Tension and Release

Artwork crafted by Laurel Mundy Illustration

I move slowly during the daytime hours, after the kids have left for school.

A wisdom in my cells tells me to take it slow while I can, because the afternoons in springtime, with its long luxurious daylight and, lately, warm setting sun, are a blur. Some days it's not exactly restful- more of a bracing myself before and onslaught of snack making, clothes sifting, bag packing, and shouting to various kids to take care of their bathroom needs and get their shoes on. I hold on for dear life to the quiet hours before it becomes madness and emotions and mess.

Luckily, today there is a more restorative kind of slowness. Perhaps its my protesting quad muscles, sore from the infamous Bulgarian split squats we did in bootcamp yesterday, forcing me to listen to my body. And so I actually hear my bones craving a pause to stop and take stock, to dive deep in search of thoughts, desires, worries, and to answer the question: what plan will best retrieve the life force I need for the day? How do I activate my most contented, joyful, enthusiastic, responsive energies today? 

Meandering, I gathered my coffee, planner, journal, and social media device, then ended up volunteering to count Vaux's swifts flying into a chimney at a local elementary school, part of a Audubon Society citizen science effort. The idea of sitting and counting angular little birds at sunset suddenly filled me with a thrill, and to me it's obvious why. 

It's all about the desire, the intoxicating pull, toward wanting to be part of something bigger than myself (however small). This idea sparks energy in me that I sometimes wonder is dead and gone forever, as a full-time mom of three. But that old feeling of "I can't wait to get out there" resurged with the same force it did when I was phenology monitoring in Mt. Auburn cemetery, herring counting on my Mystic Lake dam, and crunching through snow learning about winter plant identification with the wise and seasoned naturalist Boot Boutwell. The energy of community effort connected to place, nature, and science has always carried me far when I come up empty on self motivating. I need people. I need partners. I need teachers. I need belonging.

The other energizing force I'm consuming today is absorbed passively through art: watching Andor again, I appreciate the delicate, restrained, brilliant use of pacing as a narrative device. This show gives a masterclass in building suspense, forcing the audience to endure slow buildup at the risk of testing our patience and faith in the artist's vision. But then comes the release, made so sweet due to the way it was earned-- a close acquaintance with the struggles of the characters-- but also because of the brand it stays so true to: revolution, rebellion, and overthrow of a colossal evil empire. Hmmm-- feeling even more poignant this year. This is going to be a fun watch. 

To list a few features that stirred me in my revolution bones: The beat of the Ferrix anvil gong at the beginning of the first episode of season 2. (After rewatching the last episode of season 1): Maarva's magnificent funeral speech, and edge in her voice as she growls "FIGHT the empire!" And the lines Cassian says to the nervous new rebel "stepping into the circle": "You're coming home to yourself. You're becoming more than your fear. Let that protect you." (See below for the full transcript of Maarva's speech.)

Perhaps my humble volunteer efforts to count Vaux's swifts migrating from Central and South America, stopping by Monroe, Washington, which happens to be one of the largest roosting sites in the country for this threatened species, won't topple an evil empire. But it WILL feel like doing something. Because when I really take in Maarva's words, where she says, "we have each other"...that's where I realize where things are going wrong. The disease plaguing this country isn't conservatism or liberalism, but loneliness and isolation. Exacerbated by the trauma of the pandemic, but on a trajectory well before that due to hyper-technologization of our social worlds, we have all lost touch with each other. We've forgotten how to be there for each other, talk to each other, and even notice that we need each other. 

It's heartbreaking. But it's also fixable. We just need to go out and find our communities, the ones that make our hearts feel seen. For me, it's nerdy birding types. And that's just the start. 

Worthy Of The Stone

My name is Maarva Carrassi Andor. I’m honored to stand before you. I’m honored to be a Daughter of Ferrix, and honored to be worthy of the stone.

Strange, I… feel as if I can see it. I was six, I think, first time I touched a funerary stone. Heard our music, felt our history, holding my sisters hand as we walked all the way from Fountain Square. Where you stand now, I’ve been more times than I can remember.

