me, walk? walk? walk?

“Yes. yes. yes.” We walk in morning air, more clear than at our arrival last night. Our Tuesday, September 14, 2022, started in a fully-clouded sky (Moosimin, Saskatchewan) and ended in Forest-Fire-Filtered-Orange sun. Now, gold sun highlights the deep-copper tones of Athena’s black fur, so dark she lit up the forests at night with a bobbing brilliant-LED light on her collar. She, so dark, we startle at the double-vision of her shadow in the light of the full moon. In the day, she is much easier to see.

A block from our house, just across 6th street, we run in the dew-wet grass, a long rectangle bordered by low berms, designed to be flooded in the winter for an ice rink. We play hide and seek in the pocket forest planted along the north and east sides of the tennis courts’ fence: trees stand tall, bushes nestle close and reach farther each year, groundcover creeps into grass. Athena waits at the base of one of the trees– the-tree-of-many-trunks-as-if-growing-from-the-palm-of-a-hand. Athena, guest-goddess-apprentice of grasslands, forests, lakes and rivers from here to Northern Ontario, waits. Her head rests deceptively on her front legs. She tracks my movements.

“Where’s A-thee-na? Where’s A-theee-na?” I call.

I move closer. I look high and wide. I wander away and back again. Athena tracks and tracks.

Finally, finally, I stop. I lift my hands in the air. I look at her. She looks at me.

“There she is!” I shout.

Athena hears. She rockets away, her feet a-blur. I am joy-in-the-moment, exactly where I need to be and what I need to be doing.

As if a spring inside Athena tightens and releases, happy love collects and expands, energy builds and propels in each of her long strides. She defies gravity.

We both fly when she runs. I feel the lift and descent of each bounded stride and the g-force-pull of rounding the circle. The resistance. The flow.

When Athena tires a bit, she sniffs the forest for signs of rabbit and squirrel and dog while I sink my feet into the ground and circle my body in a spiral, settling when I sense a center. From here, I exhale long and attend to the feeling of gravitational force.

Everything-here-now is comfortable and familiar. I have not known comfort-like-this for weeks and weeks of travel. I have known resistance. Fear. Pain. Athena, too, suffered. A dew claw injury meant she was under watchful observation for a few weeks. A day of letting her run and play resulted in a re-injury and an experiment with the healing potential of comfrey.

This is the beginning of the telling of a story of Danger or Not danger.

Warriors and knight in the canoe.

The Universe is Expanding

Monday Night Friends Circle– a group of friends asked me to lead them in a writing circle for a few weeks: Sometimes we share what we’ve written between weeks. Last night we wrote during our circle: three segments of ten minutes each on three different topics:

1. Write for 10 minutes about everything you know and can say for certain about the Universe, God and the Solar System.

2. Write for 10 minutes everything you can say for sure is true about relations between human beings.

3. Write for 10 minutes everything you can say for sure is true about yourself.

The humans are as stunning and brilliant and as interesting as their writing. I believe their experiences are preparing them. They’re so close to life and ideas about life in their 20s. Their story is immediate; they have lived outside their first family for a few years. At 55 I’m reflective about a long story. I remember my 20s as a time when I was curious and I believed change and education could save me.

I still feel young inside but I no longer believe I need saving. There is nothing to save me from…I am changing. I am alive.

The universe is expanding.

My son’s girlfriend is an astrophysicist. She studies exoplanets. She spots them. Uses data points to create models of expected trajectories, system qualities. So far no one has found a planet like ours or a solar system like ours. All the masters candidates in her department have one burning-like-peat-moss question: Where are the aliens?

Her name is Maggie. I love her. I’ve known her for four days. We had coffee together, in the space between sleep and movement. We walked along the ocean. The conversation was inspiring. I love her. I expect I will know Maggie for a very long time. As a pre-teen, I thought about changing my name to Maggie. Often the new kid at school, I planned the story I would tell about who I was and what I’d done before I arrived. Maggie and Mar’ce seemed so close in sound. I was pretty sure I could get away with it. I wrote the name Maggie over and over on the inside flap of my spiral bound. M. a. g. g. i. e… I loved the feel of the pen dropping below the center line on each g and the swing back up. Right in the middle of the name.: down. up. down. up. I wonder if Maggie’s love of all things physics stems from the gs in her name.

