It is wonderful to read you and hear your voice again, Antonia. I've missed seeing your name in my inbox. It's taken me eight days to respond because I've been up to my elbows in alligators and have just now been able to carve out some quiet time. Of course...now I'm getting sleepy.
I read your essay, "Discarded." It is courageous and beautifully written. Thank you. I suppose one of the things that universally connects us all is that we each will lose, suffer and struggle. I am sorry that your experience was so terribly tortuous. My favorite neuroscientist and polymath, Iain McGilchrist, states that relationships are prior to self, that there can be no self except in context to relationships. From that perspective it certainly makes sense that the loss of a cherished connection can devastate the sense of self and leave one feeling dreadfully isolated and alone, as if one were, as you put it, "dissolving out of existence." Over the course of my life I have spent some time in that dreary pit of despair.
How exciting you got to hear Abraham Verghese speak in person. I am a fan of both his writing and his humanity. If you've the time and the inclination you might enjoy his recent commencement address at Harvard. It's on YouTube. Yes...THAT Harvard.
"Up to my elbows in alligators ..." There's a story there!
Thank you for reading it. It was a tough one to write (and completely different from the original essay they accepted, which focused far more on the childhood stuff, but the editor wanted the focus on the friendship and I can't say she was wrong). I am glad it's out there, though. It felt like drawing out a toxin.
Iain McGilchrist pops up in my YouTube recommendations off and on and I always mean to listen to it. And I think that's true; it's something I've read elsewhere anyway, that there is no "self" without relationship to others. I think I read it in "Finite and Infinite Games"? Maybe. We can only "human" in relationship.
I'm sorry you spent time in that pit. It's not a good place to be. I wouldn't wish it on anyone except for those who have the strength to face the shadow self and walk through the dark valley. I don't know if I've finished doing so yet, but can't say I'm fully ungrateful for the changes and insights.
Verghese was wonderful! And yes, I saw that talk. Felt very privileged having just seen him speak in our corner of nowhere. A friend of mine teaches at the community college, and she told me afterward that staff got roped into helping while he hand-signed ALL the books being given away (first 500 tickets got a free book), and she said he was the same with all of them. Generous, thoughtful, very curious about their own stories. His talk gave me heart, but hearing that he carried that authenticity through to seemingly unimportant settings gave me even more.
Perhaps to Verghese there are no unimportant settings, no unimportant people, and no unimportant stories being lived out.
And try this one on sometime when you're sitting alone by a river or staring into the nighttime sky...I've also heard McGilchrist suggest that consciousness is an "ontological primary" in the Cosmos. Maybe we're not as alone as we sometimes imagine ourselves to be.
You write so beautifully that I was utterly with you there by the clean (ish) river, thinking about relationships of my own, about mending and finding joy in tiny moments—all of it— completely caught up so that when I saw my name i was thrown for a loop. Who’s that? And then to read your words about this work I keep learning from—well I was so moved I had to go for a walk.
What can I say but thank you — for all you do. And congratulations a thousand times over for working your way through this reconfiguration of your life with grace and conversation and friendship—for doing it and then sharing it so we all can see that it is possible.
My main hope in life is to move people to walk! Thank you 🥰
I think about your work all the time! Because alongside our footsteps along the ground, there are our hands and how they relate with all the plants, water, soil. And I don't know anyone who truly moves their hands through the full relationship of living plant to worn threads. To me, there's something incredible and *alive* about that.
And thank you! We're trying. It's pretty tiring, but I imagine doing it any other way is even more tiring, not to mention harder on the kids. I keep reminding myself it can't be a bad thing for them to see that a relationship can be taken apart and reformed into something different with kindness and care, and it doesn't have to be the end of anyone's world. 🤞
You put this so well: "when worlds fall apart, those who suffer most are those who are already suffering most, those who always have suffered most." I get lost in my anger at such cruel injustice. I needed this beautifully written reminder of what can be done when there's no cure and it feels hopeless…healing. Thank you for this!