I always wanted to be lifted. I was always eager, always waiting to be inspired. I remember every time it happened, every time the dead lifted me… with their truth. And now I’m dead, and I yearn to lift you. Not because i want to shine or even be remembered. It’s because I want you to go on. I want Ferric to continue. In my waning hours, that's what comforts me most.

But I fear for you. We’ve been sleeping. We’ve had each other, and Ferrix, our work, our days. We had each other and they left us alone. We kept the trade lane open, and they left us alone. We took their money and ignored them, we kept their engine churning, and the moment they pulled away. we forgot them. *(SIGH)* Because we had each other. We had Ferrix.

But we were sleeping. I’ve been sleeping. And I’ve been turning away from the truth I wanted not to face. There is a wound that won’t heal at the center of the galaxy. There is a darkness reaching like rust into everything around us. We let it grow, and now it’s here. It’s here and it’s not visiting anymore. It wants to stay.

The Empire is a disease that thrives in darkness, it is never more alive than when we asleep. It’s easy for the dead to tell you to fight, and maybe it’s true, maybe fighting is useless. Perhaps it’s too late. But I’ll tell you this, if I could do it again, I’d wake up early and be fighting those bastards from the start! Fight the Empire!

Staying Awkward Brave and Kind

Now is the time to remind ourselves who we are.

Who we are doesn't change when the  imperfect democracy you were proud to be a part of is morphing into a nihilist dictatorial oligarchy.

We are still awkward, brave, and kind... and proud of it.

We do not have to become "harder."

Once, when I was the manager of a teen jobs program on an island in Boston Harbor, we were holding a feedback circle, giving each other positive and constructive criticism, including us staff managers.

When it was my turn, I faced all 22 of my employees, each taking turns giving their 26-year-old boss their thoughts on how I was doing my job. Yeesh, looking back, that was a brave undertaking. Teen after teen, and even my middle staff managers, had similar advice: you should be stricter with us (first of all, it is striking that they were asking for this, but that's a topic for another day). But the last teen to go was Shauntera (or Shaunee). With her megawatt smile that ceaselessly radiated kindness, she told me, "Don't change a thing. You are perfect just the way you are."

The wisdom of this 17-year-old has stuck with me now for 17 years. 

The following year, the majority opinion was still ringing in my ears, and I couldn't help but feel obligated to try being "stricter." I realized my mistake almost immediately. The strict me never worked, and never would work. 

The awkward brave and kind me is just me, plain and simple. It's how I live my truth, how I authentically contribute to society, how I make the room brighter when I'm in it.

Lately, I'm feeling less alone in noticing this cacophonous, rabid nationwide shift to "hardness", distrust, fear, greed, power-grabbing, blatant lying, and bullying-- though others are at varying degrees of loss to explain it.

Take Prentis Hemphill, who observes that the shift is "not just anti-democratic, it's anti-vulnerability, anti-relationship, collective responsibility, connection, all of that." She notices the prevailing philosophy is "that we have to harden ourselves, we have to not feel for each other, and erase history and its ramifications." Her stab at why this is happening? Because "we are emotionally and relationally underdeveloped for the times we are in."

Dr. Shefali Tsabary explains the phenomenon as the scourge of the "raging unchecked ego on steroids on full display. It's always destroyed our world and it's destroying our world now" and that it begins in our homes with how we raise our children. When children are taught that power must be stolen from and wielded over others instead of cultivating it from within, and that to connect and form relationships with others they must be brainwashed, belittled, and controlled instead of forming meaningful caring connections, we get MAGA. 

And in the New York Times' latest reflection on "How COVID Remade America", the first major theme is the shift towards "hyperindividualism", observing that, "isolated, we saw one another first as threats and then as something less than real." Their doomsday view is that, "over the long sweep of liberal history, our circle of empathy had expanded steadily, until it encompassed nearly the whole globe; now it snapped back, as tight as a rubber band."

These realities, or anti-realities, leave me disoriented and exasperated. But it remains true that I will live my life wholeheartedly believing in community care, in radical honesty, in the gray area of nuance. Echoing Dr. Shefali, my personal power and internal knowing is unshaken. I am still awake to the vital need for truth, beauty, connection, collective responsibility, and vulnerability in the world. I will not let the madness of the mob harden me.