Author: Trebbe Johnson

Last weekend, six members of our nature preserve stewardship committee met at the preserve to do some trail grooming. We split off into three separate groups, each heading off to a different trail. One woman, Dorrie, and I took what’s called the White Trail. She had a weed-whacker for trimming the trail, and I had a small can of white paint to brighten up the markers on the trees.

Marking thin white stripes on trees, so the next mark is visible from the one you’re at is a lot less time-consuming than swinging a heavy, gas-powered machine back and forth to cut low vegetation. I got to the place where the White Trail meets the Blue Trail, which is where Dorrie and I had agreed to stop. And then, because I had long since ceased to hear the roar of her weed-whacker, I decided not to wait for her, but to turn around and paint the other side of the trees as well, for anyone hiking from the opposite direction.

After several minutes, I met up with Dorrie. (She was covered in flecks of grass, and she told me I was covered in paint.) She told me she was going to have to stop soon, because she was just about out of gas. But, since I was far from running out of paint, I went ahead and marked trees all the way up to the trailhead.

When I met up with Dorrie again, I told her I couldn’t help wishing that there were more tasks in life when you knew you were finished simply because you ran out of gas or some other obvious sign of conclusion. As someone who’s been self-employed for more than forty years, I never know when to stop. When one thing is finished, I plunge on to the next one.

I wish my computer would run out of gas now and then.

What I’m reading

I’m almost finished rereading East of Eden by John Steinbeck. which I read enthusiastically when I was sixteen. It really is a man’s book, something I didn’t know when I was a teenager, because so much literature was written by men about men. I’m looking forward to reading Glenn Albrecht’s new book, Earth Emotions, about the human response to nature in its wholeness and its brokenness.

Savory Moment

I was enchanted during a walk the other day by the behavior of animals in a large pasture at a neighboring farm. The cows munched and stared at me. Two horses ignored me and one came trotting over to say hello. A donkey was making its way along a patch of grass and couldn’t be bothered with anything else. And a flock of sandpiper-ish birds rattled up from a bordering bush and screamed chu-chu-chu across the sky.

Upcoming Schedule

July 12-14 I’ll once again be part of an incredible literary event in this rural corner of Pennsylvania. It’s called The Gathering and in the past 12 it’s featured writers like Diane Ackerman, Tracy K. Smith, and Salman Rushdie. This year the theme is “Refugees and Immigrants” Who are They and Who am I?” I’ll be leading an experiential (writing and solo walking) called “Moving with the Ancestors.”

I grew up in an alcoholic household, which meant that promises were suspicious and expressions of opinion often unwelcome. When my father, sunk in remorse for the breakage, the violence against my mother, the shouting and blaming he’d caused the night before, swore he would never drink again, I knew, by the time I was nine or ten, that the future was likely to be as bad as, or worse than, the past. I told myself that I would hold onto the truth about my family, even though no one else seemed able to.

Though I grew up trusting myself, it took me many years before I had any confidence that what I saw or believed would be of any value to others. For much of that time, I was afraid that what I perceived might be considered rude, risky, or crazy.

So, the other day in the supermarket, when I saw a striking woman whose appearance gave away something of her recent experience, I wondered if I should speak. She was probably in her mid-fifties, and she wore leggings, a tunic, a colorful scarf, and long, dangling earrings. She was distinctive, and not just because of how she dressed or how erect was her bearing. Her head was bald, and she had no eyebrows. I’ve known enough friends and loved ones with that look to know it probably meant cancer and its awful treatment.

I also know that many people, including close friends, are often reluctant to ask questions of someone who is ill or even to suggest in any way that they’re aware that  illness is a huge, constantly looming presence in the other person’s life. Would it be rude, I thought, to say something to this woman that would acknowledge, indeed blatantly refer to, the fact that she was probably having chemotherapy? Should I dare?

I walked up to her and said, “It’s not everyone who manages to look gorgeous and elegant when she has no hair, but you’ve managed to pull it off!”

She told me it was her first day out without a hat, and that this was her second experience with chemotherapy. She said she was trying to get out into the world and not hide away. And she was grateful for what I had told her.

This small connection affirms for me a tenet of life I try to act on: If it even just slightly occurs to you to do something kind for someone… act on the impulse!

Today is Easter and I am thinking not so much about what that holiday/holy day means as about what religious symbolism in general can mean.