You are such a beautiful person, and I’m grateful to have met you here “on the page,” so to speak, to have traded lemons and braided sweetgrass, our worlds so far apart yet bonded somehow. Thank you for your weaving of the personal with the inscrutable — you help to clarify these weird times. I am sorry you are going through a divorce — it’s always hard but there is light real light and soon.
I was thinking about those lemons just yesterday! There's something really beautiful about being able to exchange those rich scents, lemons and sweetgrass. And I'm so grateful to know you "on the page," too, so to speak.
It is hard but I'm conscious of how much worse it could be. Trying to hang onto that! As well as the lightness (cross fingers) afterward. Thank you 💖
This is a beautiful, hope-filled piece! Thank you. Two things bonded me to this reading, and really to you: Montana and Chloe Hope. I lived 30 years of my life growing up and being shaped by Montana and I have found a most precious friend in Chloe Hope. How beautiful is that! It is Chloe, sharing to Notes a quote from your post, who led me to your newsletter! There are cycles happening on so many levels and ~ripples~ occurring in so many ways, all for the blessed good of all of us. Simply, Divine! I look forward to reading more of your work! You have a new fan!
Wendy, thank you for being here and also to Chloe for sharing this piece! I love the ripples. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, like water. Except for maybe birdsong. And that sound of the wind through larches and lodgepole pines.
Thank you so much, and may I say, in a way, welcome home! 🧡🏔️🌲
You are right about the water, birdsong, and wind through larches and lodgepole pine, Antonia! Such gifts of nature! My heart beamed when you said ‘welcome home’; oh, I do miss Montana and visits there are never long enough! So happy to have connected with you and to be getting sweet glimpses from afar!
Yes! Blessings to Chloe! She is such a glorious human gift, as well! Her writing and her love for feathered friends, and humans, are their own beautiful, miraculous ripple makers.
“To be surrounded in life with people who heal, whether rivers or relations, animals or animosities, is a kind of magic.” That gets a big Amen from me, as does everything else you’ve touched upon here. I’m so glad you linked to your Psyche piece. I’m familiar with the present offering something tonally identical to the past, and the bulk of me reacting as though I’ve time traveled back. I’m glad it set you on a path to healing some of those wounds, Nia. And I’m glad to know you a little, and to see life through your eyes ocassionally. I didn’t know how badly I need reminding of the fact that we must build and repair alongside collapse, and I thank you deeply for that, my friend.
Also, I so dearly wish I lived somewhere where teenagers would stop me and say, "Ma'am, watch this." !!
I am still tickled by being called "ma'am" every time it happens 😂
Gratitude to you for all the work you do, the reminders you give all of us of the beauty of life that cannot be separated from its endings. And for that echo of "the present offering something tonally identical to be the past, and the bulk of me reacting as though I've time traveled back" -- a somehow restful description of a disruptive experience. I'm glad to know you a little, too!
I listened out on the deck on my tablet, and for fun turned on the Merlin bird song app on my phone. The sound here this time of evening is dominated by a Robin, and I also have Crows and Gulls. But the Red Wing Blackbird, Cedar Waxwing, Starling, and Yellow Warbler were yours! (Capitalized Bird names are a nod to Chloe Hope!)
Like you, I'm blessed to live in a place where many are working to repair the commons. It feels right.
Thank you for the Psyche link, which I had missed. Every time I read there, I go looking for the comments. Oops.
And I completely missed the Cedar Waxwing! Incentive to go down more often :) I have been hearing the Sandhill Cranes almost every day except for that day. Was hoping they would come by but it wasn't meant to be this time.
Aeon used to have moderated comments for all essays, and then changed it to only some (the moderation is a lot of work, I'm sure), and Psyche I think has never had comments? I can't remember. I would have liked them on this one, to be honest. To know other people could share their experiences. Ah well.
