*I’m changing my publication schedule. Please see my note at the bottom of this newsletter for all the details.
Poetry
Enlightenment Ten years ago I couldn't stop thinking, feeling, Just anger, just rage, until this moment. A crow laughs, the dust clears, I hold the arhat's fruit. Spotted sunlight in Zhaoyang Palace, a pale face chanting. - Ikkyu (translated by Sarah Messer and Kidder Smith in Having Once Paused: Poems of Zen Master Ikkyu (1394-1481)
Journeying
I spent the last few days in a 10X10 cabin in the woods and rolling fields of northeastern Kansas. The cabin had everything I needed except running water. For that, I took a ten minute walk through the woods to the main retreat house and plumbing. In the last ten days or so, the midwest has experienced both extreme heat and flooding, so my several times a day walks were steamy. I didn’t necessarily have a focus for this retreat. I knew I wanted to think about my writing and rest; beyond that, I wanted to listen and watch for what surfaced. Here’s an assortment of arisings, banal, silly, possibly profound, that I recorded during my days of pause.
A text exchange between my partner and I after my arrival:
“Just had an unfortunate conversation about hell with the guy who works here . . . but generally lovely space.”
My partner, “Ah, O.k. Not sure how a conversation about hell naturally springs up, but you do have a knack for eliciting people’s thoughts about things . . . I meant that as a compliment or a recognition of a gift.”
I imagined arriving at this retreat and then spending days bent, like a female version of Rodin’s The Thinker, in deep concentration about the nature and course of my writing. Today is my first full day here, and I have determined, in just under a minute, the changes I need to make in my posting schedule and the writing that will happen as a result. Now what?
from The Creative Act by Rick Rubin, the word, “papancha,” a Buddhist idea that means “preponderance of thoughts” or “the mind’s tendency to respond to our experiences with an avalanche of mental chatter.” Yes, and the antidote is acceptance, and, I’m learning, the practice of silence.
I am revisiting my relationship with humidity as I don’t have much opportunity to cultivate that in Omaha. Turns out, I’ve missed it. Thick air is good for the skin after all, and holds the body like a very attentive lover.
The trees embrace me here. Their green attention fills each window. They hold this quiet shelter without extra effort. In being who they are, they impart their gifts to me. Can I also share gifts of my being in the easy way of trees?
This food tastes so good; maybe the lack of distraction enhances the flavor. For lunch, a Moroccan inspired rice dish: rice cooked in broth, halved almonds, raisins, onions, a bunch of spices (definitely turmeric), chickpeas, did it also include a bell pepper?
O.k., so all that humid attention can be a little oppressive.
I’ve spent a lot of time with my unclothed body. The weather is hot. I am hot. The cabin is remote. When I’m in it, I don’t bother with clothes. I notice for the umpteenth time my belly, which, after housing big babies that did not always come one at a time, has the feel and look of bread dough. I remember the holiday ornaments my children made, small hands pressed into play dough, the reminder, “we were here.”
Eat peaches, and more vegetables, with better seasoning.
I don’t like ritual. It’s tedious and stressful. I feel trapped in its expression. When I perform it with others, I feel like an invisible actor in the scene from Star Wars: A New Hope when Luke, Han, and Leia are all caught in the trash compactor. 1
I do love good, inane verbal banter. This morning after breakfast, I encountered the center’s director in the hallway, cleaning. He dropped a rag as I noticed him.
“You know that’s what Beethoven died of don’t you?” he asked.
“I thought he died of lead poisoning.” (I’d watched a video about this while numbing my brain via YouTube)
“No, he died of dropsy.”
“Dropping things?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s amazing we’re still alive then.”
“For now.”
“Yeah, you never know.”
Gardening and Making/Mending
This is the summer of the moveable garden. In the last couple of months, I have spent more time out of my garden and in the great mother garden of nature than I expected. This past week that garden included woods, fields of brome grass, and a beautiful meadow of native wildflowers. It also included one deer, innumerable butterflies and dragonflies, a number of rabbits, and three juvenile raccoons. I crossed paths with these fuzzy siblings several times on my walks to and from the retreat center. Inevitably, they would hear me before I saw them and begin making a lot of nervous noise in the brush. By this time, I had located them, and they were heading rather clumsily up the nearest tree, generally clambering all over each other until they arrived about three feet above the ground. At this point, they would all turn to look at me, trying to determine if I was a significant enough threat to climb any higher. During our last meeting, one of them didn’t seem to think I was worth the effort, until a sibling looked at her pointedly, and she reluctantly climbed a few inches above ground.
I finished a sock and have technically begun on another, as you can see. This single sock fits my daughter quite well and pleases her. A second would make her even happier. During my retreat, I fell down a couple of rabbit holes. Aren’t retreats inherently rabbit holes? The first was books by John Higgs (anyone who writes about William Blake gets my attention). The other began with an email containing a dress pattern. I am not a dress person, but in hot weather, cool linen dresses with no waistbands or sleeves appeal to me. So I found myself considering all of the fabric options for this dress as well as the possibility of unfolding my sewing machine (it’s a 1953 Singer that belonged to my grandmother and fits neatly in a wooden cabinet) and beginning a project. We’ll see if my plans extend beyond humidity induced fixation.
And a Podcast
This past week, I recorded a podcast with the wonderful
. This was a first for both of us, so we were a little nervous. But Julia asked such great questions and is such a welcoming host that I managed to forget (at least some of the time) that we were recording. If you’d like to hear me talk more about thin spaces, have a listen.And, also, an Announcement
*I am shifting my posting schedule to every other week. Despite the sixty seconds it took me actually to make the decision, I have considered this change for a bit. I would like to write longer form essays, submit work for print publication as well as guest posts on Substack. I don’t have time to do that if I post here once a week. In my newsletters, I seek to translate for you my inner noticing and awareness into words with as much skill as I can muster. This takes time. Improving my writing craft also takes time. I want to do both: produce excellent work for you and continue to improve that work’s quality. So Field Notes will be on hiatus for the time being, and you will receive my regular newsletter in your inbox every other week. I want to say again how much I appreciate each of you and your contribution to this publication. I couldn’t write for so much of my life, and now I can. And you want to read my words. If I need proof of goodness, that is it. Thank you.
For a beautiful, generative take on the possibilities of ritual see the For the Wild Podcast episode “Three Black Men: on the World as Ritual.”
I just finished watching your interview with Julia and enjoyed it very much (It took me two sittings to finish). Curious; do you play piano, Emily? I see you are sitting in front of one in the interview. 🎹
I love inane verbal banter too. It reminds me of the beautiful Light in everyone. Why else would we share a silly joke about dropping rags and mortality?!