It’s a sunny day here in Plattsburgh and I hope that sun is/was shining on you when you wrote this entry to in your newsletter. I am very glad to hear that you are having a different kind of writing space/opportunity. I know what a great gift that must be and I wonder if you will discern a difference in what you create under different circumstances. I am very moved picturing the connection between the library and the graveyard—two locations I make a point of visiting when I am in a new place. Go in peace and return in peace.
I'm glad to hear from you, Diane. I hadn't thought about it before, but there seems something related about the cemetery and the library bookshelf, storehouses of the past. The biggest difference I notice is that the labor of writing takes less of a toll on this physical body when I am distanced from the chore list, so that the in-between times are for the nap/ski/run/eat/puppy snuggle sequence, on repeat. Best to you.
I think I will keep on writing how cool, and beautiful and brave it is what you are doing. Shifting perspective for us. By looking at things from a different ground.
I don’t think we can change the way things are. Not really. But we can feed those cracks, and what grows in them. Develop a hunger for something that tastes like village, for aliveness between people … and stay true to this deep, deep yearning …so that eventually what is alive in in these cracks will start to run the show again. Because we want it to.
Well said, Marko. I will keep insisting that there are so many more cracks than most will admit. The taste of village. That's where the book is dwelling. The taste of belonging--to land, to people, to forest.
I think you are very right. There are more cracks. We are just so absorbed in modernity that we are too mad to be sensitive/literate (I don't quite know what the right word is) enough to be affected/reached/comforted ... pulled towards home by them. General speed has to do with that too I think.
Yet - and there is some truth to this - it seems it often is difficult to slow down. Because of the thing we are all to various extents locked into to survive … the thing we also (unfortunately) have to navigate, endure, bare to create conditions for something else, I think. The modern insane thing… which has trained us to be insane too.
Good to write with you.
Thank you Adam (any idea when the book will be „out“ ?)
Just because of belonging to the forest - I am from, and now live again in the most forested part of Austria. I once built a not so small cabin/house from the forest around it which took many months. I knew every piece of wood well ... from before it was a piece of wood. I think there was a time where this was rather normal. The house was still forest in a way. A home which made the word "home" unsuitable for most "normal" houses. After leaving this house because of moving away I never felt sheltered again in a house. Not really. Only in very few. A bit. I always felt that the plywood/laminated doorframes and chipboard-plastic-covered, absolutely perfect rectangular surfaces literally shamed a part of myself that could not quite be there. Now ... I am building with wood from next door again. I am like a beaver or something like that. I can't even say that I "like" this. Its just what this body is doing. Much of it is crazy ... regarding the work of using self -felled timber (practicalities, logistic, planning), also doing this on a really really small budget. It wears me down , burns me out in combination with the other farm stuff) and I do need to take more care of myself but there is nowhere I would rather be then in a self built barn, building, cabin where I still know where every tree was standing when I look at a beam or post (like living in a gigantic story...).
A world where we used to know so much -if not everything - about where our clothes, food, tools .... came from where everything around us spoke of being tied to the places we lived ... a reminder of that ... man - not sooo long ago. And now everybody is just obsessed with sustainability... dropped into a vacuum ... village/indigenous souls fled into the furthest possible away places ....
jeeez. we have got to bring it back ! at least the taste of it.
this got a bit long. sorry for that.... belonging to forest.
I write about the U.S., but it doubly-heartbreaking to learn that these patterns are recognizable in so many places, given the folks who nod along to these stories. I am grateful for your note, Andreas.
I am grateful for this note. Stuffed to bursting indeed. Here as well. I just spent time with one of those affluent children, and I ended up feeling so sorrowful for the long-term consequence upon him, all the while his parents thinking that they're doing the best for him.
Long may you continue dandelioning between the paving slabs, my friend.
I will accept the work assignment, my friend.
The "seems grumpy but is really just deeply sorrowful" is my song, too. Big hug, Adam!
