Walk Around

Some writing about a bridge I used to run across all the time, and my thoughts on a manuscript I’ve been working on. Recorded by a small pond on the edge of a field outside Forest Grove, Oregon.

Transcript

(sorry about typos)

I've been trying to learn a short song on the piano recently. Because right now, I'm house sitting at the place across the road from the yurt that I live in. And there's a piano in here, an upright. It's not very clean, it's actually kind of out of tune. And that is just the kind of quality of sound that I like.

Trying to learn something that someone else made, trying to copy it, is a very different process then just sitting down at the piano and playing whatever comes into my head—which is what I've always done. Trying to intentionally press certain notes is a lot more difficult than just letting the notes come out as they will.

But as soon as I started to learn some of this tune, I realized that there is music in the tune; that there is expansion available to these pre-made notes. In other words, there is further music inside of that tune to be found—and so I started playing around within the phrase, I guess it's called. To be honest, I have no training in music, so I don't know what I'm talking about. But I started playing around in the notes themselves.

And I've realized that just in that snippet of the song, there was maybe so much variation—just in five seconds of music.

And I really like that. Doing more with less: the idea behind that, what it brings up, what it results in. And I like that even though I'm not good at copying someone else's work, when I start playing, immediately what comes to mind is finding the music within the music.

When I write, I write in an unconstrained way. I never find myself writing to a rubric. I never set a certain amount of time I'm going to write for. I never set a time itself to write. I never set any kind of a goal.

I just have this general idea that I need to write as much as I can, which doesn't always work out. Because it's not very disciplined. But actually, it kind of does, because it seems like I tend to write a lot by not putting any constraints on it. It seems like I allow what comes to come, and I don't deal with the garbage. I don't produce crap in order to get to the good stuff. I just don't produce when there isn't anything worth writing, which I think is up for debate with a lot of people. And the funny thing is I recently haven't been able to really write, as well as I've been able to just talk. And talking is even more unconstrained, because as I speak I don't really remember what I just said.

All I'm doing is following a thought pattern. I can't go back and read the words I wrote down, I'm just here in the present saying whatever is coming to the forefront of my mind. And I think that it's a sign of a lack of constraint and an abundance of creativity: to be able to just talk, and not need a form, and still produce something intelligible.

Which I think is pretty difficult.

So, I've been thinking about the heart recently. Just last night, I read a piece by someone, I kind of, sort of know, who lives in Maine. Her name is Jenna Rozelle, and she writes about food, but it's more the idea of nourishment. I really appreciate her writing.

I think she's very articulate and prolific, and I like that. She hunts and has a relationship with wild landscapes. And she wrote about the heart recently just last night. In the article, she explained her experience of this season, and taking heart, and what gets her through some of the times, and other things.

Anyway, you should go check out her newsletter, Appetites. You can search for her name too.

So it got me thinking about the heart. And what I think of the heart has a very particular association with a lack of constraint. Because if anything, the heart ceases to function when it's constrained—when it has atherosclerosis in the arteries, calcification, or a lot of people deal with arrhythmia. Or afib.

And it's this idea of constraint that brings me back to thinking about the heart. My experience of the culture I live in, and what is being asked for in that culture and what is being permitted, and not permitted. In other words, constraint has a direct effect on the heart, in my opinion.

And this is coming from my studies recently with Chinese medicine and energetics and holistic medicine. But also, just my sense about these things that has developed for a decade or so now. And so what I see when I see constraint is a lack of heart

And to me the heart means also—so there's this idea in biomedicine that the heart is a pump, and it's goal is to push blood through the body. And while that's true in some sense, the heart has been shown by other medicine forms to be more of a sensory organ. And the perspective of Chinese medicine, of many perspectives on the heart, is that the blood actually is what pumps the heart.

So to explain that—the blood carries information in its temperature and flow. And so when it heads out to the periphery, it is cooled and comes back. The heart notices those changes. And it adapts as a result of the process of the blood moving through the body. And then the blood does so many things, obviously and the heart is adaptive to those needs. And so the heart I see as more of a sensory organ. And so, if you think about someone who has a closed heart, or a hardened heart, what do you think is going on there? Maybe a lack of of sensitivity of the world around them, a lack of sensitivity of their own emotions and of others.