It sounds like a platitude, but the wisdom of changing what you can can always applies. I can't stop a demented autocrat, but I can help take care of the people and land around me.
Arnold Schwarzenegger had good advice in this case. An imperfect human by a long shot, but you can't deny that he knows how to achieve a vision. His words may seem dismissive, but he is using gym talk because it's in his workout newsletter. Short version: Repair what you can. Do not let others dissuade you.
“What do we do when the president disagrees with us on environmental issues?”
My answer might surprise you, and it applies to many things in life, so I want to share it.
I told the audience that I think people should stop worrying about what the president thinks, cut the complaining, and get to work.
It is bogus politics. I know because I’ve been there before. When I was Governor, the president didn’t agree with me on the environment. I didn’t whine. We built a million solar roofs, provided incentives that helped the electric car market take off, and cut pollution by 25 percent.
We didn’t waste time complaining about what we couldn’t control — that the federal government didn’t agree with us — because there was too much work to do that we could control.
Totally agree, and I always appreciate a reminder of Arnie! He got probably permanent respect from me with the video he put out about his father after the neo-Nazi march in 2017 or thereabouts. It was one of the more important things to come out about that time, and he was honest and courageous and showed actual wisdom.
And the bits I've seen from his exercise newsletter (I don't subscribe but have read it now and then) show the same. I don't think it's dismissive; there's some hard truth in facing the reality that you can only control so much. That's what's at the heart of Viktor Frankl's insights formed in a concentration camp. It's less than dismissive -- it's really, really hard to accept that you can only control so much, and sometimes only your reactions! It's tremendously hard work to know, and then live with, what you can change versus what you can't.
Thank you, Nia. “There are so many people everywhere working to fix the wounds of the world, knowing that pain and scars will remain.” You are one of those persons engaging in repairing our shattered world. 🙏❤️
As are you, Greg. The work you have spent your life doing is mostly unseen by the rest of us, hidden care and healing of a certain kind that's needed even if most of us don't know it.
All I will say is that you're still here and so long as you're here, there's hope for healing, growth, and winter reads of our friend Frodo's adventures.
The summers I lived in Whitefish I never imagined swimming in the river. Maybe not so much the chemical pollution -- although it certainly didn't look inviting -- as (a) it just didn't get that hot that often and (b) the city beach filled the need those few times it was hot enough.
City Beach is still a wonderful place to go, and of course is the only place with sand, which is a nice change from rocks! (Though Les Mason is still our go-to.)
Even 10 years ago, less than 10, I had trouble forcing myself into the lake or river before early or mid-June, it was still so cold. But of course it gets warmer earlier now. The river's still snow-cold, but as you know it's been hot and these shallow edges are warm enough to be too warm.
It is so necessary to name the many forms of creation in face of rupture. We often talk about annihilation of old systems but never say how destabilising it would be for people who are already suffering, for people who are dealt the hard cards all their lives. Thank you for naming it here Nia, “Dismantling structures of oppression and violence requires building and repairing alongside collapse, lest we simply allow the same harms to grow in the ruins” . This is why you are my hero. ❤️
"name the many forms of creation in the face of rupture" -- I feel like you are invoking goddesses here, Swarna! And that is not surprising. Maybe that is what we need. Baba Yaga in every form she can take.
No heroes! Just all of us. Tyson Yunkaporta said that once in an interview -- stop following gurus or something like that (she says, quoting someone like he's a guru, good grief). Just all of us. Shoulder to shoulder, step by step. Doing our own small parts, even if it's just saying hello to water and asking it to carry greetings to our friends across the world.
Still you are my hero in sense that you can sense the inner resting place of things that need to be named and bring that to the forefront of consciousness. You name them. It is one of the hardest things to do - to name the shadows - both personal and collective. Once we identify them as they are, they already lose some hold over us.
