the cycle continues

dispatch 18

Hi friends,

March was 17 years long and so it feels like I haven’t sent one of these in well, 17 years. Things have been quietly chaotic as I navigate some family health challenges, my ongoing and constant work anxiety, and some gentle writer’s block. But Spring is springing and within it, I feel a bit of life coming back, which is exactly what I wrote about today.

All funds from March’s paid subscriptions have been donated. Rounded up we donated $100 to SunServe in South Florida. Without your support that wouldn’t be possible… My deepest gratitude to you! If you’d like to sign up for an additional monthly dispatch you can at the button below.

Iris reticulata because I just take pictures of flowers on walks now.

the cycle continues

As the earth comes to life I am suspended in uncultivated wonder. There is a newly found careful attention to season that has become a part of how I view the world since my return to the Northeast. The pandemic too has made me more aware of cycles. The tiny changes that I was always moving too fast to see before. As a result, I am exuberant about Spring, full of a kind of over-the-top joy. Every walk I take with my family is spent pointing out every flower, every tiny bud. I cannot begin to count the number of times in a day that I say “Wow!,” that delightfully inelegant marker of human wonder.  I am noticing how truly amazing everything is, and I cannot stop noticing. 

We are living in a time that will become a marker, a collective historical pause. In 20 years we will remember events by their relationship to this pandemic. Was it before? Was it after? We will mark time by how we have been changed. This time of year will likely always remind me of those first weeks of COVID in this part of the world when we all were suddenly plunged into fear and open-ended uncertainty. In the early days, when every breath felt dangerous and walking the dog was the only break in the monotony of it all, Spring came whispering hope. In the unexpected clusterings of flowers, the buds on the trees, the rain that never thought of being snow, there was a bit of magic that reminded me that given enough time, things always shift. 

The first Spring of COVID was my first back in the Northeast after five years of perpetual summer, and so I watched this change with a kind of reverence and devotion that was only deepened by the pandemic-induced need for distraction. I was coming out of a personal Winter as well as a literal one, unsure of how to emerge amidst so much change. The earth coming back made me feel that there were ways forward that could be beautiful. That is the hope of this season for me, a clearing of the dark and a renewed energy. 

This time feels like the moment too when the Earth is most honest with us about her power. When last year’s discarded life feeds this year’s burgeoning life in public. When we can see the whole cycle everywhere we look. The trees are still bare, the leaves are a wet, brown mass covering the ground. The flowers arch up in the middle of everything but this kind of beauty is meant to be complex. 

The light looks different at this time of year and each morning I awaken in the dark and watch it come. The snow has melted. The ground is brown with leaves leftover from Autumn. They smell of rain and rot, and each day when I walk around my neighborhood I see what they are feeding. If I practice noticing, if I can look beyond my worries or my phone, I find more flowers in colors I had forgotten about, growing out of the ground in impossible places. Yesterday I remembered that there are, for a brief and fleeting moment, tulips in our yard and that you can live on that type of delight.

In a few weeks, the lilacs will come, my favorite time of year. They smell like how I wanted being drunk to feel, a wholesome and creative mystery. The anticipation of them, how quickly they are gone, is part of what makes them so magical. I know that for a few weeks, busy adults will stop in the middle of the sidewalk, gather the heavy, tender blooms in both hands and bring them to nose, inhaling deeply. We will pause. We will pay attention, and attention in this frantic world is worship. It is devotion.

I am reveling in this change of season, at the ways that my body too is awakening to care and sun and rain. The ways that I want to nurture myself and others. The ways that I pause by the creek to hear the water again, now that the ice is gone. Deep breaths of air as I run through the neighborhood, slower than I was in the Fall, but still moving.

Assorted, rad things: 

• Body Work by Melissa Febos: I read this twice in 48 hours. Closed it, flipped it over, and read it again. There is nothing I love more than writing about writing and this has that special Febos magic of holding a magnifying glass over the world. It’s a secret weapon towards creative apathy and writer’s block.

• Doctor Foster: I recently re-watched this BBC show (with Max watching for the first time) and it is bonkers how incredibly uncomfortable this show made us, two people who spent a decade in active addiction, for every single moment of its 10 hour duration. The women of the show are complex, deeply flawed, intense, and unlikeable in a way that I have never seen women characters allowed to be. This show is incredible and Suranne Jones is a gift. Bonus points for pre-Villanelle Jodie Comer.

• Freedom Dreams podcast: I listened to this show’s whole backlog last week. I love that it centers on crucial questions about our future around healthcare, food and land access, and schooling. I’m having a bit of a values reckoning personally and this felt like a really fruitful way to spend some time and consideration within it.

If you feel moved by today’s essay, hitting the like button or leaving a comment really lets me know…creating in a vacuum is way weird. Thank you for reading. I know things have been really hard lately, so please know I am sending you (yes, you) the biggest virtual hug (or fist bump, wave, or another form of consensual affection!).

lisa

This newsletter is reader-funded, the small percentage of folks who pay make this whole thing possible. Big thanks to those who support my work in all of the ways. Sharing is encouraged and appreciated. Feel free to send snoozeletter to a friend if you think they’d enjoy my work.