Toward Body-Land Continuity
among other things
The other title for this was Fall Collage - because I’m writing many moments from recently, some related, some not. Perhaps you can read it with a nonlinear, nonhierarchical spirit?!
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Crying every time someone chimes in on the group text for my friend who just had a baby - how deeply I feel the magnitude-mystery-magic of giving birth even when I just hear of it, and the support and love flowing in this group text to my friend. To recall or associate someone else’s life with mine at the moment of my births, it always brings the tears. Because it was such an obliteration of previous self for me, continues to transform me in the shape of my children’s faces, lives, words, bodies, continues to humble me. The fellowship of this life experience, and the fellowship of witnessing friends love other friends.
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Receiving new heaps of mass emails from my kid’s public kindergarten, the absolute worst youtube videos from the superintendent - how can someone need that many cuts in a 2.5 minute video? First hand encounters with the fucked public school system in sf. And, the beauty of seeing my kid run into friends from school in the neighborhood, the beauty of walking my kids to school a few blocks from my house. The beauty of our time together after school, the magic way one of his teachers says, “I feel lucky to be with these inquisitive, bright, lovely kids.” That’s the vibe. That’s the best vibe I could possibly wish for my kid - that the adults in his presence consider themselves lucky to be with him and the other kids - because we are.
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Hardly cooking, making toast for dinner, cereal, apple and sliced turkey. Hot dogs, grapes, boiled eggs.
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The astonishment when both my kids did not have a melt down for the entire afternoon and we discovered a new creek spot in the park and they played with each other and alone for the entire outing and bedtime was easy and it wasn’t too hot finally and my eye was healed enough that I could rest in ease with them. The magic of life feeling hard, such that when a day comes that is not hard, it is new, it is a fresh thing, ease is so much more easeful, sparkling, noticeable, when it’s been hard.
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Reading Chelsea’s new writing here, listening to Mike Birbiglia’s podcast, how spiritual it is for me, to listen to comedians talk about process when none of it is explicitly spiritual. The way my mom attended to me and the kids and all the unglamorous unnoticed details when I was in the dark of my room not moving after eye surgery, the way Aunty got BB Jr a bagel after she drove me to my follow up appointment and the way the nurse very pragmatically, stiffly, lovingly put numbing drops in my eye after I broke down in sobs to him when he asked how the pain was.
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The discovery of Codependents Anonymous, when I need it, now, the miracle of it, how many different people come together in those zoom rooms, the alchemy of what happens there, a gift it seems that was made just for me, so many people offering their voices, their time, their presence to a collective healing project which costs no money, has no hierarchy, truly an outlier of community, a way to see how community can nourish, can actually save, a way to practice community, wow.
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Walking back home from Blackbird, with a matcha, all of the absurd, overwhelming resources and forces conspiring to put those tea leaves into that powder into my cup with clean water and oat milk, Janelle and Paige and Kathryn and Erik and so so many people whose faces I haven’t seen, whose labor I haven’t felt, so many acres of soil, rain storms, irrigation pipes, compost piles, sun rays, trucks, airplanes, public infrastructure, to create this occurrence of this tea in my hand. Walking home drinking this matcha I am obsessed with trying to write this feeling of now (which might be why I might never finish writing a book, the now keeps shifting!). This feeling of parenting loneliness, how hard it is to make plans with people, how many of them get cancelled, the giving over of my self to my children so fully, the joy in that, the disorientation of that as they evolve and need me less, the rearranging and rearranging more, the opening of the new questions appear again - who am I now? When and where and how does it even matter who I am? What might I offer to you, to myself, to my partner, to my friends, now? I am a new person now, 6+ years since I first got pregnant, parenting, squarely in my middle age, what remains from before that is worth keeping and what is here now?
What a mystery to be a person, to be this person, to be discovering how to be present and not leave myself in a new way, to be with these people my children for whom I will do anything and also not always “do anything” for them to care for them more! In other words, to be less codependent with them so that I can love them more. To love myself more to love them more. These are some questions of now.
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Watching that new netflix romcom show Nobody Wants This and the takeaway for me is I want to be a rabbi. Not that I will actually become a rabbi but the feeling I have watching it is, I also want the show to be more about how he is a rabbi and what he thinks about and how he finds things to offer, conjures spiritual remedies for the incoherence that is living this modern life because how does anyone do that and how is there any other question than that?
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Listening to this person, my sister’s friend, Matt Simon, this writer doing this incredible profound impossibly heartbreaking work of tracking the plastics nightmare (I recommend listening when you have the time/space to feel resourced enough to weather the realizations). As small or inadequate as it feels (and it is guaranteed to feel small and inadequate), when I hear this episode, the thing that occurs to me that I could offer is the efforts toward a spiritual framework to build tolerance to witness this kind of atrocity. To be open to, look for, locate, and communicate the spiritual tools to help it feel possible for more of us to listen to this podcast. And to be with the pain of hearing it. That’s what occurs to me that I could do with my skillset at this point. Here are some thoughts to that end at this moment:
My attention must steady on the spiritual generosity of this science writer choosing to live with this heartbreak enough to write this book, enough to share this with us. Contemplating what that must have felt like for him, on the daily, the years it takes to write a book, to be steeped in the devastation of those facts, and seeing that he did it anyway, for love. Foregrounding the love in the act of writing this, the way that love calls forth my own relevant actions, participation.
My attention must steady on Heidi Moseson’s love letter for our neighborhood, the Outer Sunset of San Francisco, our city, the spirit she brings to organizing, for Prop K in particular but for our collective evolving in general. Step by unglamorous fucking step.
My attention must steady on the countless ways countless people are using the resources available to them to guide us to living instead of prematurely dying, preventing the creation of plastic and genocide, instead cultivating plants and body-land continuity-identification, thriving instead of surviving.
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My attention must steady on what everyone is giving because it’s the only way I can access the energy for what is next, for my next assignment, whatever that is. That’s my practice today. I redirect my attention over and over to who is offering generosity to stay in the trouble, to pull us toward expanding our own loving attention. When I do this, love and gratitude comes easier, which buoys me to offer more of what I can offer.
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The last thing for now is an invitation to a joyous result of very many people’s labor. The Modern Witches Confluence is the fruits of Casey Zabala’s beautiful vision and practical ground-working. which is an online and IRL gathering I get to be at on November 2 at the sf county fair building in golden gate park in San Francisco, offering astrology readings. I will be there along with many heroes / friends / comrades offering services and magic. I’ve got a couple spots for you to sign up for short readings in advance, or you can just show up, say hi, and see what I’ve got available!
Either way any way thanks for existing out there,
Sarah