Consider: When the Edge Gets Closer

5 thoughts on everything and nothing

For the foreseeable future all Moon Lists paid subscriptions (monthly or annual) will be donated toward California wildfire relief. I'm taking time to identify organizations doing vital long-term recovery work in affected communities and will share specific donation details as footnotes in upcoming posts.

I had another post written and ready last week, but then the fires started a few miles away and things did not continue as I'd anticipated.

A couple years ago, I wrote "protect the flame" as my mantra for the year. The irony of that feels almost cruel now, but I was trying to name something about my tendency to lose sight of what's essential when life gets loud and complicated.

The line between everything and nothing is incredibly thin. I don't like living this close to that edge, but there's something clarifying about it. Crisis has a way of pointing out what parts of life you actually care about and which parts you've been performing. It shows you where you've been arranging your life into a story that makes sense to everyone but yourself.

Jean Gaumy, Italy; 1977

Things I'm thinking about, related or not:

• The difference between rituals that ground us and habits that just give us the illusion of control. Some practices bring you closer to yourself; others keep you at a safe distance, offering the comfort of routine without the risk of presence.

• Louise Glück writes how her poems "were me; they represented or embodied me. But, at the same time, they were not me; they were a thing apart that could be studied and adjusted and made perfect, as my actual self could not be."

• The word "attention" comes from Latin attendere - literally "to stretch toward." We're always orienting ourselves around something, whether we recognize it or not. What are we stretching toward, and what are we straining to avoid?

• Rebecca Solnit wrote that "to be lost is to be fully present, and to be fully present is to be capable of being in uncertainty and mystery." There's a difference between noticing life and trying to capture it. Sometimes our need to make sense of things prevents us from experiencing them at all.

• Getting closer to what matters often means letting go of who you think you should be. It's not about improvement, or being "better" or "good" – it's about being awake.
  
  Here with you all, always wishing you well.
  LP