The layers of deprivation and injustice that we have to deal on a daily basis is just hard to name because when we live so long with them, they kind of become a part of us, we internalize the injustices. The poor and marginalised internalize their circumstances, they somehow believe that they deserve what they are going through. It is always this way with oppression. We cannot demolish a system without completely destroying these people, even if it is a system is flared with injustice. We need to reconstruct while it is still functional.
That's exactly how I feel about you! Diving deep and fearlessly into the darkest parts of the darkest caverns and shining a light on what is there.
"We need to reconstruct while it is still functional" -- exactly exactly exactly. I think the hard part of this is knowing where to expend our energies, both individually and collectively. The more we explore those capacities within ourselves, the more constructive we can be. Maybe. I think! 🫶🏻🕯️
LOVE this essay, Antonia. Did you know the book I'm working on now is about the Maine river where I swim every summer? That scene with the boys was so resonant to me. All of it was. I'm posting this on Facebook.
P.S. Just listened to the first bit of your recording, and I LOVE the birdsong and the goose-song, and the sound of the water as you pull your feet out of it.
Jennifer! I did not know that! That's so exciting.
I was just talking with someone about American Breakdown the other day. I hope that's been going well, the distribution, promotion, response to it, etc.
And I'm glad the sound came through. I usually listen to the recording to check before I post it, so should stop worrying about whether people can hear things! The water felt lovely.
It is wonderful to read you and hear your voice again, Antonia. I've missed seeing your name in my inbox. It's taken me eight days to respond because I've been up to my elbows in alligators and have just now been able to carve out some quiet time. Of course...now I'm getting sleepy.
I read your essay, "Discarded." It is courageous and beautifully written. Thank you. I suppose one of the things that universally connects us all is that we each will lose, suffer and struggle. I am sorry that your experience was so terribly tortuous. My favorite neuroscientist and polymath, Iain McGilchrist, states that relationships are prior to self, that there can be no self except in context to relationships. From that perspective it certainly makes sense that the loss of a cherished connection can devastate the sense of self and leave one feeling dreadfully isolated and alone, as if one were, as you put it, "dissolving out of existence." Over the course of my life I have spent some time in that dreary pit of despair.
How exciting you got to hear Abraham Verghese speak in person. I am a fan of both his writing and his humanity. If you've the time and the inclination you might enjoy his recent commencement address at Harvard. It's on YouTube. Yes...THAT Harvard.
I wish you peace and healing.
"Up to my elbows in alligators ..." There's a story there!
Thank you for reading it. It was a tough one to write (and completely different from the original essay they accepted, which focused far more on the childhood stuff, but the editor wanted the focus on the friendship and I can't say she was wrong). I am glad it's out there, though. It felt like drawing out a toxin.
Iain McGilchrist pops up in my YouTube recommendations off and on and I always mean to listen to it. And I think that's true; it's something I've read elsewhere anyway, that there is no "self" without relationship to others. I think I read it in "Finite and Infinite Games"? Maybe. We can only "human" in relationship.
I'm sorry you spent time in that pit. It's not a good place to be. I wouldn't wish it on anyone except for those who have the strength to face the shadow self and walk through the dark valley. I don't know if I've finished doing so yet, but can't say I'm fully ungrateful for the changes and insights.
Verghese was wonderful! And yes, I saw that talk. Felt very privileged having just seen him speak in our corner of nowhere. A friend of mine teaches at the community college, and she told me afterward that staff got roped into helping while he hand-signed ALL the books being given away (first 500 tickets got a free book), and she said he was the same with all of them. Generous, thoughtful, very curious about their own stories. His talk gave me heart, but hearing that he carried that authenticity through to seemingly unimportant settings gave me even more.
Peace and healing to you, too, my friend.
Perhaps to Verghese there are no unimportant settings, no unimportant people, and no unimportant stories being lived out.
And try this one on sometime when you're sitting alone by a river or staring into the nighttime sky...I've also heard McGilchrist suggest that consciousness is an "ontological primary" in the Cosmos. Maybe we're not as alone as we sometimes imagine ourselves to be.
