Another World Is Probable

I’m going to do something I never do and present an idea that I can’t fully verify. So basically, don’t quote me, and hopefully this post gets you thinking, which is ultimately my intention. I think there's a connection between "art" and "truth," etymologically.

I, like many, watched the Artemis II mission with rapt fascination. It was incredible to see so many updated images of the moon and Earth. But it also had me pondering our strong connection to the moon.

When I thought about what to write today, the answer that came to me was, “Take a break.” I think it’s both a missive and a message, meaning I need to take a break, but also other people need to take one too. I can’t speak for anyone else, but for myself, I notice right now with so many things happening in the world, so many issues vying for my attention, it feels irresponsible to take a break. That instead, I must fire on all cylinders all day, every day. I think it’s in part because there’s pressure in the external world, but also in part because it’s how I’m made.

On Saturday, I remarked to some friends of mine that I’ve spent nearly a year querying literary agents for my romantic comedy, and no one wants to represent me. One of my friends chimed in, “yet. No one wants to represent you yet.”That word snagged my attention because there’s so much hope and faith wrapped up in three letters.

In the process of coaching me through transformation, my chiropractor said there is a space between who I am and who I’d like to become. And in that space, I need to breathe in trust and creativity. I don’t need to know how to get where I’d like to go, I just need to trust I’ll get there and remember to be creative. More in this week's post.

I’m finishing up a housesit in Berkeley and typing this outside while birds chirp and the sun warms my face. A leaf just fell on my keyboard. Earlier today, a rainbow prism sparkled in my bedroom and lit up a nature scene on the wall so it seemed like the rainbow could have been part of the picture. I tried to capture it to no avail. Just a moment for me, I guess. I forget it’s the small things, the pedestrian things that fill my heart to bursting.

I’ve been writing about transformation so much lately because that’s the phase of life that I’m in, but the shadow side is I keep bracing for the worst-case scenario. It’s perfectly reasonable, sensical, even, but that also means my hope for things working out or going the way I’d like is at a nadir. