Notes:
I was struggling… overwhelmed with the world, and I had this feeling that I just wanted things to stop for a while so that I could catch up. And I told my mom at one point that I was going to…spend a few weeks where people wouldn’t expect me to do anything other than just stare out the window…And she said, “You need to go to the wilderness.”
~ Terry Tempest Williams, Erosion: Essays of Undoing (October 8, 2019)
Photo: Luksefjell (Norway) by allanaasland (via Poppins-me)
An owl’s feathers are silent in flight because individual barbs zipper shut so no air can rush through like the sound of desert wind. Each time I find a feather, I brush its webbing like velvet against my cheek. Sometimes, I close my eyes and fan the air by my ear. I hear nothing, only feel a slight breeze.
~ Terry Tempest Williams, Erosion: Essays of Undoing (October 8, 2019)
Photo: Burrowing Owl by Kevin Juberg (via Voice of Nature)
Late to bed Tuesday night, following long return flight from Phoenix.
Late jump Wednesday morning.
4th morning train to NYC.
Light misty rain.
And, Terry Tempest Williams continues to lay tracks.
“In the end, it’s rarely the large gestures that count, it’s the small ones.”
My antenna is up.
On train, a middle aged man gives up his seat for a lady. She’s not young. Not old. Not pregnant. He just does it. And stands for the entire 55 minute ride.
At Grand Central Station, Construction worker, hard hat under his arm, looks behind as he crosses the threshold of the exit, sees me coming, holds door open. I was several yards back. Let’s say 10 yards back. Rare occurrence. It was a conscious act. Everyone is exhausted with political attacks, the lack of civility. How about some decency today?
And the gestures, small, keep coming.
Flight to Phoenix. Elderly lady sits in aisle seat. Not her seat. “Would you mind taking the window seat.” She gestures asking him to lean closer: “I have a bladder problem.” He slides across and takes the window seat. “No problem.” She exhales.
Susan out for a morning walk in Phoenix. She returns to tell me “the most unbelievable story.” I roll my eyes. Can’t wait to hear this. She comes across a lady walking “Sunny”, a Golden Doodle. Lady asks where we’re from. Susan explains. “Here to visit my husband’s younger brother. He’s hospitalized and breathing with the aid of a ventilator.” Lady pauses to assess the receptiveness of her planned gesture. “I’m sorry to be so forward, but would you mind if I said a Prayer for him and for you.” And then proceeds to reach for Susan’s hands, and Prays.
I walk across Fifth Avenue. It’s 7 a.m. E.S.T. and 4 a.m. in Phoenix.
He’s sleeping now, machine pumps oxygen into his lungs.
I stand waiting for the cross walk sign to turn.
I look up, light drizzle brushes my face, three flags flap over a major hotel entrance.
I inhale deeply, and then exhale, and this Agnostic fires up his own Prayer.
Breathe Bro. Breathe.
Photo: Mine with smartphone. At Times Square yesterday morning, at the end of my cross-town walk. NYC awakening.
Recognizing the dignity of each living thing, mobile or fixed, insect, animal, tree, or mushroom, has broadened my love for this world and diminished my need for a god in heaven. We have multitudes of gods on Earth.
~ Terry Tempest Williams, Erosion: Essays of Undoing (Sarah Crichton Books, October 8, 2019)
This is the bleached-bone veritas of the Colorado Plateau. We stand on the edge of an erosional landscape looking out. The curvature of the Earth becomes our home range. The silence before us is time. We feel how small we are in the embrace of geologic relief… Watching light captured and held within the pastel pinnacles of Bryce Canyon in shades of pink, orange, and yellow—all these weathered places show us we are merely humans, soft, humble, and temporary.
~ Terry Tempest Williams, Erosion: Essays of Undoing (Sarah Crichton Books, October 8, 2019)
Notes:
Belief is tricky. One day I do. One day I don’t. Believe. But there are things I believe that have never wavered. My belief in God is not one of those. Not long ago, I made a list, my attempt to address this question: “Do I believe in God?” It went like this:
God as an old white man with a beard—No
God as a human—No
God as a being—No
God as energy—Yes
God as consequential—Don’t know
God without definition—Yes
God as a creative force in the Universe—Yes
God as natural processes in motion—Yes
God as evolution—Yes
God as gravity—Yes
God as love—Yes
God as forgiveness—Yes
God as beauty—Yes
God as a no and a yes—Maybe
God as wrathful and merciful—Perhaps—This one scares me.
God as Mystery—Most certainly
I realized through my Q & A exercise that my problem is with the word “God,” for all the limitations it has placed on my imagination, such as “God the Father.” This was the beginning of my erosion with Mormonism in particular and religion in general. It happened early. I watched birds and studied them. If I dreamed of a great horned owl and saw one the next day, that was normal, to be expected. If a yellow warbler came into my mind, it was not unusual for me to hear one. As a child, I came to understand my relationship to nature was reciprocal and that nature had a relationship with me. We called to one another. We called one another into being. What I mean by that is we have evolved together. I still have a tailbone. I trust what I see and I believe what I feel. Trusting direct experience is the open door to revelation. This was my foundation for faith. It still is.