You write so beautifully that I was utterly with you there by the clean (ish) river, thinking about relationships of my own, about mending and finding joy in tiny moments—all of it— completely caught up so that when I saw my name i was thrown for a loop. Who’s that? And then to read your words about this work I keep learning from—well I was so moved I had to go for a walk.
What can I say but thank you — for all you do. And congratulations a thousand times over for working your way through this reconfiguration of your life with grace and conversation and friendship—for doing it and then sharing it so we all can see that it is possible.
Sending all the good stuff.
My main hope in life is to move people to walk! Thank you 🥰
I think about your work all the time! Because alongside our footsteps along the ground, there are our hands and how they relate with all the plants, water, soil. And I don't know anyone who truly moves their hands through the full relationship of living plant to worn threads. To me, there's something incredible and *alive* about that.
And thank you! We're trying. It's pretty tiring, but I imagine doing it any other way is even more tiring, not to mention harder on the kids. I keep reminding myself it can't be a bad thing for them to see that a relationship can be taken apart and reformed into something different with kindness and care, and it doesn't have to be the end of anyone's world. 🤞
I haven’t had much time for Substack reading but this morning it just felt right and I knew where to go. ❤️ this!
Gotta have something to talk about from the Parks Board besides the grass damage from Oktoberfest! 😅 I'm going to miss that.
Thank you, Marti. 🧡 Hope you visit those steps soon! The ones on the other end of the footbridge are going in in July.
You put this so well: "when worlds fall apart, those who suffer most are those who are already suffering most, those who always have suffered most." I get lost in my anger at such cruel injustice. I needed this beautifully written reminder of what can be done when there's no cure and it feels hopeless…healing. Thank you for this!
I get lost in it, too. Thank you for reading this and helping me remember, too, that the choices we make and how we act still matters!
You are such a beautiful person, and I’m grateful to have met you here “on the page,” so to speak, to have traded lemons and braided sweetgrass, our worlds so far apart yet bonded somehow. Thank you for your weaving of the personal with the inscrutable — you help to clarify these weird times. I am sorry you are going through a divorce — it’s always hard but there is light real light and soon.
I was thinking about those lemons just yesterday! There's something really beautiful about being able to exchange those rich scents, lemons and sweetgrass. And I'm so grateful to know you "on the page," too, so to speak.
It is hard but I'm conscious of how much worse it could be. Trying to hang onto that! As well as the lightness (cross fingers) afterward. Thank you 💖
Antonia,
This is a beautiful, hope-filled piece! Thank you. Two things bonded me to this reading, and really to you: Montana and Chloe Hope. I lived 30 years of my life growing up and being shaped by Montana and I have found a most precious friend in Chloe Hope. How beautiful is that! It is Chloe, sharing to Notes a quote from your post, who led me to your newsletter! There are cycles happening on so many levels and ~ripples~ occurring in so many ways, all for the blessed good of all of us. Simply, Divine! I look forward to reading more of your work! You have a new fan!
Many blessings and MUCH LOVE,
~Wendy💜
Wendy, thank you for being here and also to Chloe for sharing this piece! I love the ripples. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, like water. Except for maybe birdsong. And that sound of the wind through larches and lodgepole pines.
Thank you so much, and may I say, in a way, welcome home! 🧡🏔️🌲
You are right about the water, birdsong, and wind through larches and lodgepole pine, Antonia! Such gifts of nature! My heart beamed when you said ‘welcome home’; oh, I do miss Montana and visits there are never long enough! So happy to have connected with you and to be getting sweet glimpses from afar!
Yes! Blessings to Chloe! She is such a glorious human gift, as well! Her writing and her love for feathered friends, and humans, are their own beautiful, miraculous ripple makers.
Many blessings and MUCH LOVE,
~Wendy💜
There are many deaths in a life. Many births, too.
Lots of bittersweet recognition in both essays, Antonia. Carry on, fellow doula of the in-between of all things.
