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[greenstorm]

I need to think very hard about how I struggle to connect impermanence and gratitude, and think of ways to honour and cherish things that don't involve permanence. This is revealing a gap there for me, because everything composts in the end. Why can I not honour gifts given me and also allow them to return to the earth?

Comments

[yarrowkat]

i think of the sacred act in both Hopi and Tibetan traditions of sand painting. much care, devotion, and time is spent creating an exacting and beautiful art object which is then swept away or allowed to blow away in the wind, to release the prayer/energy. intentional impermanence.

[yarrowkat]

thinking more about this, i think it is the act of release as the part of the spell where control is relinquished and it is up to the Universe, given back, and specifically in terms of gratitude, i see value in that letting-go; when blessing is surrendered to the world, the world will return it in further blessings. law of 3 and all that.

[greenstorm]

This makes a lot of sense to me, and is pretty much why I need to turn my attention to it. I need to send some curiosity towards relinquishing control of my past, even the parts I loved, even the parts I chose.

[greenstorm]

Gardening is this, for me, and making all the myriad food things I make: it's interacting with a thing through process and experience and then letting that experience fall away. Then I grow into the next experience.

Somehow that is fine, but the thought of letting certain moments fall away is so sad.

[yarrowkat]

my tantra teacher Alex would say, "let it fill your battery and then move through you, don't try to hang on." that is always their advice. i'm highly imperfect at following it, myself, i tend to clutch certain things. and also to try to remember that my spine is a battery & holds energy & potency that can be pulled from one time to another.

[greenstorm]

I've been thinking about this and I think I'm relatively good at doing it with actual things, but not good at doing it for memories or records. Like, it's ok if the experience passes, but I want to hodl on to the memory of it and I know it can't.

Hm, hm. Lots to chew on.

[yarrowkat]

somewhere else recently you asked me if i like my changes all at once, or a bit at a time. and i just realized how clearly my life right now is an answer - i would want to say i like them a bit at at a time, but in fact here i am with a new love affair, and starting a press/side-business with terra, and planning all the plans about my upcoming new life - everything all at once. this dawned on me because i'm thinking of perming my hair - and i always change my hair when i need to change my life and can't. so here we are. cut off my hair in 2017; got divorced in 2020-21. curling it now maybe (and certainly coloring it this weekend, but that's monthly anyway), Mohrhardt in 2024-25. right in the pattern.

[greenstorm]

I do them all at once! I mean, a big change in the pattern is going to ripple into everything anyhow which then needs rejigging, might as well do it all at once? And that is truly a lot.

My hair gets changed in times of loss. And change, I guess, is loss.

[yarrowkat]

it is. i can feel the grief that will come in the wings of this decision, and i will do my best to make time to grieve the loss of all of this, even as i step into the new life with all my heart.

the all-my-heart part lets me know i'm doing the right thing. and then there's still this crazy-long timeline on it, so bits of things float to the surface and submerge again becase of that.

[greenstorm]

Long timelines are so so hard. I thought mine, from this spring to June, was difficult to handle! But maybe making incremental progress towards it regularly will help (you're doing the thing! Just one piece at a time) and it sounds like you have that lined up.

I still feel sad about Cor Viriditas. Many people, when they say they fall in love with a place, mean it as a metaphor. I don't. It seems like you've connected with your other place pretty strongly? Or is it mostly the freedom it represents?

[yarrowkat]

i am trying so hard to trust the process, trust that everything is happening in perfect timing. i kind of want it to be now. but it isn't now, so we have to plan it well and we have time to plan it well.

we're going out to Tara's for a week in December, to dig into these conversations in person & as a group. and re-center ourselves on the land and feel it in a different season. that'll be good.

the land there got under my skin, got into me. some particular trees. the old oak i stepped inside and stood in and listened to for a timeless while. bathtub springs & golden hillsides. i've always loved coastal California, as a guest. now i feel drawn to it as a denizen and steward. and i want the freedom & space, very definitely. but also definitely the land.

of course you are sad about Cor Viriditas. it was a very good very big dream that blossomed and fell very quickly. and that beautiful land, the heart.