And as for someone who has an open heart, what do you think their sensitivity of the world around them would be like? What kind of things do you imagine that person would allow in? What would they constrain? And where does that lack of constraint, or need for constraint, come from?

My idea is that it comes from a sense of protectiveness—of someone trying to preserve their internal well-being because they feel attacked, or they have trauma. And so if you come across an uncaring person, the result of that lack of care is often that they had extreme trauma. And they can't be sensitive anymore because they're trying to protect themselves. Which I mean, this is not revolutionary thinking at all. But a couple years ago, for me, it really was. And maybe for some people, thinking about the heart as a sensory organ, that responds to the needs of the body and even the emotions, rather than that it's a pump that goes on mindlessly—maybe this is a revolutionary thought.

So from what I understand in Chinese medicine is that the heart is seen as the place of one’s spirit. It's where the Shen, as they call it, rests every night. The Shen is kind of an animating principle. It is the quality of a person's experience, and intention in the world.

So it's this reflective or responsive phenomenon that makes up who that person is. And so you can see a lot of interesting aspects here—if, for example, someone is hurt, often as a young kid, their Shen changes. And that would have a responsive or reflective aspect on the heart function. But potentially as well a you can actually see a shock such as that in the pulse. You can see it in atrial fibrillation. You can see it and tachycardia, or arrhythmia. You can see them being unstable. And so it affected the terrain, these shocks, and you can actually see it in the body. You can even see it, sometimes, on people's tongues.

So in other words, the heart works best when it's unconstrained, when it doesn't have trauma, when it can be sensitive to the needs of the body and the spirit and to others around it. So the heart to me, is something that governs what is let in or what is excluded.

And that's really interesting to me because in the cultural moment that I perceive, there's so much hard-heartedness going on. Everyone wants to immediately come to a conclusion about who someone else, and what they believe in. Why? Because people are deeply afraid. They're trying to protect themselves from something that may hurt them, or has hurt them.

But the moment a protective wall goes up, communication stops, and calcification manifests. And I think it's really terrible to see all of these boxes that people or the culture want to live in, or basically build around themselves as a protective measure.

And I wonder if the this has deep implications. The number one cause of death in the United States is heart disease, right? So—it's like heart disease, maybe, comes from closing off oneself to external sensitivity and others emotional needs and a person's own emotional needs. And then the second one is cancer. Cancer may come from grief, unresolved grief... I don't know. It's pretty interesting.

Of course, this isn't conclusive information at all about how chemistry works inside of the body. But I think it has some interesting implications. And for me, explains to some degree how the heart looks and functions. What it does. In terms of the blood and sensitivity and how it senses relationship with others and how it makes up our sense of self.

And so to be grounded in oneself means to have a strong heart. To be sure of oneself is to have an intact circulatory system, essentially, an emotional system, and therefore a strong heart.

And to be open to the world means to allow things that may damage. But also to know that even though those things might cause damage, that can be healed or not necessarily fatal. That they can actually make the system stronger.

So when I first started running a couple years ago, it hurt. The circulatory system is not prepared for the muscles calling for so much oxygenated blood and the heart and the lungs and the blood suddenly have to work harder. And it's a process that takes time. But once a general fitness is achieved, it doesn't fade very quickly, I've noticed. Maybe it's been that I've been active for a lot of the summer, but I think it's interesting to understand that aspect of the heart—when stresses are placed on it, actually gets stronger, as long as the stresses aren't chronic and insidious. If they're healthy stressors, like difficult relationships that are worth it.

So when I write unconstrained, I feel like I'm letting my heart open. I'm allowing it to take in my thoughts. My emotions. What's happened before? What's coming next? What's happening right now? I can take in the world around me, by being unconstrained and open. And I find that I allow real sustenance to come in.

I guess that's what the heart means to me.

I recently heard about a story telling event nearby. The theme was Rural Life in Vermont. It made me pause, consider: if I had an audience in front of me, what kind of story would I tell?

