Amidst the Din, Tune to the Subtle
A Love Letter, Peek at My Book-in-Progress, Upcoming Workshops, Meditation, & Creative Prompt
Dear Fellow Human,
How are you, my friend? Are you okay? Do you have good people around you so that when you finish reading the news and feel as if you’ve been assaulted by a battering ram, you can look into someone’s eyes or reach for their hand and remember that in fact you have not been hit by a battering ram. You are simply a drop of water in a great big ocean that is swelling and sinking higher and lower than usual. The truth is we all feel sick from the wild tide of these times. And the truth is that we are part of the ocean, part of the wave that will rise and crash and recede. And we will also be left on the shore after the wave returns to the ocean, wondering what to do with the treasures that have come in and wondering how we will carry on without the treasures that washed away.
But what if, Fellow Human, you are like me and live alone with no other eyes or hands to turn to? Perhaps, like me, you have found other useful means of centering and grounding as the world heaves and churns: Noticing and smoothing out your breath. Calling to mind ancestors who lived through incredible adversity, and thus calling upon their strength, steadiness, and knowing. Or perhaps stepping outside and opening to what is happening in nature—the activity or apparent quietude of the nearest plant; the way a drop of water glistens like a jewel; the way the veins in a leaf look like the veins in your hand; the buzzing and scuttling sounds of insects; the fleeting scent of the season in your region.
Yes, your percipient nose will tell you just where and when you are if you will but let your mind and your eyes rest, and if you but tune your mind to the subtle.
Fellow human, I am sharing a few special things with you in this month’s love letter:
A taste of the book I’ve been slowly, slowly emitting from my heart as a kind of medicine intended for myself and for all. Love Letters to the Lonely is exactly what it says it is: many letters written to Lonely Ones everywhere. And that means, Fellow Human, it is written to YOU. For who among us sensitive humans does not feel the ache of Loneliness?
Creating anything from your heart are means of medicine-making. And we need everyone’s medicine in order to heal the painful things that are happening on this Earth right now. This is why I send creative prompts out into the world—here in this Substack (for paid subscribers), in The Cantigee Oracle, and in my upcoming workshops. I hope you will join me in these practices—and join me in making and sharing our medicine so it can find its way to wherever it is needed.
“A Secluded Perfume”
from my book-to-be, Love Letters to the Lonely:
Dear Lonely One,
In the same way that we do not notice that the air we peer through is blue, coolly tinting everything we see, we do not know our own scent. And if we are residing in the company of our own unique Loneliness, after a while, we do not notice its scent either.
In an effort to evolve beyond this ignorance, I am crafting the perfume of my Loneliness. Here’s what I’ve put in the bottle so far:
The damp mushroom and moss covered northern edge of a vivid-red cedar log decomposing into the dark humus of forest floor—and just up the road, the sulfuric stench of the rust colored well water streaming from the tap in a cold, cavernous apartment lit by a leaky skylight ten miles outside of a small town a hundred miles from the town I meant to end up in.
The sterile scent of the vinyl chair I sat but did not sleep in beside my unconscious baby nephew’s hospital bed—and the sweet scent of his infant breath before he was forever changed.
The deisel soot of a train tunnel I dared to swallow me forever—and the dewy mountain, fir and fern air the tunnel spit me out into, daring me to keep living.
The spectral scent of disintegration and severing that surrounded my cat as the flame of life within her waned into void—and the piscine-tinted feline scent of her face when she touched her nose to mine each night before I fell asleep.
The electric scent in the air before the clouds threw oceans of rain and hail stones the size of golf balls on my bare head—and the mixture of soaked sod, soaked cotton clothing, soaked bark of tree, and impromptu rivers of rain, soot, rubber, and gas, gushing in the streets.
The scent of the grief of exclusion in the exhalations of one of my neighbors in West Oakland, who lived in a carefully curated accumulation of tarps and curious items pulled from trash piles, including deer antlers, pompoms, and a shiny porcelain toilet—and the flourishing scent of gardens in the happier hills of Oakland and Berkeley.
The dusty wind whistling through dry grass at a barely crossed crossroads in rural Washington, surrounded by miles of parched late summer agriculture, where a well meaning stranger dropped me off to wait half of an eternity for my next ride—and the moist, sappy scent of the tundra my first love and I planned to visit together but didn’t before taking separate forks on the road of life.
The delicate rot of the black mold covering the walls of my childhood bedroom—and, in another home, the comforting scent of potatoes frying in a skillet in my Nona’s kitchen.
The iodine and brine of the ocean rising past my ankles and up my calves as I waited for the boat to fetch me and the bushels of seaweed I had harvested from a previously exposed rock in the bay, now swallowed by cold grey water beneath an iron sky—and the astonishing scent of whale spray on my face, while sailing in the bay of another ocean.
This perfume draws near to the scent of Loneliness, but what is missing is the scent of your Loneliness and the scent of all other people’s Loneliness. Would you perhaps help me complete this communal cologne? What are the ingredients in your bottle of Eau de Solitude Douloureux?
With love,
Your Friend
Fellow Human, I hope you take your percipient nose far and deep. Let it tell you the truth of what is happening in your heart and in the world around you. You may hone your subtle senses in community in this and any of up my upcoming workshops.
