Falling Gently Podcast

For my 58th birthday

I gave myself the gift

Of ceasing to be disappointed in myself for not being a morning person

Back in the days when I wrote New Years’ Resolutions

Becoming a morning person was on every single one of them

A fantasy in my head involving yoga and writing and tea

Before anyone else woke

Communing with the emerging light

Feeling centered and connected

That’s not generally how my day starts

I do not leave bed easily

Originally, because of my proclivities

Now, my body

Whenever I get up, I could’ve gotten up earlier

And those things I could’ve gotten done

All remain undone

So, most mornings of my life

I felt behind before I even got started

I can now feel it as a violence I did to myself

All those days, all that self-recrimination

58 seemed like the perfect time to shut off that shame faucet

And I’ve gotta tell you,

It changed things

Not starting off feeling behind is way better

Divesting from the imagery of a perfect routine

And just doing the things

Is a much calmer way to live

I have been trying to get somewhere for so long

I missed much of the rhythm of being here now

So now I’m getting really granular about being where I am

Instead of a person looking to find what’s next

Because my mother moved in, the financial need that’d been elusive is softened

And caring for her well is a privilege and sweet time

I’ve decided to explore the valley through the poetry community

And I’m astounded by all the talent

I’m doing qi gong and slow motion weight training

I’ve got a much lower expectation about how many things I ought to be accomplishing

But far more potent nonnegotiables that get my attention

Slowly, slowly fortifying

The life I want to live

Which has some similarity to that morning-person-life I imagined

But it’s distributed into my natural rhythms

I knew when I thought of it that this birthday present to myself

Was a real gift

But as I unwrap it

There are more little boxes

Opening up ways to accept myself

And this moment

No matter what time it is.

You got this at 8:08 am because Substack has a scheduling function :)

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If you were to guess

How many times in your childhood do you think you said

“When I grow up, I’ll never do that,” or

“When I have kids, I’ll never make them…” whatever

Probably a lot

Although plenty of those things are self-fulfilling prophecies

Many do shape how we move forward and raise our own children

This is something I noticed early on and had to square with

I lived my baseline, and used it to imagine my optimum

I then worked to provide my optimum for my children

Which then became their baseline

It would frustrate me how they would sometimes take my optimum for granted

But, I would have to remind myself that they never experienced my baseline

This was their baseline

And while I thought they were wildly lucky

For them it was just Tuesday

And so there should be tacos

I had to hug and kiss all my relatives every time I saw them

My children do not have to touch or be touched by any person for any reason

They do not have to deal with my creepy uncle who was always untying my bows

And while adults held authority in the house I grew up in

By the time I had kids I realized older does not necessarily mean wiser

And so while they had to be respectful, they were in no way subordinate

These things felt like huge upgrades to the operating procedures of my youth

But they’re my kids’ baseline

Anything else seems absolutely primeval to them

So I can’t quite expect them to be grateful

Indeed, they have ideas to refine their policies even further

And that’s evolution

They WILL make choices informed by their baseline, finessed into their optimum

And their children will be blest

But they probably won’t be grateful

Because that carefully engineered optimum

Will once again become a baseline

And they will call me and say, “they don’t know how lucky they have it!”

And I will laugh and say, “Yep, but it just shows you’re doing your job. That’s evolution.”

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There were brief periods when my children were in classrooms

Classrooms can be surprisingly political places

Especially for those unversed in chaos theory

We had our share of great teachers and questionable ones

Great friends and nemeses

To make sense of it all, we had a family metaphor

School is like an ice cream store

There is room for all of the flavors in the coolers

Some flavors you’ll like, some you won’t

But a big part of the value of the store is that there’s something for everyone

Dad loves pistachio ice cream. He’ll get it a decent portion of the time.

I really don’t care for the flavor. I don’t even like the look.

Even if I hated it, I’d still have to appreciate it exists because Dad enjoying pistachio ice cream gets us to the ice cream store which lets me get strawberry.

So, viva la pistachio ice cream

But, strawberry, please. Today.

Tomorrow it might be chocolate.

I might even want a double.

