VAST FORWARD

My introduction to existentialism occurred in my senior year in high school, when my advanced French class read La Peste (The Plague) by Albert Camus. The novel explores the various ways in which people respond to crisis, specifically a plague that engulfs the coastal city of Oran in northern Algeria. At first, despite growing evidence that the illness is spreading, many people act as if the trouble is nothing much to worry about and will soon pass. They “disbelieved in the plague,” Camus writes. “They thought that everything still was possible for them; which presupposed that pestilences were impossible. How should they have given a thought to anything like plague, which rules out any future, cancels journeys, silences the exchange of views.” Eventually, the disease takes over and the gates of the city shut. By that time, the question of belief or disbelief has become absurd.

For the past few months I’ve been writing about Camus’s plague as a metaphor for how society is dealing with climate change. Now, all of a sudden, we have a real plague of our own as the world confronts the coronavirus. Author Nassim Nicholas Taleb would say that the coronavirus is a “black swan event.” That’s an event that comes very suddenly and unexpectedly and has a major impact, either positive or negative. Black swan events surprise you, throw you off balance, and often freak you out. In retrospect, pundits have plenty of opinions about why they happened, but while they’re occurring they have the power to knock our sensible responses aside, for it seems that all we can do is react.

So, now that the coronavirus has killed (at this writing) four people in the United States and more than 3,100 worldwide, how can we deal with this existential threat? How can we deal with this scary black swan? Here are a few suggestions:

1. Moderate your portions of the news. How many times a day do you really need to update yourself on the latest morbidity numbers?
2. Wash your hands.
3. Don’t touch your face. (Turns out that’s a really difficult thing to do.)
4. Never ignore an impulse to do something generous and unexpected for someone. You could be a little mini black swan, a most welcome one, in somebody’s day.
5. Replace panic with curiosity. Notice how people are behaving in response to the virus and determine how you, personally, want to act.
6. Laugh when you can. Here’s one slice of humor from outabouter.com—a comment from a pangolin, the animal from which the coronavirus apparently came… because some people want to eat it.

What I’m reading

After about thirty people told me I need to read The Overstory by Richard Powers, I finally started it on the long plane ride from Tel Aviv to Newark a couple of weeks ago. And, truly, it is wonderful, this novel about several people whose lives are shaped in one way or another by trees, such as art, science, activism, video game design, and a near-death experience. All these individual stories eventually intertwine. What is most amazing of all to me is that this book, which is:

• about how extraordinary trees are
• and in what complex ways they communicate with one another
• and are so beloved by humans
• and is a book written in language laced with poetry in every line

that such a book is a such a huge best-seller. That gives me more faith in humankind than just about anything I’ve experienced this year.

Savory Moment

During the first week of February, I was traveling in Jordan, Palestine, and Israel with a group of 91 other ecologists; spiritual leaders from many faiths, including indigenous spiritual traditions; social entrepreneurs; the prince of Ethiopia; ambassadors; filmmakers; and musicians. A hundred moments were memorable. One that continues to rise to the top is our stop on the border between Jordan and Palestine, before crossing the Jordan River into the ancient city of Jericho. We were detained for a couple of hours, and during that time, Pato Banton and Antoinette Rootsdawtah led some of us in making a music video about ending nuclear weapons. There we were in such a desolate place, where everyone who arrives is regarded with some suspicion, and as twilight fell over the land on both sides of the river, we were joyfully singing and moving in spirit!

 

 

On a cold, rainy morning last week, I was on my way home from the gym when I heard a story on “BBC News Hour” that I keep pondering.

It began with a very short conversation between Greta Thunberg and Sir David Attenborough. The young Swedish climate activist and the elderly documentary filmmaker—there are 77 years difference in their ages—express sincere appreciation for each other’s work. [Click here to listen to the interview, which begins at 45 minutes into the program. Note that the link will expire at the end of January.]

But the part of the story that has stuck with me was an interview at the end with Greta’s father, Svante Thunberg. He talks about how, as a child, his daughter had watched Attenborough’s nature films and become very sad about what was happening to the planet. For three or four years she was extremely withdrawn and depressed. She would not speak to anyone outside her family and just one of her teachers, and she would eat only at home.

Then she decided to go and sit outside the Swedish parliament building with her Climate Strike sign and some leaflets she made about the ecological crisis. On her third sit-in, someone approached and gave her a vegan Pad Thai dish from a nearby restaurant—and she ate it.