Yesterday I had a conversation with a good friend who has a remarkable sense of ceremony and symbolism. Although she doesn’t identify herself as a Christian, and in fact regularly meditates at a Buddhist zendo, she is intrigued with the Christian mystery stories. Yesterday, she was telling me how she observes the week between Palm Sunday and Easter, a time she finds deeply meaningful on both the psychological and spiritual levels. For example, on the night of Good Friday, she attends a vigil at a cathedral, sitting in the contemplative silence of waiting during the threshold time after Jesus is killed and before he rises. On Easter, she invites friends to join her in celebrating the new life that is the promise of this day by making small animals and other figures out of clay and natural materials and creating a little village by the brook that runs through her back garden.

Many people who profess to be spiritual seekers and who enthusiastically study Buddhism and indigenous spirituality reject Christianity. I suppose that’s partly because evangelical proselytizing is so annoying—the people who stop you on the street or come to your door and try to convince you you’re going to hell if you don’t embrace Jesus. But, really, that’s condemning the many for the few.

I don’t consider myself a Christian either, though I was brought up in the Episcopal Church. However, I’ve always been a seeker after paths of mystery, transcendence, and connection with the potent and animistic world beyond the world of the everyday. For that reason I love the ceremonies and the search for meaning in many religions, from Navajo to Yoruba, Hindu to Aboriginal. When I was in elementary school, I envied my Jewish friend Marilyn because of all the rich and meaningful ceremonies her family participated in at holidays. To me, my church services were pale and dull compared to Judaism.

And I confess that I have tended to ignore Christianity for years—taking a sort of, Yeah, yeah, I know all about that already attitude. My friend’s description of her deep and personal observance of Easter touched me and I’ve been thinking all day about how I might get reacquainted with Christianity on a different, more meaningful level. individual and culture psyche.

The great poet, W.S. Merwin, has died at age 91. He was the author of scores of books—mostly poetry, but also prose, and translations. He was dictating poems to his wife Paula even after he lost his eyesight a few years ago.

I remember discovering Merwin’s poetry in the college bookstore when I was 20 years old. I stood there, leaning against the bookcase, stunned and awed as I read one poem after another, and then reread them. Although I had very little money in those days, I had to buy that book.

What struck me then and continues to pull me back over and over to his work is that Merwin’s poems don’t hit you over the head with their messages, like those of some contemporary poets. You don’t read a Merwin poem once, then nod your head: Yes, I get it, I know about that. Rather, a Merwin poem wafts over your skin and your sensibility like a breeze. You can’t catch the fragrance in that verbal breeze right away, but have to turn back into it again and yet again to be stroked alluringly into greater awareness.

I met Merwin a few years after my first encounter with his work, when I attended a poetry reading he gave at Wesleyan College in Connecticut. We stayed in touch on and off throughout all these years. The last time I saw him was at a reading at the 92nd Street Y in New York about five years ago. Last year I wrote to him at his home in Hawaii to ask if he would write a blurb for my new book. Knowing that he was 90 years old and now blind, I didn’t even expect to hear back and was so very honored that he agreed. Here’s what he wrote:

“It’s a great vision that Trebbe Johnson is sending out into the world, and it is very much her own. The great central truth of what she is doing is the very hard lesson for all of us in our lives, and yet it is our blessing.”
—W.S. Merwin, Former Poet Laureate of the United States

Merwin is gone, but his poems will live on and on and on, because they are timeless.

The other day I had a conflict with a colleague. The details don’t matter. I’ll just say that I was unhappy with something that the other person—let’s call him or her Z—had done. I expressed my displeasure somewhat peevishly. Z had less generous terms for my tone of voice and got defensive and—in my opinion—a bit mean with their retort.

So now what?

For most of my life, whenever I was involved in an argument, I tended to assume it was my fault. I always envied those people who could smoothly blame others and boldly deny any responsibility of their own. There were even a couple of times when I was younger when someone accused me of doing something I knew I hadn’t done, and yet I actually wondered for a moment if had done it.

I’ve definitely come a long way since then, but conflict does make me uncomfortable. So, I asked myself, what should I do in this situation? It came down to four things I’ve learned over the years.