Every once in a while, there might be some ice-cream-catastrophe

And the scooper will need to get involved

Like tree nut flavors having a dedicated, separate container

All the flavors may not go well together

And they don’t have to

Each flavor is delicious to someone

And every one has a right to exist

You don’t need to like it

Your job is to find what you DO like

Sample away

You do not need nor want the whole cooler to be just one flavor.

You also need not eat every flavor in the cooler

Nor eat the same one every time

You don’t need anyone else to agree with you

They’re welcome to their own flavors

Sovereignty starts at the ice cream shop

But it doesn’t end there

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fallingtenderly.substack.com

When our kids were little

Sometimes a friend wouldn’t be in the mood to play with them

And they would take it personally

Doesn’t that person like me anymore?

It’s a moment

And it doesn’t feel good

It works both ways

Sometimes they wouldn’t be in the mood to play with a certain friend

It didn’t necessarily mean they didn’t like them

Or did it?

That could be a real quandary

How does this feeling reflect on forever

And that is a question we don’t necessarily need to ask every time

We had a family context:

Friends are like pizza

We love pizza

We’re stoked to eat it A LOT

But that doesn’t mean we’re always in the mood for it

And not being in the mood for pizza doesn’t mean we don’t like pizza

It just means it doesn’t sound like what would be satisfying right now

Or we’re simply not hungry

This orientation resolved a lot of anxiety, often immediately

And its effectiveness reached back into my own childhood

I had often put myself on a rollercoaster ride if someone wasn’t as eager as I was

Old, unresolved tensions I didn’t realize I’d still carried

Melted like the cheese on a pizza

Rejection didn’t necessarily have overarching meaning

And if it did, if someone didn’t like me anymore or whatever

Let that be on them to be explicit about

“I’m allergic to pizza”

Noted.

Everyone moves on

And having it as a policy in our lives

For a decade or more

I’ve witnessed it meet and diffuse an anxious moment a hundred times

In both directions

Let that feeling or wondering rest in a bed of perfect acceptability

I suppose it’s a mechanical thought process of not taking things personally

Having a context that diffuses extended meaning

Acknowledging that relationships having natural experiences of space

Doesn’t mean the relationship is lesser

I remember one friend my daughter absolutely loved

And when she didn’t feel like doing things with her, she’d feel terribly guilty

“Maybe I don’t like her as much as I think I do?”

The pizza analogy nipped that in the bud

All the guilt and inquiry went away

And didn’t taint their next encounter

I think plenty of people do this naturally

I didn’t

And I’m glad I didn’t pass on all the neurosis I had about youthful friendships

Finally, I, and my children, could choose from the buffet of life

Not feeling like we need to put everything on our plate

Or to be on every plate

To enjoy what’s most delicious today

There is a buffet here. Would you like some pizza?

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fallingtenderly.substack.com

Kiichi Usui was the best man in Yoko Ono’s first wedding

They were part of a group of Japanese artists that came to New York in the ‘50s

To make art that didn’t exist yet

Kiichi parlayed his traditional Japanese art education into abstract expressionism

While Yoko got into the Fluxus movement where the idea mattered more than the object

You may be familiar with the story of how she met Lennon

When he went to see her installation consisting of a ladder

At the top of which was a magnifying glass

You could use to search the ceiling where you’d find a small, printed word:

YES

And thus began her third and final marriage

But Kiichi had a different experience

He’d been a working artist in New York for a decade when his wife got pregnant

To support his family he decided to take on a new relationship with the art he loved

And moved to Michigan to open Meadow Brook Art Gallery

On the campus of Oakland University

There, he made a name for himself as a curator

Bringing in remarkable works rarely seen outside of New York or Paris

Lichtenstein, Pollock, Warhol

To this tiny art gallery in suburban Detroit

But he made that gallery big, in reputation as well as acreage

The university sat on a fifteen hundred acre parcel of land

Anchored by the founder’s Tudor Revival Meadow Brook Mansion

Kiichi initiated a competition for large modern installation pieces throughout the property

That made the whole campus feel like anything could happen around the next bend

He didn’t paint during most of the years he was curator

As he felt it was a conflict of interest

But in the mid ‘80s he started again

He moved from abstract expressionism into what he called

Photo romanticism

Applying his talent to recognizable imagery with a softness photorealism wouldn’t allow but impressionism took too far

My mother shared an office with him when she worked for the theater and festival

So I knew him

When I was 18 and a Japanese major

Kiichi asked if he could paint me

I was happy to sit for him, and happier still when I realized it would just be a photo session

Much easier

While most of the work revolved around me wearing intricately embroidered kimonos

I was mortified the first time he asked me to take my clothes off

What would my mother think?