Awhile back I set out toward what interested me. You could say that by today's standards, I set out to be a failure, because attached to that idea was no intention to make money. In other words, to most people, my future had no future in it.

As time has passed I haven't always felt like I chose the right way forward. And there have been moments, that have become funny over time, where people challenge and judge my way of life. And yet despite the hard times and so on, I never felt like I've chosen the wrong route—on the good days.

There were moments when I could have been this or that—for example, a magazine photographer. But when I was taking photos of people doing interesting things, and writing profiles about them, I realized that it was actually I who wanted to live that interesting life. I didn't want to be someone who documented it, I wanted my own way.

And what I've realized is that living a truly interesting life isn't usually paid for. What I mean is, the back and forth commute and static routine most people have, I would say, is not interesting to me. And yet so many people I've met tend to think, and demand of others, that it's the only way. If it works for them, that's fine. But to demand others live the way you do because you think it's the best way, makes no sense at all. It says more about who you are than anyone else really. To be honest, this kind of policing and judgement makes me sick.

For one reason or another attention to basic things has always been interesting to me. I remember being very small, just a child, and having one toy I cherished above all. For a while it was a tiny grey fighter jet no longer then the first joint of my finger. And then it was a black plastic goat. Now I find myself interested in the details of life. Where do I hang the kitchen towel so it stops being in the way, yet is easily reachable? How do I make efficient use of this single room I live in with another person? How do I maintain and lovingly take care of my axe and knives? My body? My relationships? How much do I really need to be content?

I was lucky in that I found out about a philosophy when I was just 19 that talked a lot about contentment, and what it required. Turns out it can require very little, to be content. As for me, I've found challenges that I overcome to be the most satisfying type of possessions. Who I become through growth and change, is all I really have. And to be clear, I don't even have that, in the end.

The route I've chosen has made up a meaningful life so far, if only for myself. And while I may not have much security, or own a home, and I share a car with my partner, I feel healthy overall.

I had this idea recently that the entire point of my life is good health. If my health is good, it means everything else is going well, right? At least, that makes sense to me.

Welcome to Walk Around—a new direction for this podcast.

Last summer, 2021, I had an idea while walking in the high country—to make a podcast about walking. I've walked a long way, and to be honest, my creative path as an artist started right there, with walking.

Walking itself is so simple, yet so corrective and health generating. For me walking, running, or any self-powered movement have always helped me find traction on ideas, reckon with problems, or work through difficulty, in ways nothing else can. Maybe it’s that moving my body through space at an understandable rate allows me to untangle what I seek to understand. Movement unties the knots, mental and physical, that life builds up. It clears my eyes, mind, and spirit.

I never got far with the idea, to rename this podcast & newsletter, because it seemed too single-minded. I don’t intend to write “about” walking. I just want to write what I find useful in the moment, along themes of understanding and communing with nature.

Below is a transcript I recorded during a run today. I hope you enjoy listening or reading what I shared, and the new direction I am heading.

Transcript

(the text below is verbatim, so it’s a little awkward read rather than listened to)

There's a beaver pond a couple ridges over from where I live. Recently, I rode my bike past—and yesterday I stopped there on the way back from picking up some flour with Anna for the bread baking that she's getting into. The first time I drove by the pond, I saw a beaver swimming along. And the pond was really smooth and glass like, reflecting the hills and the trees around it.

It's not much of a pond though. It's kind of abandoned looking. The trees aren't very big the brushes scraggly. There's an old dike or something, some kind of an old dam. Someone used to drive their car over it to someone's house, back in a hollow that's now been razed. And the only only thing left is a stone foundation.

In other words, it's just the kind of place I love.

I like places that aren't really noticed by anyone else. And they have a quiet solitude. Anna & I walked over the Beaver Dam and into this old pasture-meadow, that's since grown up with a lot of trees. There were many game trails crisscrossing the area, headed to the apple trees, down to the water, along the creek, through the trees. It was astonishing. Animals seem to go where people don't like to go. And I guess that's why I like some of these places. They have a special gentleness to them.