Humans are wired for love or by love. Humans are a circuit or a circle of love.

In bible school when I was 8 we sang,

May the Circle Be unbroken,

by and by, Lord, by and by.

Here I am in my circuit of love, my circle. Sometimes I can feel the heart cycle through my organism, heart muscle expanding and expanding, like bigger and bigger breaths. I know fear, too. The great contraction: the muscle clench, the jaw set, the avoidant eyes. I’ve known my mother’s eyes of love in many contexts; when I needed her, when she was afraid for me, when she did not want to say good-bye.

I love a full expression of love. I notice love when it is vibrant and when it is dim.

The night sky is a good example. Say all the planets and stars are expressions of love. Say nighttime walks sparkle you with love, and on full moon nights, bathe you in love.

Imagine love expands the universe.

Say my love, your love, our love is creating a solar system right now.

What if Maggie discovers an exoplanet and names it after love? Will wars lessen? Will people hug each other more? Will we learn to share better?

Oh, life. I love you.

The Truth about Beauty. Or Ugly. Or nothing.

Good Bones

Maggie Smith

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.

Thank you Maggie Smith for acknowledging the reality of our lives. I’ve been battling thoughts of one side vs. the other in the last months. I’ve been battling denial. I’ve been battling how I’ve harmed and how I’ve been harmed. I’ve been battling. I notice I want the impossible: certainty, stability, unwavering truths, un-competing truths. It’s been tough to forgive myself for how I’ve felt I’ve failed. I’ve failed to find the comfortable response. Instead, the inconvenient truth stands before me.

None of this will ever be easy or not messy. Love is the way. Love is often used as a weapon.

The body, though, the body knows. It’s the only way of holding truths against each other and walking forward anyway. If we cannot choose between one truth or the other, can we try to walk forward anyway?

This may sound confused. I may be confused. A truth. I’m willing to not be an expert. I’m willing to be confused.

I have no authority on this matter. Just a desire to be in the conversation.

Thank you for reading.

M

Letter: Promise to Self

Letters show the addressing mind. The I’ve-got-something-I-believe-is-worth-expressing mind. Letters can be helpful to a reader, like you, even if they aren’t addressed to you. They have been very helpful to me, the writer, to see the pathways I’ve taken, to see how the same thoughts arise, again and again. To love myself, anyway.

I’ve been writing letters since I was young. I don’t send many of them. I repeatedly and strategically read others. Some, I tossed when I couldn’t face the shame of what I confessed or how I behaved or to whom I spoke. Some, I burn. This one, I make public because it shows a mind, my mind, after an intense week of meditation with Jon Kabat-Zinn and Saki Santorelli in March 2012 at Mt. Madonna Retreat Center in California. I believe in the value of meditation. So…I’d like be transparent about my experience of it.

In 2012 I’d never been on a meditation retreat. I’d never meditated with another being other than my cat- Aurora. My therapist reassured me I could meditate on this guided retreat when I wondered if it would be a good idea for my future self. In fact, it was a good idea for my present self, though painful most times and joyous at times. One hundred and seventy people registered. I sat on the floor stage right, near windows looking out into the mountains. I watched the sun rise each morning. We meditated often and for varying lengths of time. We gathered for meals though I remember few conversations. I shared a room with a human from Florida but I don’t remember any details of her, other than she wanted to meditate to feel better.

I wanted my life to change. It was going to change anyway, I think now, but back then I wanted to find some gentle and kind way of approaching the tumult in my mind, my body.

Near the end of the retreat, we subjected ourselves to complete silence for 72 hours which included not making eye contact. I felt so depressed. I only wanted to sleep. On the cushion I fought to stay present. I experienced, though, a profound moment: one might say it was an imagination, a vision, a lucid dream, a revelation.

I saw a brick wall between my self and my younger self. The wall was beginning to crumble. I could look through a small hole. I saw my younger self on the other side. She was waiting for me. Had always been waiting for me. I understood all my life, she could hear me through the brick wall. Sometimes I could hear her. Her eyes looked up at me and I started chipping away at the bricks, scrambling at them with my fingernails. My body, finally, surrendered. If you’ve ever physically surrendered, perhaps you’ll recognize the feeling of crack, break, stretch, pull, push, open, open, open. So much movement, the exhaustion is immediate. As is the relief. Joy shows up.

