Who benefits from this chaos?
A post + links
(This post and curation of links began off the grid over the July 4th US holiday and was completed this morning after returning to San Francisco and better internet service.)
July 4th.
I’m writing from a little cabin in the California redwoods that I have stayed in many times over many years. This place is always great to visit, and especially today, on a noisy US holiday during a heatwave. No fireworks are allowed under the cool canopy the gentle giants provide simply by existing.
Co-regulating with trees feels to my nervous system like it’s an instrument being psychically tuned by handless, silent master musicians. I exhale, drop my shoulders and smile gratefully, realizing more lifeforce is now flowing through my senses and less through my anxiety.
I didn’t come to this forest to examine my own troubles or those of the world, nor did I come here to forget them. This forest nurtures my ability to simultaneously examine and forget.
(((I follow the news loosely from the woods. Spotty internet service insures I don’t get too caught up. Today, I’m heartened to hear some countries are beating back fascism through their elections, taking the global blood pressure down at least a few notches. Thank you.)))
Today, I seem to be processing the meaning of struggle in a way that feels liberating. Here’s what’s coming through...
- My lived experience has shown me how difficult honest reflection can be in the throes of conflict and chaos. When threat is so close and immediate that it’s centered within the crux of a person’s experience, it can become their Everything. The only wish of a person standing in the center of a fire is to feel some distance from the heat.
- Though a problem can be a universe of stress, at its core, a problem is just life prompting us to pay attention to something that isn’t working. Our stress comes not from the problem itself but from our inability to accept the problem’s disruption of our plans. With acceptance of a problem, we can move on to solving for it. A regulated nervous system is more accepting of problems and is therefore more capable of witnessing and processing them.
- I see how worry can draw us out of apathy and into showing up. Worry carries a creative charge. There’s medicine in the activating power the right dose of worry holds. Excessive worry, though, becomes destructive--like unconsciously praying for the very catastrophe everyone is trying to avoid. Chronic worriers, pearl clutchers and hand-wringers are rarely problem-solvers, and the worst of them are drama queens who, wittingly or not, weaponize their worry in manipulating others.
*
July 5.
Waking this morning from a beautiful sleep, the soft dawn brought an insight that stayed with me all day. What happens when, in the midst of chaos, we ask, “Who benefits from this chaos? Who has the incentive to keep this chaos going?"
When everyone is drowning, and the lizard brain defaults to "every person for themselves,” people fight when they could be protecting one another. Fighting the person struggling alongside me only deepens the damage for both of us. Asking who benefits from the chaos and has the incentive to keep it going doesn’t end the chaos, but does cut through the noise and dust and de-pressurizes the conflict by shifting accountability’s gaze towards the real perpetrators, those pouring gasoline on the fires while hiding behind the flames.
July 7th.
I woke after a more restless sleep to the thought that in my most effective moments, I’m walking alongside anxiety--my own and the world’s--noticing how many ways both anxieties are the same phenomenon, born of the same trauma patterns.
I know anxieties tend to move with more grace and leave fewer scars when they’re not fought or hidden or controlled but instead are breathed through and respectfully-but-closely observed as they work their way out of the body like an fever burning itself out.
Yesterday we hiked down a river, not by walking alongside it, but in it, which is one of my favorite things to do.
Sometimes we float, letting the current carry us. Sometimes we need to move against the stream to get to the place we want to go. In the shallows, we step slowly across slippery moss-covered rocks, and in the deeps, the more forceful currents sometimes sweep us against hefty boulders. Our response is laughter and, when necessary, holding onto one another.
After yesterday’s river hike, along with a few bruises, we felt more settled and somehow more energized than before. The woods calmed us so we were daring enough to enter the river so it could juice us up. Now that my nervous system is well-tuned, it feels like it’s playing my favorite song.
Something about typing that last line lifts my eyes from the screen.
I notice I’m surrounded by light streaking through the trees.
