Here are some zero-context snippets from my journal since my last post:
How do you get your momentum to stay steady when you’re brought up short by various limitations?
How do things get lost in a house?
There is life offscreen.
I will be my biggest experiment.
My sinuses: In rebellion.
Thinking about: The pressure we’re under to publicly be somewhere, do something, pay attention, participate, opine, pontificate, defend, create, maximize, optimize, and otherwise be present and on at all times. Or else. (or else… what?)
I think of my grandmother and how close she was to the beach and plants year-round (and maybe that’s what it is for me - there is year-round life there) (sun, energy) and I think… “I want that.”
Can a person be grateful and grossed out at the same time?
Why do I always revert to cleaning?
Listening to Low’s first record while making dinner and watching the moon rise… it felt so lonely. [RIP Mimi Parker. Thank you.]
The BYI household has always been mostly DIY, use-what’s-available guest-havers, concerned more with the food and music and combinations of people than expending a ton of energy on artifice.* 909 has been a place of mostly small gatherings** since we bought it in 2005. It is not a large dwelling, and as such cannot accommodate more than a few people inside.*** Since we’re in the lower Midwest, outdoor gathering was (and still is) planned with the understanding that Mother Nature does, indeed, bat last.
Anyway, I’d been thinking a bit this fall about houses and homes and households and the energies released when people come over. Perhaps it’s in the air. From my journal the next day…
It’s Saturday, the best day of the week without a doubt… whilst out collecting coffee and cinnamon rolls and celery and salad mix, I heard an episode of Splendid Table, or part of one, about hospitality, hosting, “dream weaving”, experience, care, thoughtfulness, attention (both personal and to larger details), relationship cultivation, meaning. It was really interesting to listen to, even with its earnest bougie-ness. It didn’t matter. It ties in nicely with what I was musing on yesterday - letting people in, giving them space, caring about them, providing respite and comfort. I mean, we all want that. And I think we provide that for others, sometimes, while not necessarily providing it for ourselves - taking care of the environment, taking the time to take care. As I was listening to the first segment of the show, where the host and guests were talking about breakfast cereals and home-canned tomato paste, I was filled with a deep…longing, or something, for a more food-oriented existence, a return to that. I keep returning to themes of home, spending time, caretaking, etc.
Add to that a conversation with dear friends about this recent performance and its similar-ish themes, my absolute respect and gratitude for young people, and the satisfaction of knowing next year’s garlic is in the ground, planted under a full moon and blanketed by a foot of straw… and I feel like I might be coming alive again.
One reason for my my writing pause has been the necessary redirection of my mental energies to quotidian concerns (so… day job). Another reason: overwhelming number of topics worth addressing → pressure I put on myself to coherently write about them all → resulting paralysis → consumption of more, often useless, information → repeat the cycle.
I’m working on this, right now, right here in front of you. I don’t want to be online as much as I am, but I’m having a hard time quitting it, or at least being its boss. How about you?
LOTSA (LISA’S OPEN TABS, SAVED AGGRESSIVELY):
Pondering massive incoming electricity price hikes—not just here, but everywhere
Dealing with fridge/freezer food after a power outage
This tarot deck is marvelous
Small-scale building preservation in Savannah, GA
This gentleman does provocative work in the future of higher education
*Backyard Industry as practice!
**Notable exceptions include a number of neighborhood+ dessert potlucks,and several years’ worth of summer cornhole tournaments between 2009-2017
***I’d love to hear from others who live in small—like 1200 square feet or less—old houses
Every day that starts with a post from Lisa BK is a good one! Keep writing (and let up some of the pressure on yourself to comment on/synthesize everything in this crazy old world). Just hearing about what's happening in your corner (guests around the table, garlic in the garden) is balm for the soul.