Heartfelt solidarity to you and with you!
“To be surrounded in life with people who heal, whether rivers or relations, animals or animosities, is a kind of magic.” That gets a big Amen from me, as does everything else you’ve touched upon here. I’m so glad you linked to your Psyche piece. I’m familiar with the present offering something tonally identical to the past, and the bulk of me reacting as though I’ve time traveled back. I’m glad it set you on a path to healing some of those wounds, Nia. And I’m glad to know you a little, and to see life through your eyes ocassionally. I didn’t know how badly I need reminding of the fact that we must build and repair alongside collapse, and I thank you deeply for that, my friend.
Also, I so dearly wish I lived somewhere where teenagers would stop me and say, "Ma'am, watch this." !!
I am still tickled by being called "ma'am" every time it happens 😂
Gratitude to you for all the work you do, the reminders you give all of us of the beauty of life that cannot be separated from its endings. And for that echo of "the present offering something tonally identical to be the past, and the bulk of me reacting as though I've time traveled back" -- a somehow restful description of a disruptive experience. I'm glad to know you a little, too!
I listened out on the deck on my tablet, and for fun turned on the Merlin bird song app on my phone. The sound here this time of evening is dominated by a Robin, and I also have Crows and Gulls. But the Red Wing Blackbird, Cedar Waxwing, Starling, and Yellow Warbler were yours! (Capitalized Bird names are a nod to Chloe Hope!)
Like you, I'm blessed to live in a place where many are working to repair the commons. It feels right.
Thank you for the Psyche link, which I had missed. Every time I read there, I go looking for the comments. Oops.
And I completely missed the Cedar Waxwing! Incentive to go down more often :) I have been hearing the Sandhill Cranes almost every day except for that day. Was hoping they would come by but it wasn't meant to be this time.
Aeon used to have moderated comments for all essays, and then changed it to only some (the moderation is a lot of work, I'm sure), and Psyche I think has never had comments? I can't remember. I would have liked them on this one, to be honest. To know other people could share their experiences. Ah well.
Just dropping back in after reading the Psyche piece to say that I see you.
Grateful for you, John 🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻
Nodding right back at you, my friend!
It sounds like a platitude, but the wisdom of changing what you can can always applies. I can't stop a demented autocrat, but I can help take care of the people and land around me.
Arnold Schwarzenegger had good advice in this case. An imperfect human by a long shot, but you can't deny that he knows how to achieve a vision. His words may seem dismissive, but he is using gym talk because it's in his workout newsletter. Short version: Repair what you can. Do not let others dissuade you.
“What do we do when the president disagrees with us on environmental issues?”
My answer might surprise you, and it applies to many things in life, so I want to share it.
I told the audience that I think people should stop worrying about what the president thinks, cut the complaining, and get to work.
It is bogus politics. I know because I’ve been there before. When I was Governor, the president didn’t agree with me on the environment. I didn’t whine. We built a million solar roofs, provided incentives that helped the electric car market take off, and cut pollution by 25 percent.
We didn’t waste time complaining about what we couldn’t control — that the federal government didn’t agree with us — because there was too much work to do that we could control.
Totally agree, and I always appreciate a reminder of Arnie! He got probably permanent respect from me with the video he put out about his father after the neo-Nazi march in 2017 or thereabouts. It was one of the more important things to come out about that time, and he was honest and courageous and showed actual wisdom.
And the bits I've seen from his exercise newsletter (I don't subscribe but have read it now and then) show the same. I don't think it's dismissive; there's some hard truth in facing the reality that you can only control so much. That's what's at the heart of Viktor Frankl's insights formed in a concentration camp. It's less than dismissive -- it's really, really hard to accept that you can only control so much, and sometimes only your reactions! It's tremendously hard work to know, and then live with, what you can change versus what you can't.
In other words, thank you!
Thank you for writing this latest essay. We need constant reminding to not give up!