When I timidly told her after arriving home she said

“Of course he did! He’s an artist. What did you think was going to happen?”

I went on to sit for him about a dozen times over the next decade

From which he painted somewhere north of 30 portraits of me before he died

Recently, one came to live with me, brought by my mother

And hanging it, I’m wildly grateful she didn’t purchase one of the nudes

I may still be the same weight

But I am decidedly not the same shape

Here, in my 200th post, I’m embracing my changing form

And who I’m becoming takes me back to Yoko Ono’s seminal piece

I feel like I’ve climbed a ladder, and I’ve been searching the ceiling with a magnifying glass

And finally, I see

YES

Go ahead, say YES!

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In 1990, Buddhist practitioner Cynthia Jurs went to Nepal

There, she was lucky enough to have an audience with a 106-year-old Rinpoche

She asked him what she could do to help heal the earth and her people

He told her

‘Just one person practicing deeply can have a dramatic impact

But you, dear one

You need to bury clay pots in the earth’

Excuse me?

Not what I was expecting

Not what she was expecting

But his hermitage gave her 30 small pots

She says it took her quite some time to wrap her head around the assignment

But she’s been traveling the world planting these pots and more, 72 so far

With local communities, in ceremony

Through her organization Alliance for the Earth

In learning about her work

I also learned: she’s not the only one

Multiple traditional communities plant their prayers

Putting minerals or seeds or talisman in a pot and burying or submerging it

A ritual act of appreciation for the land

Recognizing the earth as a main character

Not a set

An invitation to the unseen world for collaborative assistance

And acknowledgement of participatory enmeshment

I’ve heard it said that at the end of ancient battles, for example

Both leaders would plant their weapons on the battlefield

In recognition of the land and what had just happened on it

Modernity eliminated that kind of honoring

In favor of digging up those weapons and putting them on display in a museum

This practice reverently puts things back

But I’m most touched by the participatory nature of the practice

The involvement of community and peace-builders in burying these vases

As individuals and groups, visitors and residents, hold and bless these vessels

Living ceremonies catalyzed by symbolism, intention and ritual

Even developing ongoing peace and resource alliances

Brought alive in a new way by what was buried

I particularly love this ritual because I can feel the humility and recognition

Participation as the sacred act

The results: out of our hands

But joining hands in recognition that our intention and actions matter

That the course of our shared history might hinge on a prayer and a gift

Humans and the earth have had millennia of certain kinds of reciprocity

Usurped by things like plumbing and industry

And we have lots of decisions to make about how we continue to exist

And as much as innovation may have a role to play

So might

Guidance from the proverbial - and literal- wise one in a cave

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Today I had the opportunity to use my umbrella shaped like the Duomo in Florence

There’s a detail on it most people don’t notice

Like the Eiffel Tower in Paris or Big Ben in London

Florence’s skyline is recognizable based on the Duomo

Or, more formally, the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore

The cathedral grew with Florence’s prominence in Italian history

First, just a small church on a northbound Roman road

Then a 5th century upgrade to “Santa Reparata Basilica”

But as the middle ages became the Renaissance

Florence came out swinging

And this Russian nesting doll of a church

Began to take its modern shape

1296 brought a new cathedral which took 100 years to build

But left a nearly 150 foot hole in the roof

And in 1420, Brunelleschi began the octagonal dome that is now known the world over

The first and still largest brick dome in the world

In what was a drama worthy of a telenovela

He built it in only 16 years

With incredible innovation

Using no scaffolding or wood supports

And confusing the hell out of the architects and artisans of the day

But, for some reason, Brunelleschi left the base of the Duomo unfinished

You have this incredibly fancy, two-tiered, intricate dome

And a bunch of raw stone and sandstone beams attaching it to an incredibly ornate cathedral