Deciding not to ruin everyone else's party and just stay grumpy is sometimes the necessary route, but never without a cost.
It’s a sunny day here in Plattsburgh and I hope that sun is/was shining on you when you wrote this entry to in your newsletter. I am very glad to hear that you are having a different kind of writing space/opportunity. I know what a great gift that must be and I wonder if you will discern a difference in what you create under different circumstances. I am very moved picturing the connection between the library and the graveyard—two locations I make a point of visiting when I am in a new place. Go in peace and return in peace.
I'm glad to hear from you, Diane. I hadn't thought about it before, but there seems something related about the cemetery and the library bookshelf, storehouses of the past. The biggest difference I notice is that the labor of writing takes less of a toll on this physical body when I am distanced from the chore list, so that the in-between times are for the nap/ski/run/eat/puppy snuggle sequence, on repeat. Best to you.
I think I will keep on writing how cool, and beautiful and brave it is what you are doing. Shifting perspective for us. By looking at things from a different ground.
I don’t think we can change the way things are. Not really. But we can feed those cracks, and what grows in them. Develop a hunger for something that tastes like village, for aliveness between people … and stay true to this deep, deep yearning …so that eventually what is alive in in these cracks will start to run the show again. Because we want it to.
Thank you Adam.
Well said, Marko. I will keep insisting that there are so many more cracks than most will admit. The taste of village. That's where the book is dwelling. The taste of belonging--to land, to people, to forest.
I think you are very right. There are more cracks. We are just so absorbed in modernity that we are too mad to be sensitive/literate (I don't quite know what the right word is) enough to be affected/reached/comforted ... pulled towards home by them. General speed has to do with that too I think.
Yet - and there is some truth to this - it seems it often is difficult to slow down. Because of the thing we are all to various extents locked into to survive … the thing we also (unfortunately) have to navigate, endure, bare to create conditions for something else, I think. The modern insane thing… which has trained us to be insane too.
Good to write with you.
Thank you Adam (any idea when the book will be „out“ ?)
Just because of belonging to the forest - I am from, and now live again in the most forested part of Austria. I once built a not so small cabin/house from the forest around it which took many months. I knew every piece of wood well ... from before it was a piece of wood. I think there was a time where this was rather normal. The house was still forest in a way. A home which made the word "home" unsuitable for most "normal" houses. After leaving this house because of moving away I never felt sheltered again in a house. Not really. Only in very few. A bit. I always felt that the plywood/laminated doorframes and chipboard-plastic-covered, absolutely perfect rectangular surfaces literally shamed a part of myself that could not quite be there. Now ... I am building with wood from next door again. I am like a beaver or something like that. I can't even say that I "like" this. Its just what this body is doing. Much of it is crazy ... regarding the work of using self -felled timber (practicalities, logistic, planning), also doing this on a really really small budget. It wears me down , burns me out in combination with the other farm stuff) and I do need to take more care of myself but there is nowhere I would rather be then in a self built barn, building, cabin where I still know where every tree was standing when I look at a beam or post (like living in a gigantic story...).
A world where we used to know so much -if not everything - about where our clothes, food, tools .... came from where everything around us spoke of being tied to the places we lived ... a reminder of that ... man - not sooo long ago. And now everybody is just obsessed with sustainability... dropped into a vacuum ... village/indigenous souls fled into the furthest possible away places ....
jeeez. we have got to bring it back ! at least the taste of it.
this got a bit long. sorry for that.... belonging to forest.
thanks.
Much love to you, Adam, any way you can metabolize it
Bless you, Marsha.
Thank you for sharing this, too.
I write about the U.S., but it doubly-heartbreaking to learn that these patterns are recognizable in so many places, given the folks who nod along to these stories. I am grateful for your note, Andreas.
I am grateful for this note. Stuffed to bursting indeed. Here as well. I just spent time with one of those affluent children, and I ended up feeling so sorrowful for the long-term consequence upon him, all the while his parents thinking that they're doing the best for him.