Monday 11s: Air Quality
The opposite of freezing
After “When Everything Is Field” by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer :: read
1. Through the kitchen window, green and grey, movement in the leaves and branches, the unseen made seen.
2. I fall in love – with the ripening bananas in a bowl on the counter, with the day that seems to be getting darker over the course of the morning as rain clouds set in, with the sound of the washing machine signaling normalcy, and yes, with you, as you sit behind me on the loveseat writing in your journal.
3. Watching you with your daily to-do list, dozens of items deep, crossing things out, transferring others. A moth flits around. The new traps wait on the counter, but a different counter than the bananas. A kitchen with multiple counters, imagine that.
4. I Googled "your intervention and the quality of your interior," looking for a quote my sister shared with me over the weekend, and all of the results had to do with indoor air quality, common pollutants, and the like. Well, yes. But not in the literal sense.
5. The expression "clear the air" is common. The energy in a room – unseen like wind, yet made visible through tone, action, expression, interaction.
6. Sometimes I am a terrible listener. Sometimes I want to change you – in other words, to make you more like me. I am not proud of this.
7. Falling in love again is the opposite of freezing. Remove the “z” from freezing and you get freeing. That's more like it. Where is the freedom? Release the "z." Zzzzzzzz. The "z" is tired, sleepy, same old, patterned, ingrained, habitual, and stuck. Let it drift away on the wind. Fall in love again. Be free.
8. Fear of discord, yet elephants in the room are a far worse fate.
9. We are usually so much stronger than we think. I am stronger.
10. "It's never too late to begin again," goes the lovely sounding adage. Is it easy? Hell, no. Possible? I want to believe yes. Because we are never beginning again in the same conditions as the last time.
11. And this is where courage comes in. It takes real courage to let things be new when there is plenty of history to dredge up. Through the kitchen windows, the rustling, the greening. A wild turkey trots towards the spill of bird seed. We joke about a B-movie. Invasion of the wild turkeys. The chimes are poised to sound if the wind picks up. Inside, the washing machine switches cycles. The dog growls at something no one else can sense. You tell me the good news about river watchdogs receiving grant money to monitor water quality. The air quality quiets as I write. I look up at your you-ness, breathe in our us-ness, and fall in love all over again.
This weekend: Massachusetts Poetry Festival
May is Jewish Heritage Month. Join me and National Jewish Book Award-winning poets Richard Michelson and Joy Ladin this coming Sunday, May 7th at 11:30am in Salem for Jewish Poets of Western Massachusetts: A trans woman, a queer woman, and a straight male have this in common – their exploration, love, and quarrel with Judaism.
See the entire festival schedule and be sure to say hello if you come!
In other news…
I am hard at work creating my very first e-course on Teachable. It is kind of a trip, since I've created prompts and facilitated writing groups for nearly nine years, to be going through this process of online course development for the first time. It's a big learning curve but also reminding me how much I love being a student, not to mention having guidance and support from folks who really know their shit. And it feels so good to be pouring much of what I've been teaching and coaching around for years into this container. I would not be doing this without the grant I received with the help of Angie Montalvo at the Massachusetts LGBT Chamber of Commerce Network, who in turn connected me with the wonderful folks at eResponders. I'm working with a top-notch instructional designer, and it feels good to be pushing myself! My dream is that when it's ready, this self-paced course will help all kinds of folks unlock their writing practice and process in new ways. Stay tuned.
Wishing you a fantastic week, dear reader.