1. I recognized where I’d made my first mistake. A friend told me once that she made it a rule never to express emotions over email. She’s right. I should have called Z and had a conversation instead of spouting off over the internet, which invited Z to spout further.
2. I cooled off before leaping to further action. If I’d responded immediately to Z’s email, the situation would only have escalated.
3. I asked myself what part of this disagreement was mine to shoulder and what wasn’t. I’ve learned this practice over the years, especially in some good friendships where we’ve been able to share personal hurt or anger. We speak honestly to each other about our feelings. Then we acknowledge where we’ve each made a mistake, yet we don’t take the blame for what isn’t ours to take. In this case, I acknowledged my unfortunate means of communication and my annoying tone, but not the motive behind that tone that Z accused me of.
4. I contacted Z—yes, by email, but this time it seemed urgent and Z lives half a world out of my time zone—and apologized for my tone. When we spoke on the phone the next day, I immediately asked if we needed to say anything else to each other. We each accepted some responsibility for the problem. I would say our working relationship is even stronger.

For many of us, it’s difficult to have an argument. I’m always afraid that the friendship or working relationship will end forever if we disagree, and sometimes it has. There’s an added problem if you’re the kind of person who takes all the blame and the other person is the kind who blames others. Maybe arguing never gets completely easy. But for me, I felt I’d evolved with this one! 

What I’m reading

Finally I’m reading The Kiterunner by Khaled Hosseini, a best-seller years ago and highly recommended by a lot of people whose literary opinions I trust. It takes place in Afghanistan in the early 1980s and then again in the summer of 2001. It’s a novel of how class, race, and the very personality you’re born with can stamp your life forever. It’s about how a moment of pride or an urge to please the unpleasable can destroy something precious. It’s about redemption the hard way. And it makes you, the reader realize that the ways Afghanis suffer, in the pages of novel, under siege by the Russians and the Taliban is only going to get worse with the war launched by the U.S.

Savory Moment

When my husband and I got out of our car at the supermarket today, I glanced into the window of the car parked next to us. The motor was running. A man and woman sat in the front seat. The man held in his lap a small vase containing a variety of colorful flowers, perhaps just purchased from the florist inside the store. He had a huge grin on his face.

Other News

Unless the government shutdown shuts down airports or blizzards ice over the eastern U.S. and Britain, I leave for England on January 29^thto do a program with artgym. It’s a mix of all the things that have preoccupied me and that I’ve written about over many years and I’m honored for the opportunity.

And—again—if you’ve read my new book, will you write a review of it for Amazon or Goodreads? I would really appreciate it!

When I was in Bangkok a couple of years ago I went to visit Wat Pho, the temple of the reclining Buddha. The Buddha is 150 feet long and gold-plated. He rests with his head on his hand and he is smiling slightly, as if he were basking in the very same divine radiance that lent him his own golden color.

At the Buddha’s head a young woman was taking a selfie. She had positioned her own head and hand like his and arranged her face in her best Buddha smile.

I started asking myself the purpose of selfies. If you feel there’s a moment in your life that you need to capture and no one else is there to do the job, the smart phone makes it possible to prove your moment was real.

But what moments of our life do we choose to record? And why? And, perhaps most important of all, who are they for? What we are saying with our selfies is, in effect, I am living a meaningful life, and here’s proof. It’s almost as if our experiences have no relevance if we only see and hear and touch them, and then they just slip away. We pass through our moments. They may remain forever in our memories, but without the selfie, only we ourselves are witness to the fact that those experiences touched us as we touched them, that they enfolded us. By inserting ourselves in the photo, we offer evidence that we are full participants in our own life.

Confession: On that same trip in which I saw the women pose like a Buddha, I took a selfie in Bali with my Indonesian language teacher (above). Honestly, the reason I did so was because I was proud of myself for learning how to speak Indonesian and I wanted to show my friends my teacher and me together, as if that were proof that I had learned well.

Do you ever take selfies? And if so, of what? When? Why?

What I’m reading
I’m reading Reporter by Seymour Hersh. I read an excerpt of this book by America’s foremost investigative reporter in Harper’s. The article described how he tracked down Lt. William Calley, who was responsible for perpetrating the disaster in the Vietnamese village of My Lai in 1968. I had imagined that the whole book would be about Hersh’s clever ruses to find people who would give him information, but the more the book went along, the more it was about U.S. policy outrages themselves, rather than how he learned and wrote about them. It also got a little tiresome that, according to Hersh, anyone who edited him or questioned his tactics or fact-checked him too thoroughly was a coward or nitpicker. Get the Harper’s article and read the story about Calley instead.