I like beaver ponds too because while they serve a function that we can all see and understand: by slowing down the flow of water, allowing it to soak into the ground, creating a reservoir underneath the pond, keeping the water cold for fish, allowing cleared areas along the edges of it that the beavers keep cut for food. Allowing amphibians and other small mammals and large animals to flourish because of the abundance of food and space and water. And allowing sediment to be trapped from the rivers to keep them running clear and high. Those are all the physical functions of the beaver pond. But I see it as a refuge. I see them as refuges. Especially now, when everywhere weather is more drastic, temperatures are higher and lower. Even though they're small, they maintain a homeostasis in some way. Just because of the amount of water that's sitting there, which acts as a sink for hot air and a reservoir for cool water.

And energetically I think that kind of a feeling is present in those places. When a person goes to a beaver pond if they're in the right frame of mind, they can feel that it's a refuge. And it's not just a physical refuge. It's a refuge for emotional well-being.

And that's just really the kind of place I like.

I'm going to read a poem I wrote recently when my mom was visiting. It was a beautiful visit. She is such an amazing person, and I love her so much. She's taught me so many things and she's so wise. She's really seen a lot of people. She was a teacher for three decades, moved all over the country—and she just has a lot that she understands about how the world works. Most recently, her final frontier has been true self-care. (laughs) Which is good because she's always been someone who's given herself away to everyone else around her. So, if you're listening, mom, try to find a beaver pond or some refuge to go to today.

And here's the poem I wrote when we were walking along one of the branches of the rivers here in Vermont together. It was on one of the only paths I've been able to find that goes right along a river without a road between the path, or running too close. It's really rare here. Every single valley has a road through it. But maybe there are some mountain streams I haven't found yet. I'm sure that there are, but there aren't trails along them. It's interesting. There needs to be more relationships with rivers here in that way. It is the circulatory network after all.

So here's the poem.

The title is from something my mom said, as we are standing at the end of the trail, after walking it.

To be here is to begin to understand

The view downstream

I paused there—I don't know if you could hear it, but just after I stopped reading, there was a breeze that blew through the trees. And a bunch of leaves fell. I'm surrounded by bright yellow leaves in a maple, beech, birch, and pine forest.

But things like this just seem to happen. It has been completely dead still this morning. No wind at all. Not even a single leaf moving. And then just as I stopped reading this breeze comes up out of nowhere. And it was just right here, right next to me. I mean, what is that?

And I tell you, it happens all the time to me when I read poems or read things are experience things out in nature like this, it just happens. It's just a mystery.

But when I dropped my mom at the airport, she had tears in her eyes because it was so sad, she lives across the country, and I'm probably only gonna ever see her twice a year or something. And she said: be sure to watch the water that goes by because it only goes by once.

And I think that that is something someone with a lot of collected wisdom can say, with conviction. I think it's important to live that way.

I often wonder, especially recently, if I'm living the right way. Because there's so many models around me that show me that there's other ways to live that are more comfortable or easier. And what am I getting for living this way? It's kind of difficult and I refuse to spend most of my time, just to be honest, working for money.

If I worked for money more often or worked harder on a career, I could afford to buy a house or have land or not live in a place that doesn't have a sink or a toilet or insulation really, or more than one room. But since I want time, I am stuck living in a way where I can't afford those things. It's my choice. But sometimes I really doubt that choice.

But when my mom says something like be sure to watch the water as it goes by, because it only goes by once, I realize and remember the life is finite. I don't know how long my present state of mind will last. And so it makes sense to do what my deepest calling feels like, even if it makes me poor.

That's what I really believe.

And for some reason, that means doing things like this.

Thank you for listening.

I’ve been having the hardest time making things recently, maybe ever. So I decided to just go talk outside for a while.

This is the least edited thing I’ve ever put on the internet. I decided to put it on here because I think other people might be able to relate. And because it tells a lot about my problems, what I struggle with, and so on—which are things I don’t often talk about.

Winnowing

It happened when the grass was flowering:

I think it’s hard to be present, because I have been taught all my life that the point of life, the purpose of it, is to progress. There’s always some achievement or some better future off in the distance.