He died more than a decade later… He could’ve finished it

No one else had the guts

No one understood the engineering above it and didn’t want to be responsible for collapsing the structure

But eighty years later, as the Renaissance was hopping

Florence set an architect to the task

At about the same time they commissioned Michelangelo to carve “David” to sit at the cathedral’s roofline

So, this architect designed decorative columns for where the cupola meets the cathedral

And he completes one of the eight sides before Michelangelo comes back to town with David

A couple of things happen next

One, David is so beautiful - and so heavy - they decide he must live where he can be appreciated

And even Michelangelo’s archnemesis, DaVinci, agrees David should be placed in front of the town hall

Sorry, Palazzo Vecchio

Where he sat for the next three hundred and fifty years

But, the other thing that happened

Is someone asked how Michelangelo thought the Duomo base was coming along

He snickered and said the columns made the Duomo look like a cricket cage

At which point, the work was abandoned. Permanently.

I mean, if Michelangelo doesn’t like it…

So, that’s what my umbrella shows

One edge of the octagon with it’s cricket cage

And seven more completely unfinished

Because of one man’s opinion

And here, 400 years later, it remains the same

Look at a picture - any picture

One of the most ornate and visited buildings in the world remains visibly unfinished

And absolutely no one cares

But it does make me chuckle every time it rains.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fallingtenderly.substack.com

There is not a food on earth that I expect to fulfill all my nutritional needs

Much less satiate me permanently

There is no shampoo so powerful that I’ll never need to use shampoo again

And there’s no clarity, on any subject, that means I’ll never need to address it again with my beloveds

Why, then, do I keep thinking ‘this spiritual practice should clean up all the remaining debris”

“This mental practice will conquer this long-held pattern forevermore”

Or

“This emotional clarity will erase the original wound”

My conditioning on ‘arriving’ is so strong

That even a lifetime of experience disproving ‘arrival’

In every category

Still gets overlooked

I get disappointed when I need to meet a challenge I thought I’d already met adequately

As if participation, refinement and renewal

Were admonishment instead of opportunity

Still, part of me wants to be ‘done’ and wants to be done through one effective tool

Sigh

Even the washing machine has to go in circles for quite some time to get the clothes clean

One round won’t do it

The truth is, I love my practices

I just wish I didn’t NEED them

And I do need them

I need meditation as much as I need to brush my teeth

And am quantumly better to talk to after both

I need relational witnessing as much as I need exercise

And feel invigorated and alive after both

I need creative expression as much as I need food

And feel delight in process and restful satisfaction after both

Hygiene is an ongoing process not because yesterday’s efforts were insufficient

But because that is how living systems work

I want to tell my children I love them over and over, in new ways

Last year’s love is insufficient to describe the depth at which they delight me today

I don’t take that kind of repetition as a problem

I like what it grows into

Just like I like the way my teeth feel after the dentist

Or I like the way our house looks right before we have company

I like the way I feel when I’m inhabiting my whole self with compassion and curiosity

These may not be permanent states, which is sometimes frustrating

But coming back around to them sure feels good

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fallingtenderly.substack.com

In my early 30’s I lived in a boat house on a small private lake in Michigan

I called it “camp”

Which is how I squared myself with copious spider population

It was the early days of the internet and I’d done a keyword search using “charming”

And it was

Down a ½ mile-long driveway

Around the side of the main house

Park by the magnolia tree

Follow the stone path to the 40 steps

The entrance of the house sat atop another 20 steps down to the water

It was about 700 square feet

Knotty pine walls (another reason I called it ‘camp’)

A 30-foot porch I could fish off of

But really I just threw the fish blueberries and watched their disappointment

The weekend I moved in, a former contact called

I answered the phone, “Paradise, may I help you?”

