letter 13: essence
Start here:
As I’ve mentioned in letters prior, for me life moves in a looping, abstract, often inconsistent pattern. It tapers and streamlines, it expands and contracts. I am not a person of constants—I yield to the change around me and within me as best as I can and I’m learning everyday to be graceful with myself for it. The mission is to remain open and soft despite what any external and internal storytelling tells you not to be.
October felt eternal. October was a funeral. November was bright, busy, exciting, fresh. Today is December 1st, and I am deeply exhausted. It occurs to me that I have only been single a total of three months since the age of 19. There are new parts of myself I never knew existed emerging each and every moment I slow down and listen. Maybe more than new parts of myself, there’s been a reemergence of the parts of myself that I left behind in pursuit of another person. Each day is an opportunity to explore who I am and be gracious with the changes I find.
When I was 15, I had a desperate obsession with Allen Ginsberg (yes, it started with Bob Dylan and snowballed). I clutched his collected works to my chest like a Bible and took it with me everywhere I could. It was cute, if concerning to some. There are more than a few ways this admiration molded me, but one poem of his in particular has been sticking up like a little flag from the craters in my brain:
Cosmopolitan Greetings
Stand up against governments, against God. Stay irresponsible. Say only what we know & imagine. Absolutes are Coercion. Change is absolute. Ordinary mind includes eternal perceptions. Observe what’s vivid. Notice what you notice. Catch yourself thinking. Vividness is self-selecting. If we don’t show anyone, we’re free to write anything. Remember the future. Freedom costs little in the U.S. Advise only myself. Don’t drink yourself to death. Two molecules clanking us against each other require an observer to become scientific data. The measuring instrument determines the appearance of the phenomenal world (after Einstein). The universe is subjective.. Walt Whitman celebrated Person. We are observer, measuring instrument, eye, subject, Person. Universe is Person. Inside skull is vast as outside skull. What’s in between thoughts? Mind is outer space. What do we say to ourselves in bed at night, making no sound? “First thought, best thought.” Mind is shapely, Art is shapely. Maximum information, minimum number of syllables. Syntax condensed, sound is solid. Intense fragments of spoken idiom, best. Move with rhythm, roll with vowels. Consonants around vowels make sense. Savour vowels, appreciate consonants. Subject is known by what she sees. Others can measure their vision by what we see. Candour ends paranoia.
It’s easy to play as an antagonist against the ‘system’ we live in and must learn to cope with, to feel anarchy boil inside of us, to be contrarian, but the way I view things, often this is as feeble and weak-willed as those viewed as “cogs in the machine.” It takes hard work to live in the grey area. God lives in the grey area.
Opposition has been on my mind lately; how we can navigate opposition gracefully, the importance in opposition in art, especially music. The older I get I am more understanding of my personal taste: particularly with music, I enjoy things that vary greatly, that are contradictory in nature, that bounce around, explore what they can, return to resting.
I’m now able to view the past and reflect on motives behind certain habits, hobbies, projects—I am able to see more clearly what I was doing for myself and what I was doing for others, what sprang up out of my own essence versus what I was allowing to clog the valve.
Dancing? That, for the most part, has always been for me, most of all when I am home alone. The gym? Never for me. Always with the desire to be so small I would fit in the palm of a man’s hand. There was a period of time I swore I would die without the gym, and then I stopped drinking energy drinks and realized I was fucking tired.
From letter 11: the search:
“There’s an exponential list of hobbies that I’ve pinned to my breast to feel more, each begins with a spark, some sort of internal flare of worthiness. For quite some time my hobby was men: hunting down an ounce of approval. Inevitably, the cutting open of the package comes, leaving me barren with the fallout of my emotional determination to stick to something (or sometimes, an ungodly amount of yarn, art supplies.) Torpefied by all the options, by the grand nature of the world around me.”
In mid-October, I decided to run a little experiment in my life: taking my gut instinct at face value and running with it. I’ve lived a lot of my life up until this year either up in my head, deliberating, or in my heart, ruminating.
It’s a choice to trust yourself, it’s a choice to be open with yourself and others about who you are, and it’s a choice to not feel any shame about it.
This, for me, is often concerning something as small as what I want to eat for breakfast or what I want to wear for the day. It’s about accepting some days I want to wear a baggy t-shirt and a long skirt and hiking boots and a beanie with no makeup, and other days I want to wear a frilly little white dress with Mary Janes and red lipstick. For me, it’s about accepting that I don’t have to commit to any of these things, that “knowing who you are” is knowing that there is multiplicity within you.
The art speaking to me most clearly these days takes the form of ceramics and Ikebana flower arrangements.
by Mary Rogers
Ikebana arrangement by Karina Kamaletdinova
In the past weeks, I’ve been actively engaged in three specific practices that are just for me: sitting with tea, silent meditation, and long hikes.
Within this experiment, running through these practices that have created enough space for me to see my emotions a little clearer, a couple themes have been popping up:
Releasing the need for external validation and concern for others’ perception of me
Guilt, what it means, how it feels, and what lies behind it
(1) Releasing the need for external validation and concern for others’ perception of me:
I am beginning to understand that what others think about me is none of my business, and is something I have no control over. Trying to come off a certain way (through how I dress, speak, behave, etc.) only dilutes who I am and roadblocks me from myself.