Yet what I’ve learned is that the present is where life occurs. It doesn’t happen in the future, and it isn’t a goal. It’s actually happening right now as you read this.

I decided to record some words about this. Feel free to listen—it was recorded totally off the cuff, with no planning, on the edge of a huge beaver pond near where I live in Vermont.

Wellbeing is a net.

And we are a strand in the net. The strands around us are made of people, places, what we consume, produce, see, feel, experience.

I think of this in the fading evening. The leaves and hills have changed slowly this season. The tops of mountains have snow. Distant hills disappear in morning mist. To the south the valley is hidden by mountains. The air cold in the morning, the grass gold or brown, the trees bare, the geese moving and honking. The water of the river reflects the clouds, turning silver. The pebbles darken with morning dew.

Most evenings I go running. During the day I study sleep, neuroscience, nutrition, plants—just to pass the time. I write and organize. Life is but people and places and things, and what you do. Wellbeing is a net.

I notice that experience compounds as my life goes on, but my gathering basket has holes. Most times are forgotten, those that matter stay. What matters is not always good. What matters is what impacts, changes: for better, or worse.

I wandered Elko, Nevada between work days, talked with a friend, and we both agreed it might be impossible to even understand one thing fully, in one life. And so many regressions.

The great task is to be here for it. To not run, to accept, compress, and take care, pay attention, and receive instruction from what occurs.

The good and bad, the things that matter. To forgive and realize: the wounds others carry make up part of their net, one of their many strands. And isn't it amazing that individual neurons can live over a hundred years? Maintaining, connecting, remodeling, constantly in connection with others around them, or they die. The sense of ourselves is encoded, somehow, in the form and waves of activity that science has revealed are less based in parts of the brain, but the interconnectedness of them all—and the neurons themselves are nets with strands: axons, dendrites, synapses. Yet there's a difference between knowing and feeling. And physiology doesn't explain everything. And we have known this intuitively for thousands of years. Yet as there is more powerful ways to study, the "truth" eludes. There is still, and always will be, mystery

Wellbeing is a net. We are a strand. There is no separation between ourselves and wellbeing. The things that come together, or move apart, are part of us. They produce thoughts and feelings that become us. This is what it means to be a strand in the net.

The geese and trees know this. Or better, they feel, or produce it. There are human cultures in my dreams that greet each other by saying:

"I am you, But,I am myself too"

I wish I could throw a rope around certain feelings that would never fade. But wellbeing, and life, are a net, and the strands are manifold, moving, changing, uncovering, disappearing—never staying the same. That's the beauty of it.

Thoughts come and go, come and go with the currents of the mind.

I wrote this once. Then I wrote again. I write my present and my future, and I write my past. It is written into me, my thoughts, feelings, my "amygdala", my "neurons", my strands, and what is beyond—my friends and relationships. The future depends on how I feel, and what I have, or what I choose to do even now. To think, to be, stay or change, are for me to know. But I am also you.

And we are: together,little gossamer strands.Glowing in the sunlight.Growing and changing, severing, or explaining. Rippling in the wind.

Wellbeing is a net And we a strand

Thoughts about being present and ignoring obstacles—to focus instead on what you can do. Credits to the young hawthorne tree that has taken root on a hillside where I boil tea.

There is a little piano against one wall of this house I live in. I play it from time to time. When I first began, I noticed all the melodies I played were sad. I knew I had some sadness in me. Actually, I knew I had a lot. But, I didn’t really know what to do with it. So I played the piano most days, but the songs were always pretty sad.

For one reason or another, I have been carrying some sadness based on grief for a few years. It has been hard but not without its lessons. I think that sadness can teach us about what others feel. So I’ve learned that. But there is a point when the lesson has been learned, yet the sadness still hangs around.

And then about a week ago I was looking at the field below the house where I live. In the sky a few hawks circled. A group of renegade chickens, who escaped months ago from a coop and went wild, took notice of the hawks and fled under the porch—their shelter.

And just before that, I had stood up from the table. But this was different than the hundreds of times I had stood up from a table recently, because for years I have been dealing with knee pain—but at this moment, there was none. Yet, I noticed my muscles tighten, as if trying to protect myself from pain that was no longer there.