Here is my letter, unsent, to Saki Santorelli, dated March 5, 2012

To Saki,

I worked for the first couple of days of the retreat to articulate what I felt, what came up for me but I stopped striving after awhile.

The request was to report on the direct experience of a particular meditation after all, not to distill my story into an inadequate expression in less than five minutes.

And when I stopped striving, not only could I turn my attention to what was present, reporting it seemed so unnecessary.

Many people reported insights I shared but it's been in my reflective time since then that I know what I would have said if I were in the group:

I realized that I am all here. I am not separate beings inside this brain.

I realized that I didn't need to look for reassurance from everyone else that I was okay because like a mother holding her daughter, I could hold myself.

I realized that my community feeling only related to a few people, not everyone in the room, because I didn't know them well enough. However, I was not scared of them, which is movement for me. : )

And I realized that the flashbacks and the fear and the sense of loneliness is better and the more I pay attention, the better it will get.

I know you are a very busy person and many people tell you often that your work, your passion, your being, inspires them and gives them hope. I know my voice is one among many.

And I have to admit then, that I am writing this mostly for myself. Here is something noble- I have said to my teacher- I learned, I have learned, I am learning. And by writing this down it becomes a promise to myself. To keep learning. To acknowledge the significance. And it is so sacred I could not adequately express it.

I'm still not sure that I have...

M

Listening.

Writing Circle invitation for Tuesday, November 23, 2021 @9:30 a.m. : I am listening.

My response:

I am listening. I listen. I listen for the sound of pleasant things. I strain for it. I want pleasant. When Athena whines in her puppy dreams, I worry- does she dream of pain, of the time we collided while running, the time I yanked on her collar to keep her away from danger. I listen for the failures. I hear the whispers of you’re not good enough. I listen for the yanks I have felt– the pulling and pushing when all I wanted was to flow, in life.

I listen to the tumult in my heart of a woman who is afraid she is not enough, she does not have enough, she does not do enough. I listen because I want to listen to the pleasant. But first, it seems, I want to listen to the reality. I want to listen and not shy away. I want to listen and hold with love. I want to listen to it all. The full catastrophe. I want to love it all.

The sound of construction equipment beeps and beeps. Reshaping the land. Moving the rocks. Our grandmothers and grandfathers- reshaping them, repositioning them, uprooting them, building on top of them.

Homes. Places where being will live, will make love, will argue and fight, will laugh and laugh. Will adorn and decorate. Will celebrate. Will grieve. Beings will gather.

I listen for the white noise sound underneath all of my listening. I hear it in meditation, often, and I listen. I listen to the flow of sound, never gone, of life expressed– vibration of wave form, electrical and light. I listen for the breath to ease the tension in my neck, my shoulders.

I listen to my doubt.

I listen to my loving heart.

I listen to the cries of the land, here, asking for gratitude, asking for reciprocity, asking to be noticed and held– as we are noticed and held.

I listen.

I vow to walk to love in my feet later today. A small action, I hear these words in my head. And it will help.

I listen to my desire to help. To love.

Athena

Athena log October 22, 2021*

Today she digs in the garden, still. Though Tom does not want this, at least it is less than before.

At night and in the late afternoon she plays zig zag, high speed, intense circle dances around Tom. She doesn’t nip, she corrals. And then he pulls out the blue tug rope and swings it in the air, catching it. Releasing it. She watches him and thinks, Oh, what fun he’s having.

But she is eating another wood chip and he resorts to sliding the rope along the ground in long arcs in front of her. Like a mouse sprinting by. When she is bigger, will rabbits be less intimidating?

She has full access to the backyard and it is perfect for her and Tom. Tom’s loves all together in one place. Magical in that way. The way of: who you meet and when you meet them. The way of: how your stories merge and follow a new path. Then, you make a turn, as if you’re walking along a web and you come to a knot where one life intersects the next. And enter: Athena.