That was the turning point for her, her father says. In other words, accepting that dish from a stranger and eating it in public while she was in the midst of a kind of activism that she had devised and carried out through her own conviction and will made things begin to shift for her.

She is very famous now, says Svante Thunberg, but “she is an ordinary child.” She dances. “She laughs a lot.”

He described it as a “turning point.” And I wonder: was it Greta’s determination to be public with her outrage and grief that opened her enough to accept that food? And did the acceptance of food, which turned out to be nourishing and safe, then further fuel her activism?

We all encounter such turning points throughout our life, the moment when one small action makes another action possible. And somewhere in the transition between them, consciousness, too, begins to unfold in a new direction. We start to see that our old ways don’t necessarily apply to the future. We realize that certain things are possible that, a day ago, were not possible at all.

Wouldn’t you love to talk about this further with Greta Thunberg herself?

 

What I’m reading

The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste. This novel is about a young servant girl, Hirut, who becomes a warrior when Italy invades her country of Ethiopia in 1935. The author moves the action back and forward in time, from events that occurred before Hirut’s birth, to snatches of the backgrounds of some of the other characters, to the protagonist’s life as an elderly woman. Hirut is fierce, and part of her fierceness is impelled by the violence done to her physically, sexually, and emotionally. The writing focuses on the inner lives of the characters, even as it makes you feel the dust of the roads, smell the spice and garlic on the cook’s hands, hear the brush crackling on a still night when the enemy is closeby.

Savory Moment

For our Christmas tree this year, I decided not to buy a fir tree or even cut one myself, but instead to go out in the woods and find a dead branch that I could repurpose. I set it up in the living room, then got out the box of ornaments, many of which have been on family trees since I was a child, others hand-made by Andy created and his children before I met him. My eagerly-awaited, savory moment was when I unwrapped the little blue elf that was my favorite ornament when I was small. Seeing him again and placing him in a prominent spot on the tree made me nostalgic, happy, grateful, and sad all at once.

Upcoming Schedule

Next year my Bali from Within trip (March 2-14, 2020), which I’ve been offering since 2008, will include three stops to find and make beauty at wounded places, which is the focus of my newest book and the organization Radical Joy for Hard Times. Even in Bali, where art, spirituality, and nature are interwoven, the land is hurting. Next year, we’ll visit some of these places with our Balinese guides to bring attention and beauty, for example:

• a river that’s drying up because of tourist development for hotels and spas
• a clove forest that has been damaged by the excessive rains of climate change
• Tanah Lot, one of Bali’s most sacred and scenic temples, slated to be in view of a multi-million dollar hotel and golf course proposed by Donald Trump

Click the link to read more about Bali from Within and download an itinerary.

 

 

We have a bird feeder outside our dining room window, and Andy is a devoted bird-nourisher all year long. In the winter he buys 40 pounds of black sunflower seeds and mixed seed each week, and he pays great attention to the ways and habits of the different species who gather.

The birds used to fly into the big picture window, so Andy hung a string of Tibetan prayer flags across the glass to alert them that woods do not lie this way.

A few days ago, the day after we got about a foot of snow, we were having breakfast when a mourning dove flew into the window and fell heavily into the snow. I pulled on my rubber boots and ran out. She had fallen headfirst into the snow and was lying absolutely still. I lifted her out with both hands, and as soon as her head was free, she flapped her wings and tried to get away. I let her go and she hopped a few feet across the snow and just sat there.

I wasn’t sure whether I should give her something warm to sit on, provide water, or what. Andy said we should just leave her to heal herself in her own way. We had seen a blue jay do that a few years earlier. So we did. The dove sat absolutely still for about ten minutes, although we could see her twitch her head and wings slightly every now and then. And then, quite suddenly, she lifted up and flew off.

It was an extraordinary spectacle of patience as the bird just sat while her body simply did what it had to do to readjust.

I keep thinking about the bird, her accident and recovery. I wonder if humans couldn’t do something like this, not only on a physical, but on a metaphysical level as well. What if, when we suffered a disappointment or had a fall, we simply sat and waited in absolute confidence that the body, with time and patience, would do what was necessary to repair us? Of course, we would have to bring to the situation attentiveness to the moment—no worrying about the future, no looking at our watch and wondering when things were going to start to improve. No self-chastising about our stupidity of flying into a window.

I see the mourning doves gathering at the feeder now and hope very much that the wounded bird is among them.

