Hello friends! This is gonna be a kind of long blog – a synthesis / digest of the last few email newsletters (please sign up for the newsletter here if you’d like an email from me once a month or so)! Feel free to skim to what interests you!!!
I spent the month of March 2019 traveling
I’ve got the magic hour candle burning. The laundry is whipping around. The sink is full of dishes. I finally vacuumed my car out from the summer. I feel like a bachelor (pardon the stereotype), living off clif bars and pizza luce and refried beans. It’s all good stuff, but damn it’s been a lot of stuff!
I hope you’ve had more time for self care then me! I plan to sleep more … once I finish this kickstarter, record this album, and complete the last season of The Walking Dead. :O) This weekend heading to teach at a yoga retreat, so that should help!
This blog was originally posted on the wonderful Dissonance blog, a mental health + creativity support organization whose mission is as follows “Dissonance examines the intersection of creativity and wellbeing, working to create safe spaces, smash social stigmas, and shape education and business practices relating to mental health, addiction, and compassion in the arts. In short, we want to contribute to a healthier environment in the arts community. Collectively, we need to find new ways to support, sustain, and celebrate creativity.”
Please be sure to follow their work, check out their programming, and enjoy their blog at www.dissonance.website
I could easily say, “I wasn’t your normal American teenager,” but I don’t think there is such a thing as a “normal teenager” … or even “normal” in general. Sometimes I’ve heard that your first trauma is where you might stay stuck developmentally.
It’s the eve of the fall equinox and my self-diagnosed SAD is kicking in. The past week has been all rain and thunder and bluster. More chances to stay inside with the tea kettle and contemplate the cold cruel world. I keep returning to a song, over an over, and it is Gaelynn Lea’s Moment of Bliss.
Hello dear music friend,
Last weekend I took a trip out west with my new beau. It wasn’t super far west, but a good 9 hours from Minneapolis to Western North Dakota where the landscape changes to plateaus and buttes and miles and grasslands. Majestic beast roam: Bison, Elk, Wild Horse, and Coyote howls. The moon switched to new, and a full day was spent walking to get water from a spring and then walking back to camp. For some people, this is their life …
To begin, a quote by Mary Oliver from a stirring article twitter brought to my awareness via Brian Pickings:
“It is six A.M., and I am working. I am absentminded, reckless, heedless of social obligations, etc. It is as it must be. The tire goes flat, the tooth falls out, there will be a hundred meals without mustard. The poem gets written. I have wrestled with the angel and I am stained with light and I have no shame. Neither do I have guilt. My responsibility is not to the ordinary, or the timely. It does not include mustard, or teeth. It does not extend to the lost button, or the beans in the pot. My loyalty is to the inner vision, whenever and howsoever it may arrive. If I have a meeting with you at three o’clock, rejoice if I am late. Rejoice even more if I do not arrive at all.” – Mary Oliver
2017 started in Taos, New Mexico and 2018 started there too. The months in-between were many … mostly midwestern, and very full. The times