“Oh, Athena, stop digging there. I just filled it. I just filled that hole. I’m gonna fill it with rocks.” Tom says. He works.

“She’s digging while I’m filling the hole.”

• recorded on October 22, 2021, posted today, a day when I am out on my own, writing, at Ghost Lake. Athena is in the city. I miss her. I also miss my grandchildren, my daughter, my my sons in Montreal and Vancouver and Edmonton. I write about them, too. I don’t post those writings, though. : )

The Arbornauts. A novel in process.

Hello All,

• Yes, The Arbornauts is the title of my novel.

• Yes, an Arbornaut could be defined in many ways.

• Yes, the way I define an Arbornaut is: a willing traveler of liminal spaces (such as walking under an arbor, entering a new world).

• Yes, I am identifying beings who I recognize have Arbornaut qualities.

• Yes, I’m having fun with writing and life!

For the curious, here is a draft of the novel’s beginning:

Perhaps more suffering still lies ahead for her, or perhaps less. Whatever happens,

Tara no longer has to worry if or when or how her mother will die. From here forward,

she is free– downright, out-and-out. Free to go to university without a student loan.

Enough cash for a PHD. Plus, a new car. New gear: lightweight tent, a waterproof

pack, a down sleeping bag. GPS navigation. Solo canoe, carbon fibre. So lightweight

she can carry it with one arm. She can travel up north into the wilderness. She doesn’t

know how long it will take her to adjust to her freedom. Or what she’s going to do with

this ache in her chest. Unrelenting ache. She is healthy. Mostly. Somewhat. And a GPA

she can legitimately brag about. Any university will accept her. She would like to go to

MIT to study with David Kaiser. Or Columbia with Brian Greene.

The ache should be an obstacle she can overcome. She is a productive human.

Capable of holding math elegantly– she accepts every invite to observe intersecting

matrices. Also, curious about and risk-ready for quantum string theory, quantum

mechanics, quantum anything. She would like to know the origins of the universe, the

story of how life is.

Her dad is her rock. He is stable, logical, and rational. He believes she will save

the world.

“Okay Greta,” he jokes when she dives deep into string theory.

Junior Forest Wardens, he said, gave her friends she could relate to– they’re all

working at the Tim Horton’s kids’ camp, a job she turned down due to her mother. Due

to her ache.

That’s how it is. The marrow in her bones. The pulse of her heart. That’s how it

is.

Writing Circle: Fall Session 2020: Writing Invitation and My response.

Writing Invitation: Choose a body part. Choose an inorganic object. Put them together in a piece of writing. You have 10 minutes. Go!

Here is my response (first draft, unedited): Body Part, Kidney. Inorganic Object, Earring.

The doctor alerted me to the problem- a kidney with an earring stuck in it. A big gold hoop of an earring, six inches in diameter, like the kind they wore in the 70’s when hair was straight and flow-y and the hoop earrings provided contrast– a version of hip before hip was hipster.

Why? How? I asked him as he pointed to the x-ray on the white light screen.

“Science is sometimes more art than we know.”

“It’s an art object.”

“Well, yes,” he said. “notice the aesthetics of the kidney– the small mass, about the size of a child’s closed fist. And then this hoop- a hoop of protection.”

“Why hasn’t my body rejected it?”

He shrugged.

I guess the body always remembers. I guess the body knows what it needs. But an inorganic object? An object of metal doesn’t belong in my bio-system.

***

It seems my body is adapting to this hoop, this gold– I’m assuming it’s 14 karat, and that somehow my kidney is filtering the toxins, the pain in my life, and finding the raw materials for some kind of complicated alchemy.

I’ve been struggling lately. The kid has me worried. My son hasn’t called me for a month. Then, when we do connect he tells me his depressed, he’s losing days to worry. I can see the downward spiral about to happen. I say, you need help. Come home. But at the same time I want him to figure it out, write a story of overcoming obstacles, creating the change he wants to see in his life.

***

I noticed some pain after the last phone call– pain in my low back, right. A feeling of something poking out. A sharp end. I’ve been wandering, walking the ridges of the city, looking down. What might my life be like if I don’t long for things, like a son who is, like, really okay?

What if I believed it were already true?