5 Good Things

Here are 5 things generating gratitude, awe, and delight lately - because in the midst of war, and hard anniversaries, in the midst of cruelty and willful ignorance, there is beauty and generosity - there is evolution and sweetness, there is life, happening.

1. Joy Harjo’s medicine-in-poem-form For Calling the Spirit Back from Wandering the Earth in Its Human Feet*: “If you sing it will give your spirit lift to fly to the stars’ ears and back.” Read or Listen:

2. If you too spent a decade of your life accompanied by a particular band, marking life events and everyday moments with their songs and ordering their latest unavailable-in-the-US CD from overseas and waiting weeks for it to arrive; if you subsequently lost track of this band in the streaming era, and if you too have undergone a substantial personal evolution to shed societal expectations and embrace your self, you also might understand my tears and shouts of joy when this post tumbled across my feed** with the realization of why this person felt so instantly familiar. Thank you, Sam, for being your self. It's beautiful to see you, hear you within your younger self and that like so many of us, in so many forms of becoming - you were there all along. The euphoria and hope the original recording of this song by K’s Choice produced in a mid-20 year old Mel is wildly expanded given this context.

3. This card keeps coming up, in the midst of big transitions personally, professionally, seasonally. Something is "on the move" as my teacher would say. Want the Change, from Abacus Corvus’ beautiful Wild Chorus deck)

“Around this ancient standing stone, a flurry of golden leaves fill the sky…As a powerful wind stirs the world into motion, notice where you locate yourself in the image. Are you caught up by the wind, scattered and tossed? Are you the stone, grounded and still? Or are you the wind, the choreographer of this chaos? Wherever you find yourself in this image, what would it mean to lean into this dance, to want the wildness of it?” -Corinna Dross and Jo Mosser of Abacus Corvus.

4. Darren Raven’s excellent Public Pedagogy series - an instagram-reel zine of sorts. This latest one really resonates, especially as my writing practice re-emerges for at least the hundredth time and I am simultaneously moving into deeper collaboration on my longest running and most communal project, Durham Community Bodywork. “Low stakes make starting possible. If everything matters, nothing begins.”

5. Ranunculus, and their incredible spiraling-infinity petals. From local grower Clear Black Flowers.

Pink ranunculus flowers from Clear Black Flowers

*Thank you Carey, for bringing this to our recent DCBW meeting.

**The internet is still (occasionally) capable of producing magical moments of seemingly random connection.