Jacki Carr here, good morning. I want to acknowledge that I know many of us might be navigating anger, confusion, sadness, grief and rage with the news from this past week. It's incomprehensible. All of it. Please read on if you're in the mood for a distraction of poetry or links I have been clicking lately, and do take care of you. - Jacki
I wrote you a haiku:
One Time When I was in the Muck of Age 25
My mother told me,
You can get lost to get found.
And then I could breathe.
The Gospel of Mary Oliver, Amen.
That time
I thought I could not
go any closer to grief
without dying
I went closer,
and I did not die.
Surely God
had his hand in this,
as well as friends.
Still, I was bent,
and my laughter,
as the poet said,
was nowhere to be found.
Then said my friend Daniel
(brave even among lions),
“It is not the weight you carry
but how you carry it—
books, bricks, grief—
it’s all in the way
you embrace it, balance it, carry it
when you cannot, and would not,
put it down.”
So I went practicing.
Have you noticed?
Have you heard
the laughter
that comes, now and again,
out of my startled mouth?
How I linger
to admire, admire, admire
the things of this world
that are kind, and maybe
also troubled—
roses in the wind,
The sea geese on the steep waves,
a love
to which there is no reply?
Andrea said ‘Try softer’ … so I will.
Source: Andrea Gibson / Button Poetry
Lately:
Reading: Barbara Kingsolver's Demon Copperhead’ on Audible. Psst, It was a co-recipient of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and won the 2023 Women's Prize for Fiction.
Dreaming of: the Sequoia trees and the Kaweah River we dipped in every morning last weekend at my Retreat to the Trees in Three Rivers, California. Where to next?
Watching: Yellow leaves fall so romantically from the trees in my front yard. Everyone is talking about how they are really late this year but I don’t know any different, to me they are right on time.
Feeling: like my conversations with my child about the chapters we just read in Harry Potter (book 1) and the evil v. good in the wizard world feels like I am also talking myself through this time in our World.
Devouring: this Carrot Bundt Cake sans the cream cheese icing, I like them naked. Want to hear the best part? I made this with rainbow carrots the girls harvested from the garden and it felt like some kind of sorcery.
Sipping: piping hot meat broth for all that anti-inflammatory goodness and warmth. I made my very first meat broth this week in my Kitchen Witch class with
. And I made it all by myself and it is the most gelatinous jiggle I have ever seen and sipped. I feel so proud and I am healing so many misplaced thoughts I had about women and cooking and home and my body and food. Just wow.Wearing: All the hats and beanies. I have my eye on this hat or this one from Trek Light Gear (love their blankets, too!). And this not very subtle I-live-in-Maine-now beanie (LLBean, obvi).
Goal-ing: Signing up for the local Turkey Trot next month, we are those people. Launching my Vulnerability Club again before the year’s end as I have a couple more things to cover, stay tuned for that.
On my TBR library list: ‘The Creative Act’ by Rick Rubin, ‘Lessons in Chemistry’ by Bonnie Garmus and ‘Stolen Focus’ by Johann Hari.
Missing you and the River ...loving Andrea and Mary...thanks for acknowledging the pain and offering some salves...curioyabout V club, say more.