He was offering me a job to run a new Australian office of his web design company

“Thank you,” I said, “and if I hadn’t been serious with my salutation, I’d be all over it”

It was so beautiful, I never wanted to leave

So I asked my boss “what would I need to do to work from home”

She answered, “you’d need to get another job”

But 6 weeks later, I ruptured a disc

And whadayaknow, I couldn’t drive for 3 months

I had been traveling a lot, so now my colleagues had to come to me

Camp hosted many meetings

Several colleagues slept on my porch instead of their hotel

We would swim off the dock to separate the work day from the evening

The environment was so spectacular

I could invite anyone over at any time

Whether I had food or wine to offer

And feel utterly confident that they would be delighted to simply be there

Usually, I could throw something together

But it was really an afterthought.

Until I got married

Suddenly, I started freaking out about whether I had enough wine

Or adequate snacks

If the house was clean enough

Or I’d swept the stairs

WTF?

It took a few times of this happening to realize

I’d changed the tape

I’d had the carefree single woman tape in the player

And now I had the wife tape

And that one was full of anxiety about how the details reflected on the state of my union

I had to do it right or everyone, including and especially me, would think I was doing it wrong

And the craziest part was that even finally realizing what was happening did not end the dynamic

It took concentrated effort to set down the anxiety that felt necessary

And it was only the magnitude of the beauty of the environment that would pause the tape

Reminding me to enjoy the privilege of sharing the space with people I enjoyed

As time went by, camp became less enchanting

The roof leaked. The landlord weirdly wouldn’t fix it

Tucker designed an utterly hilarious indoor gutter system that channeled water into 3 separate buckets

By the time our daughter was born

What was once magical suddenly felt potentially dangerous

Circumstances changed

We ended up moving 1,000 miles away

And I had to continue to slowly debug wife.exe

In a New England bungalow

I went back to camp about 3 years later for a visit

It was every bit as beautiful as I remembered it

I couldn’t resist jumping in the lake

I got entirely tangled in seaweed

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fallingtenderly.substack.com

AI has led me astray more than once

It just sounded so sure of itself

LLMs don’t present data as data

They weave narratives

Intimating that they know everything

You’re being seen and understood as you rarely are in life

And here’s your straightforward 7 day plan

It has been helpful, like when I had an identity theft scare

And super not helpful, like when it said an appointment would be covered when it wasn’t

Was it the LLM’s fault

Or mine, for accepting its authoritative tone as real

When I’m working with an LLM on something I actually know about

The errors are many and obvious

Which finally has me applying more discernment

When Google’s AI Overview gives me a convincing answer to something I’m truly questioning

It is something I need to remind myself to do

Question that contrived authority

And today I realize I need to bring that same skepticism

That same knowledge of the need for deeper inquiry

When fear swoops in

Intimating that it knows everything

It’s the authority

It has the data

It cares for me and understands me and wants to support me

Both fear and LLMs only have access to the past

Rearranging it and calling it the future

But that’s not a real future

It’s just the regurgitated past

And I’ve certainly had enough of that

I don’t necessarily think fear or AI is trying to deceive me

I think they’re trying to present themselves as an authority that already knows what to do

You know, to help me feel better

It’s a trap

And it’s so easy to get caught in it

Because quick knowing is the whole appeal

Even when it’s wrong

When I call AI out on its errors

It does the same thing fear does

“Yep. You’re right. No excuse. I won’t do it again.”

And absolutely does it again.

Talk about predictive modeling.

I can’t erase AI from the cultural zeitgeist

Any more than I can erase fear from my thinking mind

I can, however, not let them go unquestioned

And my frustrations with AI are just making explicit and obvious

The series of predictive jumps and ridiculous confidence fear has been conjuring all along

Sure, not knowing is uncomfortable

But life is a dance with discovery

The nuance and specificity of this encounter

What this moment is both asking and offering

Fear and AI help me think I already know enough to stop paying attention

As if I can circumvent the discomfort of not knowing and feel safe

But billions of years on this planet

And it’s never been the same day twice

I want to meet today

Not a model I’ve anticipated, perfected and executed flawlessly

But a living possibility

Where inquiry, discovery and wonder

Aren’t things I need to resolve or protect myself from

But what I allow to shape me

Wonder what’s next? Subscribe!

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fallingtenderly.substack.com