I stood watching the chickens cower, and thinking about pain. About how mental pain becomes physical, and physical pain becomes mental—about how pain works its way into us, and hangs around.

It’s not that I haven’t done my best to grieve, or get rid of pain. I have really tried. But I failed. Yet in this moment, noticing the lack of pain, I felt the way my body still held itself tense around pain that wasn’t there. I thought about the chickens hiding from the death of the hawks. I thought about what it is to protect oneself. And I thought about vulnerability, and how opening is needed to allow healing. I knew all this, and have practiced it too. Yet somehow in feeling my body respond automatically to pain that was no longer there, I saw a different way forward.

Later that week, I listened to Wilson Wewa, a Northern Pauite elder, tell the story of the grieving woman and the sage grouse.

Long ago, before there were people, there was a woman. She was crying, crying, crying endlessly because her husband had died. She was utterly and completely overwhelmed with grief. Her people did not understand her grief, and they did not know what to do. So she grieved alone. She was carrying so much pain. And so she went out into the desert all by herself.

While she was out there alone, she heard a noise. She walked to the top of a rise and looked down. There, down below her in the sage was a group of sage hens. And they were dancing. They were in a big circle, and they were having a good time. And at the end of their song, they would open up their wings and let out a big joyful whoop.

One of the sage hens noticed the woman crying. So she came up to her. And she said to the woman that she should not grieve uncontrollably. And the sage hen said that our grief is not good for us when it makes us sick. The sage hens then taught her a song that she sang. And she found comfort in the song.

When she came back to her village, she brought the song and the dance, and she taught the people.

I listened to this story, turned it over and over in my mind. And the words came to mind: Pain is a Practice.

It is a practice because it’s something that we have, whether we want it or not. A practice is something you have to work on. So the practice of pain is a choice. Though this practice is not a comfortable one.

As I wrote the poem Pain as a Practice, something left me. And something came in, too. But I don’t know if this pain I carried for a long time is gone forever, in my knee, or in my mind.

But, I do know one thing: the grief has passed. It has stopped making me sick. And I hope that going forward, I can play other songs on the piano, and write other words than the ones that are sad.

Pain as a Practice

When I stand up from the table, I shift slightlyto allow my weight to land on my right leginstead of the left.Twisting under weightseems to bother the left knee.

When I write I try to make the wordscome out in long sentences and paragraphs, again.But I cannot.Pain has modified my ability to write stories.Each sentence written has to hold what it needs— like me, in each moment.

I can’t always tellwhat is good for me.So I use pain as a practice— because it shows what hurts. It’s important to keep up the practice, of painto not let it slip awayinto numbness.Because, I’ve learned, the pain will still be there.

I am getting in good shape this spring because I am planning to walk five hundred miles, or morestringing together a rough route on CalTopoon Shoshone, Bannock, Crow, and Blackfeet land.

And so, just recently, I noticed my left instep is weaker than my right which causes my knee to sway slightly inward. My suspicion is that this most subtle instabilityis behind a nebulous knee pain I’ve had for years.

And so I practice: little exercisesto strengthen my footand suddenly, the pain is gone!But,my body remembers.It has been sensitive to that pain for years.Yet now that it’s goneit still won’t let it go.The pain might come back at any time, my body thinks, and Ithink, because I am also my body— I think, without thinking: I must stay safe from pain.

Yet, this protective notion protects the trauma, not me.This is not the painful practice that will be a freedom from pain.This practice of protecting the painmight create an imbalance that brings it back again.And so I have to let it go.

I heard a Pauite elder saythat endless grief can make us sickand even hurt those who love us.We have to learn to be human beings again, he said.“We are small. And we don’t know everything.Nature can teach us things.”

Caught in my mind,I forget I have a bodythat can work out the inside problems by itself. By a simple moving through the world.

What it takes, is this subtle noticing a mind of care, for my own wants and needs.A hand to the wind—A vision through the drainageof down trees, and bogsto get to that far ridgewhere the walk doesn’t end, but, beginsat next days first light.

Then Again,and again, and again, and again….