moving with the stirring stillness
celebrating the equinox and emerging
And now as the iron rinds over the ponds start dissolving, you come, dreaming of ferns and flowers and new leaves unfolding, —Mary Oliver from her poem "Skunk Cabbage"
Equinox greetings, everyone.
Wherever you are in the world, whether you are easing from winter to spring or summer to autumn, I hope you find a few moments of stillness to listen to the wild language of your ecosystem on this edge-of-season day.
Here, spring is whispering in my ear. She’s murmuring about possibilities and how much she (somehow, I always imagine the voice of spring as a young woman’s) loves waking up after a nice, long sleep.
She’s so close. Closer than the still monochrome landscape reveals. She loves this bit. The almost-ness of it. The yearning. The slow swelling from safe obscurity into inescapable presence. The dance from gestating to full flowering “here I am!” while her elder sibling autumn quietly does the opposite dance in southern hemispheres.
The edges of seasons telegraph wild code.
They signal bodies—bark-covered, furred, feathered, carapace covered, soft-fleshed—that it’s time to emerge and rise or release and pull inward.
These transitional spring equinox days are all about listening to and moving with the stirring stillness.
In my corner of the world, spring is pushing what has gestated all these quiet winter months through bark and soil into wind and water and air. All the new and renewed life that has been silently forming unseen is revealing itself.
Two days ago, I flipped the final switches to open this reborn business.
It's the perfect time of year for a transition this momentous. That same rising, emerging energy I sense from the land nourishes me and this new website (!) and the writing and self-exploration workshops I've been gestating through the winter.
Like spring, I love this bit. This slow swelling from safe obscurity into inescapable presence. Change, growth, expansion—it’s scary-exciting, you know?
I'm curious, what's emerging for you now? Or, if you're in the southern hemisphere, what's easing toward rest? If it feel nourishing, maybe respond creatively to the idea/word “transition.” (Write, draw, dance, make music, do whatever makes you feel most alive.)
What has emerged and what it means
There are now three ways for us to write together!
Writing Ourself Home: Saturday Respite Writing
We meet virtually on the 1st and 3rd Saturday every month from 10 am to 11:30 am New York time. These circles are islands of respite and joyful, kind community. Cost is pay whatever you can between $10 USD and $35 USD. Reply to leave a comment if you’d like to join us!
Listening With Our Bodies: Writing Toward Resilience
Offered through the amazing Transformative Language Arts Network, in this six-session class, we will explore our own noticing patterns—the ways we notice and what we notice—through multi-sensory exercises and writing invitations. We will consider if we’d like to change established patterns or cultivate expanded noticing to deepen our well of resilience and engagement. (Even though the class begins July 20, it will probably fill well ahead of time. Definitely check it out soon if you’re interested.)
Alchemical Writing: Stones, Bones and Seasons
(This is the workshop idea I mentioned in my last letter.) This class/workshop/experience has a soul, and a time-frame, of its own so details are emerging slowly, like leaves on the trees in this ecosystem. So far it has claimed the above title and it will probably run for the first time from the June solstice through the September equinox. Reply if you’d like me to alert you when it’s fully emerged and ready to welcome people.
Lastly, a spring-inspired poem I’m working on.
trailing my eyes through replete green I am hip-deep in now. daffodils. erect moss. brash onion grasses punching round blades from frost-heaved soil. Cooper's hawk drops, skims, misses, shouts his hunger and the red maple buds, and the red-winged blackbird, and the soft new air.