"Now the jacket, it hangs in my closet
where your sister came and left it
but I see it on other bodies in every place that I go
and sometimes, to a stranger, I reach out and touch the shoulder
and ask, “Is that you?” -- Danielle Ackroyd aka Vera SolaThis week, I had the great fortune of reconnecting with two long-lost friends, both of whom reached out to me in a 24 hour stretch.
Each friend is rooted in a different chapter of my life and two different places I used to live.
These conversations unfolded in dialogue, confession, apology and tales of birth, new love and heartbreaking loss--including one friend's passing on the battlefield in Ukraine and another's discovery of his birth mother, after 40 years of searching, just days after she died alone in a nursing home.
One conversation lasted into the wee hours of the night because saying goodbye felt so cavalier after so many years of thinking we'd lost one another forever.
The gut punch that comes with relationship breaks can be so high-octane that numbing out the pain is more manageable than allowing ourselves to fully feel the loss. We may not realize how much these breaks hurt until the relationship resumes and the rupture begins to mend.
These two conversations left me full of longing and trying to walk upright upon softened, overly tenderized bones. My heart swirled on an emotional ferris wheel and eventually steadied as a lost piece of itself slowly reset back into the proper position.
Now the world feels beautifully haunted as if everyone else I’ve lost and hope to find again is close by, maybe even within reach.
As these exploded parts of life recongeal, I wonder why we catapult ourselves so far away from one another with such sudden and fierce conviction--especially when regret is certain.
Maybe our need to abandon one another is a byproduct of our open secret that we want and need one another more than we can really handle or even admit. All the desire and yearning to hold one another close can reach such a sentimental crescendo that we sometimes--wittingly or not--attempt to lower the vibration by unraveling the sacred knots that bind our lives together. Later we stand alone, stripped psychologically naked and wondering, “What have I done?”
Maybe the gift is learning once again that evolution isn’t linear, orderly or well-paced; it’s all trial and error, a never-ending series of false starts stacked in messy, unwieldy layers that jerk and writhe without regard for rhythm or timing.
Maybe we’ve been conditioned to chase happy endings while--as long as we’re still breathing--nothing--least of all relationships--actually ends or completes. We might walk away and never return, but the story we imagine behind us eating our dust might actually still be processing and shapeshifting its life through our actions, including those we believe are new and improved.
These thoughts ring very true and present in me this evening, and I’m grateful that I’m able to share them here. Thanks for reading.
LINKS THAT MADE ME LOOK & LINGER
I love sharing these links because they unify our attention and bring us together outside of space and time.
I’m enjoying the discovery of the band Vera Sola whose songs are lit on fire by the words of Danielle Ackroyd. A verse from her song “Is that you?” opens today’s newsletter. The music has been described as an overlapping of Leonard Cohen, Nancy Sinatra and PJ Harvey. Here’s a great interview with Ackroyd. Maybe listen while you peruse the rest of the links: Spotify | Bandcamp
Continuing on the subject of music, here’s a cool interactive look at how the "best albums of all time" have changed over 20 years. To me, it’s a critique of how we critique, choose favorites and arrange things in hierarchies of good, better, best. The interactive tool makes the analysis fun and revelatory.
I want to visit Arcosanti, an experimental town in Arizona. I love when people realize they have a common vision and decide to manifest and live it together in real time.
Also, I’d like to return to the Rothko Chapel in Houston where I spent a life-shifting afternoon about 10 years ago walking through its rooms and grounds and gazing at the 14 monumental paintings by abstract expressionist Mark Rothko. Looking at Abstract Expressionist works in person evokes surprising degrees of emotion, an experience the Rothko Chapel is designed to nurture and support.
The film “Run, Lola Run” will return to theaters in June in celebration of its 25th anniversary. I saw the film in the theater right after its release, loved it and look forward to re-watching to see how it hits me this time.
Adult sleepovers are making a comeback. I’ve always loved adult sleepovers though I never thought to call them that. The spontaneous ones are my favorite, when people are together having such a great time the host says, “why don’t you all just stay over?” On TikTok, there are 1.1 million videos with the hashtag #sleepover and I’m so glad because communal sleeping is as nourishing as communal bathing and meal sharing. I’ve learned in my years-long quest to help people rest and sleep better that sleeping under the same roof with people they feel connected with works wonders for many.
I’ve pre-ordered and will be reading The Light Eaters soon as it’s released. It shares the most recent science around what plants know, the ingenious methods they’ve adapted for survival, how they communicate with and recognize their kin + more. The author, Zoe Schlanger is a botanist who studies how plants absorb light and all the things they can do with it. Here’s a quote from a fascinating interview with Zoe Schlanger:
The “brainless mind” is the most exciting possibility that I think will become basic knowledge in the next ten years. Much of the debate in plant science revolves around the fact that plants don’t have brains, so, ‘How could we consider a brainless organism intelligent?’ But when you think about how plants evolved, always rooted in place, we realize it makes sense for them to evolve to have sensory capabilities throughout their bodies. Think of an octopus, which has many arms with neurons that seem to act quite independently of the octopus’ main brain...It’s similar with humans. About half the cells in our body are genetically ours, and half are foreign DNA—but we wouldn’t be ourselves without them. They’re causing so much of our lives to happen, and then when you think of that in the context of intelligence, what does it mean that our brain is not controlling most of these organisms?
A few newsletters ago I linked to a livestream at Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center where Athena the Great Horned Owl was sitting like a queen on two eggs. Welllll, they’ve hatched! Click here for owlets! I’ve been checking in on them every morning since hearing the news.
I will not be reading too much into this coincidence and hope you won’t either, but these past few weeks I keep stumbling upon interesting content about death. Each of these three articles fed me in different ways. For example, this piece from Dr. Ezekiel Emanauel, “Why I Hope I Die at 75” is oddly inspiring and not at all the scary downer the headline implies. “The Contested Afterlife of Amy Winehouse” is a thoughtful and honest reflection on Winehouse’s legacy, a critique of celebrity culture in the 00’s, and a review of the upcoming biopic “Back to Black” which hits the cinemas mid-April. In “William Shatner’s Next ‘Bold’ Adventure: Facing Death” the 93-year-old ‘Star Trek’ icon is interviewed about his new documentary and ends up talking quite a bit about his mortality, declaring, “I haven’t got that long.”
For the next several months in Wandering Around Vagus (my newsletter on the vagus nerve & Polyvagal Theory) we’re exploring three experiential responses/states of: Play, Intimacy and Freeze. Last month’s edition (April) introduced these three states. The next edition arrives on May 5th and will focus on the state of Play. Find out more or join here.
I just made this unique take on celery soup BUT STAY WITH ME even if you don’t like celery. The main character of this soup is may be celery, but apples and white beans draw the show into bright, sweet, sour and creamy territories. The whole thing is sprinkled with pistachios. I’m betting people who balk at celery would not only love this soup, but might not even detect its presence unless informed otherwise.
I’m lingering a lot around the drawings, collages and paintings of Maya Varadaraj.
Closing with more music. Composer and alto saxiphonist Cassie Kinoshi’s “gratitude” is inspired by her mother’s gratitude journal where she recorded one thing to be thankful for each day. This music is “colourful and uplifting spring jazz, unabashedly melodic and emotional,” says
whose newsletter led me to Cassie Kinoshi. I found this work equal parts lush and wise. Maybe listen as you move on from this newsletter into the next thing in your day. Spotify | Bandcamp
That’s it. Enjoy. I’m glad you’re here.
With Love,
Run Lola Run - Mo's uncle!!!