 

What I’m reading

I finished Farewell to the Horse by Ulrich Raulff and now I’m catching up on an article in The New Yorker  about the horrendous nationalism being practiced in India by the prime minister Narendra Modi and his followers. They are targeting Muslims in ways that are absolutely criminal. America under Donald Trump has not reached these depths of outright hatred and genocide, but we are on the path toward it.

Savory Moment

I spent the weekend selling my books at the annual holiday craft fair at the Unitarian-Universalist Congregation of Binghamton (NY), where I am a member. I was seated by a woman selling soaps with natural scents on my left and a woman selling little pillows with fragrant natural plants on my right. Across from me, in front of the window, was a woman selling small watercolors of flowers and a woman selling hand-made glass ornaments. When the sun was low in the sky in the afternoon it lit up the glass. My books sold pretty well, but the experience of being in the company of people who take time to make lovely and creative things was very touching, and I was glad to be part of them.

Upcoming Schedule

Next year my Bali from Within trip (March 2-14, 2020), which I’ve been offering since 2008, will include three stops to find and make beauty at wounded places, which is the focus of my newest book and the organization Radical Joy for Hard Times. Even in Bali, where art, spirituality, and nature are interwoven, the land is hurting. Next year, we’ll visit some of these places with our Balinese guides to bring attention and beauty, for example:

• a river that’s drying up because of tourist development for hotels and spas
• a clove forest that has been damaged by the excessive rains of climate change
• Tanah Lot, one of Bali’s most sacred and scenic temples, slated to be in view of a multi-million dollar hotel and golf course proposed by Donald Trump

Click the link to read more about Bali from Within and download an itinerary.

 

In the “Savory Moment” segment of my last blog, I wrote about Terry Tempest Williams’s speech at Bioneers last month, in which she talked about the frequencies that geologists had recorded by placing seismometers on Castleton Tower, a rock formation near Moab, Utah. Williams stood quietly at the podium before three thousand people as she played a three-minute segment of the pulse of the rock. (You can hear the recording  on Outside Magazine’s website.)

That “savory moment” has turned into a savory month for me, partly because I was moved to such tears by the voice of the Earth that I had to leave the auditorium afterwards and miss the next couple of speakers. But it also stays with me because of the way Terry Tempest Williams handles the pause.

I first saw her make this bold on-stage magic in 2014, when I was with Judy Todd at the annual Bioneers satellite conference on Whidbey Island, Washington. Besides offering their own programs and workshops, the organizers streamed many of the speakers at the big national San Rafael conference.

At that event, Williams was talking about the importance of rethinking what we know and allowing fresh creativity to rearrange previous patterns. To illustrate, she explained that the German composer Max Richter had become weary of how the beautiful violin concerto that he loved, Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons,” had been trivialized and sentimentalized. And so, he had recomposed it. With that announcement, Williams played the first short movements of Richter’s piece. (And it is stunning; I ordered it myself that same day.) While it was playing, she just stood there, listening, responding gently with her head and then her whole body, glancing over the audience with penetrating but nonjudgmental curiosity. At an event where most of the speakers are so polished, so well-rehearsed, so in command of every sigh, pause, and tear of their performance, Terry Tempest Williams gave over her time on stage to something beautiful that someone else had made. She took that pause and showed no impatience to reclaim her voice, reclaim the microphone, reclaim attention. She was absolutely comfortable to wait in silence. It was a powerful moment I have never forgotten.

I long to stand with such ease and generosity in a great silence.

 

What I’m reading

When I was living in a little stone cottage in England in 1973-74, I used to check out books from a tiny library in the market town of Farringdon, Berkshire, where I bought my meager supply of groceries. One day I discovered a novel by the Australian writer, Patrick White, who had received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1973. I fell in love with his work and have read all his eleven novels at least once over the years. Currently I’m rereading an early one, The Living and the Dead. What I love about White is that his writing captures, in a way I’ve never encountered in any other author, the emotional, perceptual field between what’s happening on the outside and what’s experienced on the inside. For example (these are from just two pages I was reading this morning):

A 15-year-old girl feeling misunderstood by her family: “Sometimes she went to her room and cried, the luxurious tears of self-pity, pausing for a moment for a footstep that might prolong the reason for dissatisfaction. Time, she felt, would relieve the tyranny. She looked forward, out of the wilderness of fifteen, to a state of emotional independence.”

