A Kind of Healing

 

"...to live the slow quiet rhythm of a day as a kind of healing"

Several years ago, I discovered May Sarton’s journals. What a blessing it has been to have them keep me company through these last few years of transition as my children have moved away, and I have gone through my own deep,unguided changes, learning to grow into a not-always-welcome solitude. She and Rilke, among others, have become cherished company in my morning readings.

This is the fourth of Sarton's journals that have kept me company over the last four years. I read and loved Journal of a Solitude first, and since then I've been trying to read them in the order she wrote them. Sometimes, she annoys me, but for the most part, I find her voice a welcome and recognizable comfort in my own struggles.

If you're looking for drama and engaging happenings, these journals are not for you. If you're looking to inhabit the slow, thoughtful world of an introvert who finds more comfort in plants than in people, I highly recommend them.

Sweet Irony

 

"Everyone knows the profit to be reaped from the useful,

but nobody knows the benefit to be gained from the useless."

When I first began reading Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk, I admit, I was not in the best frame of mind. Between the end of Daylight Savings Time and Winter Solstice, I struggle to console myself even for my own existence, so naturally, I'd choose a book with that kind of title as a pick-me-up.

For much of the first part of the book, I read with one eye on the page. It just wasn't catching me. I couldn't decide if I even liked the narrator. I found her slippery and not easily pegged. Don't we all like easily pegged? We don't have to think. I get impatient with astrologists, and she is definitely into astrology, so at first, I was dismissing her often based on my own bias. 

By page 200, I read raptly, with no breaks.

If I've learned anything in my life, it is that keeping an open mind should always be my go-to. While I still don't believe in astrology, I do believe in many of the ideas this narrator espouses. 

I love that she assigns descriptive nicknames to humans in lieu of  given names for most people. I find it interesting that she (or I guess the author) capitalizes the word Animal and the Types of Animals, but not of plants. Do I know for sure this is consistent? No, but I did often notice it. So she herself is making the kinds of distinctions she asserts we have no right to make.

I can't say much about the plot without spoilers. People die. Animals die. The point is that all killing is wrong. Is it?

Our narrator is far from perfect. She's neither always right nor always wrong. In her choices and in her actions, she embodies the imperfect hypocrisy she so rightly disdains. 

When Reality is Too True

 

My Nightmare
9/15/2021

For almost two months now, I have been unable to read fiction. I've tried repeatedly. I just can't focus. This has never happened to me. Who am I if I can't read novels? 

I have no memory of the beginning of my obsession with fiction. My first specific memory of reading on my own was devouring the Nancy Drew mysteries when I was 9. Forty-five years later, I do not remember ever not being able to read fiction for weeks on end. The last novel I finished was really a novella, and that was at the end of July.

Until last week, I was just suffering in shame and silence. Then I had a conversation with two other novel eaters, and both of them told me they were experiencing the same debilitation.

What is going on?

I can't speak to anyone else's experience.  For me, the state of the world today has made it almost impossible for me to devote any mental energy to anything that isn't true. The positive side of this is that I am learning a lot about other people's experiences and improving my capacity for empathy as I learn.

Unfortunately for my novel reading life, I am also learning how much of a privilege it is for me to be able to enjoy fiction, and thus how much of a privilege it is to be able to rue the loss of that enjoyment. I have a home. I have food. I have some semblance of safety. What a privilege it is for me to worry about losing my ability to lose myself in fantasy.

And yet, maybe fantasy is what keeps us going. 

What keeps us hopeful? If we lose our ability to engage in "what ifs" and "what abouts," what have we lost?  What is the value of distraction and delusion? My current nonfiction read is about that very question. Maybe I'll blog about that next week. 

An Evil Pallor / Grow Your Own Tomatoes

 

Today, as I was hanging my clothes out to dry, I noticed an evil pallor in the sky. Amidst sustained heat I had never felt before, I realized it was past time for me to speak up about what is happening to our planet.

I grew up with grandparents who gardened and with a mother who canned and froze the fruits of those gardens. Until my mid 40s, I never had to buy commercially canned green beans, and I had never been without fresh corn or fresh tomatoes in the summer until the last of my grandparents died.

The first time I learned to can tomatoes, I was in labor with my first child. At the time, I had no idea I was in labor. My mother had died a few months earlier, and I was in a trauma fog. I felt too tired to move, but in my family, a female feeling tired has never been a good excuse to lie down, so I canned tomatoes until I couldn't. Even then I felt guilty about leaving Nanny Byrd to finish alone. Ironically, the child I was laboring over has always hated tomatoes. 

Now that I have your attention, here is what I really want to say:

Grass lawns are ecological dead zones, and that's not even taking into account the fossil fuels it takes to maintain them. Find a way to cut the area of grass you mow in half. Planting native trees and shrubs is the best solution. I am still working on this. It's not easy.

Plastics are death. Work hard to stop using them. This requires constant vigilance. If you're using a Keurig, just stop. A coffee maker with a reusable filter is not that much more difficult. I do understand the difficulty of getting away from some plastics. I've tried to endure the hell of a bamboo toothbrush on my jowls. I just can't. But at least try to be aware of plastics when you are buying things, and ask yourself, does this come in a non-plastic version? I recently changed my vinegar purchase after asking myself this question and plan to work now toward figuring out how to make my own mayonnaise. (Recipes welcome)

Compost!!!  This is so easy. Just google it. Composting and recycling cut my garbage output by more than half.

Stop using plastic grocery bags. This one wears me out because it is so easy to fix. This is the easiest of all of these problems to address. Buy a reusable bag. It's ok if you forget once in a while. I do too. What matters most is every time you don't forget.

I'm sure I'll have more to say later, but this is what came to me today while I was mowing what's left of my lawn, right after I picked the lovely tomato in the photo. If nothing else, grow your own tomatoes. It's really not difficult, and it's so lovely to be able to step outside and pick one when you want one.