almost still

I’ve struggled to be still and good.

I’ve struggled to smile when someone says smile, I for sure do not.

When someone says “Oops, looks like it's time to wax your  mustache," I grow my mustache bushy.

Also my beard.

So when Gabrielle said, “almost stillness” in class the other day, I stopped struggling and sunk into my favorite self - the one that listens. The one that trusts herself and doesn’t fight to be anything but herself. The one who still doesn’t wax her mustache, but since we are in masks all the time, it doesn’t seem to matter now (The other night, Glen said “You have butter in your beard.” We laughed, so hard).

When Paulette emailed me this sentence, “Not pushing with ambition, being with attention,” I sunk even deeper, trusted even more, danced with more stillness than I ever had as I paid close attention to everything, easily.

When Val said, “What would happen if I didn’t have fear - only curiosity” it felt hard not to cry, and when Gabrielle said “This class is an opportunity not to be at war,” the silence that followed almost shattered the computer screen.

When I was little, my nickname was beez wild (my sister would complain to my parents, “Joanna beez wild!” and so, beez wild), because at night, after dinner, I’d get wild. I'd crawl up the walls in the doorways of our house, perch up at the top, and then jump to the ground, frog hop around, and shimmy back up again. 

As an adult, at night and after dinner, I’m still beez wild, and stillness and silence seem far away. The local herd of deer with their babies — the ones I told you about a few newsletters ago —  know me so well now, that after our night hike, when Glen and I are back at the house, tooling around outside, and I’m singing and dancing, making sounds that make no sense, crawling and hopping from here to there - the herd looks up at me, and I swear to god they shake their heads, just like my parents did, then they flick their big ears, and go back to eating the leaves.

I keep jumping and singing until I am done, say good night to the deer -- they nod in return -- and go inside. I start working on this newsletter, and find myself almost still.

Almost still as we imagine the world we want to become while the world that is, is falling.

Almost still as another black man is shot and killed, or shot and paralyzed, or shot or shot or shot, and the streets are filled with the people -- bodies on the line in a way they were not on the line only a few weeks ago, in this country I am writing you from.

Almost still not knowing what happens next.

Almost still hoping that what happens next will ease some of the hurt. (And wondering...can it though?)

Almost still with fear, and then remembering what Val said, and breathing into that fear, with sweetness, as Val also said, and working toward kindness, in the midst of a rage that is unbound.

I am beez wild.

A hairy grungy beez wild who can’t stand it when the man on the street corner says “Smile."

I am a hairy grungy beez wild who lunges and leaps, who crawls up the sides of doorways, whose feet are dirty from walking barefoot through streams, whose body is moving always moving, 

and violence is violence is violence until it stops — make it stop,

and we are almost still.

~


In a little corner of the world, a small but vibrant group of BIPOC young people are working to make change. They are grappling with how to build a future that honors them, cherishes them, holds them, lifts them up, as our world, any world, should and should have so that they don't have to work so hard for it.

They are imagining this world that they will help grow. 

These are the kids from YAASPA, the ones I’ve been talking about these past few weeks.

We, as a collective, have raised $1,511.29 for the BIPOC youth working with YAASPA. 

The Executive Director is so excited, she could barely contain herself in her email to me this morning. Usually the emails I get from her are very professional, but today they were filled with hearts and rainbows and stars. One sentence simply stopped in the middle, and spilled over with smiley faces.

I'll send the check off to her tomorrow, so if you'd still like to be part of this imagining, you can. Just click here.

~

Gabrielle wrote this poem in class yesterday. It feels important to share it with you.

Start close in
don’t take the second step
or the third
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step
you don’t want to take.
Start with
the ground
you know,
the pale ground
beneath your feet,
your own
way of starting
the conversation.

David Whyte, Start close in


Today, beginning with sweetness 
and grief.
Lying on the pale ground I know —
and don’t know — almost stillness,
and almost non-doing and
my right hand slides very lightly
along the smooth oak floor, skin 
feeling its coolness, its surface easy
to glide across. 
This reaching into space
with sadness under my skin, behind
and in my eyes — making a bridge of grief.
Am I making a bridge of grief 
toward the women on their own floors,
toward two men in a prison who also feel
the loss of a parent in their lives? Or
is this a bridge that arises naturally,
made of gap, 
made of quiet and almost non-doing,
made of breath and loss and
sadness?
A humanity bridge — 
and not just humanity —
a bridge of being an animal, 
maybe lost, temporarily — maybe 
not lost —
in a wooded place, where
grief is a stream, and my body
instinctively looks for the warm places
where sunlight falls down through shadows
and I have to be quiet enough to hear it,
though grief may be loud.

A place where I might take
just that first step, the one
I’m not sure I want to take, the one
that is so quiet I can almost hear
my pores opening and closing as
I breathe. 
So quiet, I can hear my eyes make tears,
and that first step is also the tears stinging
in release. 

It is also a long stem of grass
longing   

longing   

longing to become a bridge between
my loss and another’s loss and another’s
and another’s. This
becomes the sweet step I do want to take
beginning with that slow glide of my hand
then my arm, then
my whole body across space
to join a conversation that begins
with sadness.

Gabrielle Edison
September 1, 2020


Sending love to every single one of you,
Joanna