Ways I’ve been practicing this:
* Being honest with grace but without remorse
* Logging out of social media (!!!)
* Listening to my ‘mmm’s, ‘mmhmm’s, and ‘ehhh’s
* Dressing how I want to despite what the occasion is
* Only giving as much as I feel able to in any given moment
(‘your best’ is variable, today and tomorrow are not the same, what is true in this moment will not be true in seconds (‘absolutes are coercion, change is absolute’))
* Having things that are just for me
* Crying when I need to
Something equally beautiful and terrifying about this approach to things: people and places and things will naturally weed their way out of your life when you are not filtering yourself for their sake.
I admit there’s some backslide with all of these practices—hard days come occasionally, and more often when it’s dark and cold. I smoke a cigarette and don’t beat myself up about it, I dust my bookshelves, I try to eat a meal, I take a hot bath. I try to take care of myself.
There’s something that happens when you cut the shit and create enough real rest and silence for yourself. What I’ve personally noticed is that there are these little loose threads all about my being. The natural inclination is to pull, pull, pull these threads, to untangle them.
Naturally, what happens is some sort of unraveling. It isn’t pretty, and it certainly isn’t easy, but it makes for someone truer than before. In many different ways, that’s how I see FRITH—as a way to document the untangling of threads, to let things fall apart if they need to, to unfurl.
(2) Guilt, what it means, how it feels, and what lies behind it
Anyone who knows me knows I am very emotional, sometimes to a fault. Growing up I always felt a lot of guilt and shame around my sensitivity.
In recent years I’ve gotten to understand emotions a bit better as a source of a very specific kind of inner-alchemy that provides an opportunity to do a lot of growing. Lately, guilt has been an emotion heavily concentrated in my life and body.
What it’s teaching me:
Guilt is asking you to lean into whatever it is you feel guilt for doing:
You feel bad for asking for/saying what you need? Ask for it.
Guilt comes up when you express yourself openly and honestly? Stop managing your being.
You feel like you can’t say ‘no’ to plans? I know you’re tired.
Late night sweet-tooth? Girl……you’re hungry.
Obviously this is with very certain scenarios—not all guilt is unwarranted and some things should almost definitely yield guilt. In my personal case, however, guilt populates in many different unjustifiable cases.
As an adult, I’ve been finding that guilt is a choice. Often it is an internalized story that came from outside of us, that we’re choosing to replay.
That’s not to say choosing to not feel guilt is easy, but that we should consider the story we’re playing for ourselves when we feel guilt in our bodies.
Guilt for me is most often coming up when I say no or ask for what I need—and what the guilt is telling me is that these are things I need practice with, things I need to do more of. I am a human with needs, that’s okay.
Notes app words from my hikes..
My current daily herbal infusion:
* Stinging nettle [three heaping tablespoons]
* Spearmint [two heaping tablespoons]
* Chamomile [one and a half tablespoons]
* Blue lotus flower [petals from one flower]
Soothing to the nervous system and deeply nutritive, this infusion has been a wonderful and delicious way to support myself for the
Steep in 40 ounces of water for four+ hours. I steep mine overnight and add a pinch of Celtic sea salt and an ice cube come morning.
Stinging nettle
Stinging nettle, or Urtica dioica is a beloved herb amongst herbalists for its powerful nutritive properties. This green, leafy herb contains high amounts of essential vitamins and nutrients: vitamins A, C, E, F, K, P, zinc, formic acid, magnesium, carbonic acid, iron, copper, selenium, boron, bromine, chlorine, chlorophyll, potassium, phosphorus, sodium, silica, iodine, chromium, silicon, and sulfur.
One cup of stinging nettle provides 42% of your daily recommended calcium intake. Stinging nettle also contains Vitamin B-complexes as well as thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, B-6 all of which are found in high levels and act as antioxidants.
Other ways nettle can support…
diuretic
styptic
kidney support
muscle recovery
anti-histamine
tissue tonic
anti-inflammatory
vulnerary
hormone balancing
hair, skin, nails
blood-building (high in iron)
Nettle is a relatively safe and easy herb to interact with. Keep an eye out for it on your hikes and walks, and harvest with care
*note that the word "stinging" preceding “nettle” is true in this case; nettle has small hair-like structures on the underbelly of its leaf that may sting you during harvest; once the herb is dried or cooked, it's stinging properties are deactivated.
My personal favorite way to interact with stinging nettle is by making medicinal infusions with it. Nettle can be easily blended with other herbs, and when prepared as a tonifying infusion, it becomes a dark green color. The taste is quite green and vegetal—you can definitely taste the minerals!
In my opinion, nettle tastes best when blended with mints, teas (white, black green), and light, floral herbs. Nettles can also be harvested fresh, and cooked in a skillet (similarly to spinach) and enjoyed with a meal.
And as per usual, a playlist to send you on your way with. This one’s exciting for me! It feels like pure me, pure essence, only what I like, without thought of curation for an outsider’s ear. Enjoy or don’t ;)
Sending you warm fingers and toes, lots and lots of dark, dark sleep, and cuddles from a purring kitten.
Love as always,
Morgan