I’m steeping in the glory of this place.
I think about the way kids make play out of their daily struggles, and do so without the slightest slip of self-consciousness. Of course they’re not thinking about power as they play, but they’re nevertheless wielding their personal will and power in a very clean way.
*
July 8th.
Another question is emerging. In addition to asking who benefits from the chaos, there is the question of who is a benefit in the chaos.
Who do I want to be with in the worst of times? Who remains light in heavily burdened situations? Who flows when things are stuck? Whose hands build solutions when others’ hands are wrung in worry?
I want to find these people. I want to be this person.
LINKS THAT MADE ME LOOK & LINGER
I love this new song “Blowing Kisses” by Jennifer Castle that’s featured in the latest season of The Bear. A profound, thought-twisting country-soul track. Listen on Spotify or Bandcamp
Future Library, a conceptual artwork. In a forest near Oslo, one thousand trees have been planted to supply paper for a special anthology of books to be printed in one hundred years. Between now and then, one writer a year will contribute a text that will be held in trust, unpublished, until the year 2114. Tending and preserving the forest for one hundred years is part of the artwork. The other part happening alongside is the invitation to each writer to create a work in the hope of finding a receptive reader in an unknown future.
Recently, a twice-yearly medicine to prevent HIV was 100% effective in a late-stage trial.
Speaking of HIV, I’m someone who was galvanized by ActUp as an response to the despair I felt over losing too many friends to AIDS. I was excited for this book’s release a couple of years ago and was then was too emotional to get through it. I re-started it recently and am finding so much power and comfort in it.
Here's a fun new way to explore and pick out colors. Describe a color (for example, “serene forest trees”) and Magic Color Picker converts your description into precise color codes.
Help with being more decisive. I found 1, 2 and 11 effective in making a decision I’d been mulling over for way too long. Any one of them would have been enough to settle my mind on an option. Moving through all three one at a time brought triple assurance.
Look! A whale shark gliding through bioluminescent algae appears to be swimming in space. 🤩 (short video)
Very interesting interview with Ezra Klein. How you train your consciousness towards deep focus and resist what media / content / digital things / advertising / capitalism are trying to do to us. “Your Mind is Being Fracked.”
Why Most People Lack Self Awareness
Chasing It Down the Elevator Shaft to the Subconscious: Or, Getting Hypnotized
How Does a Therapist Stay Neutral?
How Colorism Impacts Black Women’s Physical and Mental Health
Grief is not a process with five stages. It is shattered glass.
Up All Night? You May Have Actually Been Asleep. (I wake-sleep on the regular. Sometimes I wonder if wake-sleeping is the body’s own organic form of yoga Nidra.)
Look at the comments in this thread: "What is something someone who has never been poor wouldn't understand?" (Like how expensive it is to be poor, for example, in paying more for daily busfare when there’s not enough money for a monthly pass.)
Elephants call each other by name and respond when they hear others call their name, according to new research.
In the last 10 years, Paris has closed 100 streets to cars, removed 50,000 parking spots, tripled parking fees for SUVs, and built more than 800 miles of bike lanes. "Those changes have contributed to a 40% decline in air pollution."
Apparently, asbestos is in makeup? Beauty brands are getting sued by people with cancer.
This list of Writing Experiments/Journal Ideas by poet Bernadette Mayer. Let me know if you try any. I’m open to sharing mine and would like to read yours.
I don’t even have Tiktok, but this account keeps me coming back because it’s...weird, wondrous...or...something(?) You tell me.
You know I want one of these big (almost bed-size) down pillows from French company Castex. (I’m not an affiliate or getting any kind of kickback from Castex. Just floating a simple reminder to cultivate comfort and ease.)
That’s it. Enjoy.
With Love + helpful questions, future libraries, good medicine, whale sharks in space, wake-sleeping, elephant names, less pollution & giant pillows,
moves my heart! thank you!
Great links!!