Her older brother, visiting Germany before beginning university at Cambridge: “It made Elyot choose his words carefully, a wadding to what he wanted to express, out of pure respect for Frau Fiesel’s sensibility. Both physically and mentally she was soft. You felt if you touched her she would sink in, the outer, unresisting flesh, it would sink and never come out again, remain like the dip in an eiderdown. So it made you go warily.”

Savory Moment

For about a month a crew has been working in our little village to install new waterlines under the street. During the past few days, when the temperatures have been below freezing, they’ve been grinding, digging, and patching in front of our house. Yesterday afternoon, Andy and I spontaneously decided to make cookies for them. Half an hour later we had baked a couple dozen oatmeal cookies, which we put in a paper bag and took out to them. They were really happy!

Upcoming Schedule

I’m so excited that my Bali from Within trip next year (March 2-14, 2020) will include three stops to find and make beauty at wounded places, which is the focus of my newest book and the organization, Radical Joy for Hard Times. Ever since our first annual Global Earth Exchange in 2010, our friends in Bali have participated in this day of giving gifts of beauty back to ecologically challenged places. Even in Bali, where art, spirituality, and nature are interwoven, the land is hurting. Next year, we’ll make a pilgrimage of mindfulness to three of those wounded places, for example:

• a river that’s drying up because of tourist development for hotels and spas
• a clove forest that has been damaged by the excessive rains of climate change
• Tanah Lot, one of Bali’s most sacred and scenic temples, slated to be in view of a multi-million dollar hotel and golf course proposed by Donald Trump

Click the link to read more about Bali from Within and download an itinerary.

 

A couple of years ago I wrote a Vast Forward blog about how I’d been watching Anthony Bourdain’s show, “Parts Unknown,” and learning how to have meaningful conversations with strangers. Bourdain’s easygoing, genuinely curious way of talking to people in the many countries whose food he explored really did help me to slice through superficial chatter and engage in interesting dialogue.

I often learn from people I’ll never meet. For example, when I was writing my book, Radical Joy for Hard Times, I read a little book on love by the 19^thcentury French writer Stendahl. The feisty, urgent tone of the introduction instantly gave the “voice” I had been seeking for my book.

When I was a teenager and an absolutely devoted Beatlemaniac, I learned from their humor, togetherness, and creativity to quit hiding what I thought of as my own unacceptable weirdness. In cahoots with my friend Carrie, I embarked on outlandish escapades that tore down my isolation and opened me up to my own sense of daring.

A few days ago Paul McCartney taught me something. As most Vast Forward readers know, I went to England in September to teach a workshop and took a side trip to Liverpool, where I splurged on a 7-hour private tour of Beatles sites. That trip rekindled my love of the Beatles, and when I got home, I bought Philip Norman’s biography of Paul (see note below in What I’m Reading). I’d forgotten that Paul took such pains to be a good business manager with the Beatles’ Apple Corps and later in his own music business. His insistence on good sense, in fact, was partly what drove the other three away from him; they were content, after Brian Epstein died, to listen to promises instead of reason.

Inspired by Paul, I decided that I, too, could exhibit more business sense than I typically take pains with. Therefore, I drafted an agreement with colleagues with whom I’m about to engage in a big project. I wrote out what I’ll be responsible for and what they’ll be responsible for. I have a tendency to dive into things and figure out the details later, and this approach feels very grounded. Discussions are ongoing, but the first step is most satisfying.

What I’m reading

Paul McCartney: The Life, by Philip Norman. Norman has, fortunately, eliminated all the stories that Beatles fans have heard a hundred times, and more than half of this fat 800-page book is devoted to Paul’s life post-Beatles. Where it misses is in any real attempt to understand its subject’s inner life, which of course is the most interesting.

Savory Moment

At the Bioneers conference in San Rafael, California October 18-20, Terry Tempest Williams was one of the keynote speakers. She talked about a team of geologists who put seismometers on Castleton Tower, a rock formation near Moab, Utah. And, said Williams, “Castleton Tower has a pulse.” She then stood completely still and let the audience hear the frequencies, the voice, of the rock. It was stunning. It turns out that the rock changes its tone depending on temperature, moisture, and the movement of the Earth. The Earth really does speak. I was moved to tears. You can listen to a recording on the Outside Magazine website.

Upcoming Schedule

I’m home for several weeks, for which I’m very glad. It’s been a busy, full, productive summer, and now darkness and winter return. Time to write, think, read, envision, and hang out with Andy.

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.”