Thank you, Nia. “There are so many people everywhere working to fix the wounds of the world, knowing that pain and scars will remain.” You are one of those persons engaging in repairing our shattered world. 🙏❤️
As are you, Greg. The work you have spent your life doing is mostly unseen by the rest of us, hidden care and healing of a certain kind that's needed even if most of us don't know it.
I always liked the quote attributed to Rabbi Tarfon: “ it is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you at liberty to abstain from it.”
That is PERFECT. Thank you.
Good to hear your voice. I usually just read. Thank you always.
Thank you!
All I will say is that you're still here and so long as you're here, there's hope for healing, growth, and winter reads of our friend Frodo's adventures.
There's still beauty in this world, and the light of the stars despite the dark forces trying to cover them up ... 🧙♂️
But what about second breakfast?
That’s a given!
Those steps look so great!
The summers I lived in Whitefish I never imagined swimming in the river. Maybe not so much the chemical pollution -- although it certainly didn't look inviting -- as (a) it just didn't get that hot that often and (b) the city beach filled the need those few times it was hot enough.
City Beach is still a wonderful place to go, and of course is the only place with sand, which is a nice change from rocks! (Though Les Mason is still our go-to.)
Even 10 years ago, less than 10, I had trouble forcing myself into the lake or river before early or mid-June, it was still so cold. But of course it gets warmer earlier now. The river's still snow-cold, but as you know it's been hot and these shallow edges are warm enough to be too warm.
It is so necessary to name the many forms of creation in face of rupture. We often talk about annihilation of old systems but never say how destabilising it would be for people who are already suffering, for people who are dealt the hard cards all their lives. Thank you for naming it here Nia, “Dismantling structures of oppression and violence requires building and repairing alongside collapse, lest we simply allow the same harms to grow in the ruins” . This is why you are my hero. ❤️
"name the many forms of creation in the face of rupture" -- I feel like you are invoking goddesses here, Swarna! And that is not surprising. Maybe that is what we need. Baba Yaga in every form she can take.
No heroes! Just all of us. Tyson Yunkaporta said that once in an interview -- stop following gurus or something like that (she says, quoting someone like he's a guru, good grief). Just all of us. Shoulder to shoulder, step by step. Doing our own small parts, even if it's just saying hello to water and asking it to carry greetings to our friends across the world.
Still you are my hero in sense that you can sense the inner resting place of things that need to be named and bring that to the forefront of consciousness. You name them. It is one of the hardest things to do - to name the shadows - both personal and collective. Once we identify them as they are, they already lose some hold over us.
The layers of deprivation and injustice that we have to deal on a daily basis is just hard to name because when we live so long with them, they kind of become a part of us, we internalize the injustices. The poor and marginalised internalize their circumstances, they somehow believe that they deserve what they are going through. It is always this way with oppression. We cannot demolish a system without completely destroying these people, even if it is a system is flared with injustice. We need to reconstruct while it is still functional.
Thank you so much for this insight 🕯️
That's exactly how I feel about you! Diving deep and fearlessly into the darkest parts of the darkest caverns and shining a light on what is there.
"We need to reconstruct while it is still functional" -- exactly exactly exactly. I think the hard part of this is knowing where to expend our energies, both individually and collectively. The more we explore those capacities within ourselves, the more constructive we can be. Maybe. I think! 🫶🏻🕯️
You think right my friend!
LOVE this essay, Antonia. Did you know the book I'm working on now is about the Maine river where I swim every summer? That scene with the boys was so resonant to me. All of it was. I'm posting this on Facebook.
P.S. Just listened to the first bit of your recording, and I LOVE the birdsong and the goose-song, and the sound of the water as you pull your feet out of it.
Jennifer! I did not know that! That's so exciting.
I was just talking with someone about American Breakdown the other day. I hope that's been going well, the distribution, promotion, response to it, etc.
And I'm glad the sound came through. I usually listen to the recording to check before I post it, so should stop worrying about whether people can hear things! The water felt lovely.