Other News

I have a new calendar for 2019, illustrated with Japanese woodblock prints, and I look forward to filling it in. I’ll be home till the end of January and looking forward to beginning work with a new Radical Joy for Hard Times  board. At the end of the month I’ll be going to England to do a workshop with ArtGym in Kent.

Yesterday I spent some time in the Rubin Museum in New York. This intimate, tranquil place is devoted to the art of the Himalayas, and I love it, because the exhibitions are both classical and traditional, contemporary and innovative. The goal of the curators is to make you think in unconventional ways… and it works for me.

Recently the museum has been exploring the story of Padmasambhava, sometimes called the “Second Buddha”. Padmasambhava was instrumental in bringing Buddhism to Tibet in the 8th century and interweaving it with the indigenous spirituality of the land. However, this great teacher knew that the world was not ready to receive all his lessons at the time of his own life. Therefore, he hid some of these “treasure teachings” throughout the Tibetan landscape and even in the minds of people who would not be born for many hundreds of years. According to the Rubin, “His legends carry universal relevance about triumph over obstacles, the power of human emotions, transformation, impermanence, achieving liberation from life and death, and notions of time—all of which transcend specific cultures and eras.”

However, what fascinates me about this story—and seems to carry a lesson about what’s possible in our own time and what will reach fruition in a time to come—is this idea that you can create a message for the future. I started to think: What if each of us had a message that the current world was not quite ready for, but that we knew a future generation would urgently need? 

Just considering this possibility—that each of us holds some wisdom, some gift that is valuable and necessary for the future—can ignite our curiosity. If we allow ourselves to believe that the future awaits what we and only we have to give it, how will that knowledge shift how we live today?

What is the one true thing that you want the world to know? What would you write out and hide in the landscape, that just the right person would discover it many scores of years from now?

Just behind the woods in back of my house is a long-abandoned railroad grade. The tracks are gone, and it’s part of the Rails-to-Trails system that extends for many miles. I often follow it on my walks and bike rides.

A few weeks ago, I was appalled to discover that many trees along the sides had been cut down and the path widened to more than twice its former size. My first thought was that a gas company had taken it over, so I called the head of the regional Rails-to-Trails to ask. She assured me that they were just re-grading the trail to solve some of the problems of seasonal flooding.

Shortly after that, my husband Andy and I noticed that our little pond was higher than it had ever been and our garden beds were surrounded by water. We attributed the overflow to all the heavy rain we’d had this fall. But on my walk one day I noticed that a large ditch had been dug perpendicular to the trail into our woods and a drainage culvert placed into it. I told Andy about it, and he went out to investigate.

The man who was operating all the heavy machinery turned off the motor to speak to Andy. “Well,” he said, “I was hoping nobody would complain about it.”

Now, at that particular time, I was working with the board of directors of Radical Joy for Hard Times to create a 3-year plan for our organization. Strategic thinking is not my forte, so I was devoting a lot of attention not just to the plan itself but to the philosophical and behavioral adjustments that have to go into making a plan that really works.

And I realized that this man’s thinking about his own project was flawed. He had made hope part of it.

Hope says, I can’t foresee how this thing I’m doing is going to affect others, so I’ll just do what I can and merge my desire that things work out as I want with the expectation that somebody else will make it happen. When you make a plan, you have to imagine its successful conclusion and take all the steps you can to assure that what you envision comes to pass. Also, before enacting your plan, you must consult with anyone whose participation is crucial to its success.

Andy explained to the guy that the culvert, which he had never consulted us about, was flooding our gardens. Eventually, somewhat grudgingly, he dug out the pipe.

Hope is not an item to include in your strategic plan.

My new book…
…is doing well, I’m happy to say. Here are a couple recent interviews.

Future Primitive (interviewer Joanna Harcourt-Smith was amazing)
Yale Climate Connections (short audio excerpt and discussion of the book)

If you’ve read my book, I’d love it if you were to write a review on Amazon or Goodreads!

What I’m reading
I’m indulging these recent days in a big, thick novel I first read about 20 years ago—Gail Godwin’s A Mother and Two Daughters. I’ve read all Godwin’s novels and reread a few. This one is my favorite. The characters stand out so uniquely, the writing is great, the story unfolds in a way that feel real and timely and plausible, there’s no sentimentality, and it’s full of surprises. Heartily recommended if you just want to forget the world and be swept away.