~ Terry Tempest Williams, Erosion: Essays of Undoing (Sarah Crichton Books, October 8, 2019)
Portrait of Terry Tempest Williams by Cheryl Himmelstein
5:33 am. Friday morning.
Google Maps signals 17 minutes to destination. Smooth ride, cruising down I-95 South. Truckers, insomniacs, and DK listening to Audible, his book on tape. More Terry Tempest Williams, her new book, Erosion: Essays of Undoing. Terry’s way in my head, and beyond, and yes, we’re on a first name basis now. “Our undoing is also our becoming. I have come to believe this is a good thing.”
The Heads-up Display on the windshield flashes alert: Object ahead on highway. It flashes an alert again. I tap the brakes.
A wind gust blows leaves across three lanes. I exhale. Wonders of technology. Car warns you about objects on highway, or if you veer outside your lane. I’m listening to books on tape, beamed from the cloud. GPS tells me how long to the office. And I can’t remember what I had for lunch yesterday.
The car wobbles over uneven pavement. 4000 pounds of car, wearing grooves into the asphalt, with my back and forth 4-5 days a week.
Read somewhere from a survey that 85% of us wished to travel more. And that one in 10 Americans surveyed say they have no interest in going anywhere. Welcome readers, to Me, I’m on top of this stack of 10. [Read more…]
Most decisions are based on a tiny difference.
People say, ‘This was right, that was wrong’; the difference was a feather.
I keep scales wherever I am to remind me of that. They’re a symbol of my awareness. Of the distortion most people have of what is better and what is not.
~ Terry Tempest Williams, Erosion: Essays of Undoing (Sarah Crichton Books, October 8, 2019)
Has anyone been face-to-face with evolution? The other day I was eye-to-eye with a Galápagos tortoise that had spent three months walking from the top of the volcano down to the sea to lay her eggs at night on the island of Isabela. In the slow, deliberate nature of her world, she upholds twelve million years of perfection. Beauty is the origin of wonder. What enables her to live eighteen months without food or water? Does a fast predicated by drought or famine become spiritual? What can we do for the tortoise? Step to the side. Give her the right-of-way. Kneel.
~ Terry Tempest Williams, Erosion: Essays of Undoing (Sarah Crichton Books, October 8, 2019)
Notes:
We have forgotten the virtue of sitting, watching observing. Nothing much happens. This is the way of nature. We breathe together, simply this. For long periods of time, the meadow is still. We watch. We wait. We wonder. Our eyes find a resting place. And then, the slightest of breezes moves the grass. It can be heard as a whisper of prayer.
— Terry Tempest Williams, Finding Beauty in a Broken World
Notes: Quote: Thank you Beth @ Alive on all channels. Photo: Clemens Fantur
I come into this small room and take a seat on the floor.
I don’t expect miracles.
But I have given myself a sacred space,
and now I simply offer myself the even greater gift of time to use it.
Someday, perhaps, something will happen here.
For now, I love this room,
this emptiness, the fading light, my own quiet company.
I am learning, by sitting, to become,
in the words of Terry Tempest Williams,
“a caretaker of silence, a connoisseur of stillness, a listener of wind.”
~ Katrina Kenison, Magical Journey: An Apprenticeship in Contentment
Notes:
It was in June. Circa 1995. A sticky late afternoon. I jump in a Yellow Cab to visit a client’s home to inspect Fine Art collateral. The cab pulls up to his building. A massive, black granite stone polished to a high sheen. Money.
I offer the doorman my name and the purpose for my visit. He reaches for the phone to confirm. Sir, I’ll escort you up.
The Doorman holds the door as I enter the elevator. Hat. Uniform. White gloves. He presses the button. Penthouse.
Hi. Good to see you again. Would you like me to show you around our place?
I graciously accept. My feet are damp in my wing tips; they clop on the white Italian marble floor. The echo ricochets off the vaulted ceiling, off the contemporary furniture with its sharp lines, and off the floor-to-ceiling windows. I look out over the city – – a spectacular view – – and then look down below. I note that my hands are trembling. Take a deep breath. It’s acrophobia. Step back and away.
Would you like something to drink?
I thank him and pass. I can’t have anything near my stomach now. I’m nauseous. Stomach is churning. I’m breathing rarified air. I don’t belong here.
The air conditioning, noiseless, offers a cooling feathery touch. I shiver. Fine Art and humidity are not friends. The temperature, constant and cool, preserves.
Here’s what you came to see.
The lodgepole pines I had seen as red and dying were now part of the story they introduced as fire ecology, with pine bark beetles entering the cambium layer of the tree, killing it, and preparing it for fire. Ted spoke of the flames rising with the heat in the forest, splitting open the cones that drop their seeds in the seared soil for the lodgepole’s regeneration the following year. “Lodgepole pinecones may remain unopened for years and burst open only during a forest fire,” Ted said. “They are referred to as serotinous cones.” As a young Mormon woman, I heard “Resurrection.”
~ Terry Tempest Williams, When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice
Photograph: Pendletron
Live & Learn 