Hello beautiful human,
I’ve written for decades. I’ve published newsletters for a number of years on various platforms.
This is not a newsletter. Unless we’re talking about the latest report from the apple tree, which seems to be staying upright, the cardinal family that have moved in just down the block, or the latest update from the pharmacy, that small window into humanity in the US in 2024.
It’s not a newsletter. It is a practice, in holding, through these written words unscrolling across my screen, An Inviting Space for us to breathe a slightly different atmosphere for a few minutes each day (or Mondays and Fridays, starting and ending the week together, if you’re a free subscriber).
What I mean to say is, I’ve been doing something akin to this practice for a while. Rising, lighting a candle, pouring the coffee, and reaching across to you. It’s my meditation, a way of grounding and opening to the “what is” of the moment. It’s my way of opening a space for connection. To myself, to you, and to the wider, wilder world that wants to emerge. This is how we move from possibility to realization, in spaces like this.
It’s also a game of Poohsticks.
If you’re a fan of A. A. Milne’s books, you may remember the game. Pooh and Piglet stand on a bridge over a small not particularly ambitious stream. They each drop a stick into the water on the upstream side of the bridge. Then they cross to the other side and peer over, waiting to see which stick will emerge first, carried on the lazy, blurbling current. Then they cross back and do it again.
Substack feels like a game of Poohsticks to me. Maybe all writing does. I drop something into the stream, wait, and see what happens. It’s not really up to me where the stream takes it or what happens next. The point is (as far as I can make out) to be alive to the world, to notice, and to keep dropping the sticks, grateful for the stream, the nice day, the good company.
It’s just about the most low stakes game ever invented. The only game I know of that beats it is a game my mother invented when she used to take care of my kids for a weekend once a month. I grew up in a small town in Iowa, in a house with a big wrap-around front porch. My mother would bring my two small children out to sit on the front step (or maybe on some days if the weather wasn’t nice they’d perch at a window). And then they’d wait and watch to see “What’s Going On.” Knowing my kids, they probably kept lists of what they saw in a notebook, scrawled in that big preschooler-y handwriting, sounding out the words as best they could.
Fortunately, the street I grew up on has a large maintenance garage at the end of it, so there was a good chance to seeing a brightly colored city truck in one direction or another. Also mail deliverers, dog walkers, and neighbors mowing, raking leaves, playing. A street sweeper or a garbage truck would have been big excitement. All the game was, was noticing. My kids loved it.
If Substack is Poohsticks, An Inviting Space is a close cousin to What’s Going On, minus the dump trucks. If I tell you a bee found the apple blossoms, well, that’s news! I’m not joking. I think we’re getting to the point where we all oughtta be celebrating every bee we see. And protecting the little workers.
In related news, the violets are blooming.
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