To Keep Us Alive
I love the gold light as October moves into November, the piles of squash on roadside stands, and the way the air smells. If I could, I would give you a handful of White Pine needles, like those all over my drive right now, and ask you to inhale. Mmmm. So good.
I watched a 9 month old have his first experience of Fall this past weekend. He and his five year old brother found a pile of oak leaves and stayed there, for at least two hours, just touching and smelling and rolling around in a state of natural happiness. I hope to find some way to experience the equivalent this week.
We think there are more important things to do with our time and bodies but is that actually true? When it’s difficult to stop and enjoy the present, I feel more able to pause when I think of it as a micro-practice in service of self-liberation. (Namely liberation from constant productivity, which is neither good for humans or the earth at this point.)
I've been thinking so much about how to be free. I fell in love with poetry because I knew I was meant to be an artist from a very young age, and eventually I learned that language was my calling, not dance or violin or acting or film, though I tried all of these disciplines along the way. I love words and I love what I can make with them. But equally important to me, at this stage in my life, is the way that poetry—the practice of it—continues to help me be more free. In mind. In body. In work. In how I think about what I am supposed to be doing with my time. And of course, in my imagination.
This past week I found myself thinking about how every day, and really, every minute, I am in a position to make choices about how fast I move, and this is a form of freedom that I really value.
For me, it must not result in a feeling that I am holding my breath, or developing a knot somewhere in my stomach or neck or shoulders. I have finally learned that I really don't like to feel as though I can't keep up with what needs to be done. I have radically simplified my life over the last 8 or so years. I accept what I don't have, or won't have, because I want to live in this relationship with my body. I don't want to sacrifice it—or my happiness—except under the most extreme circumstances.
—Holly Wren Spaulding, November 2022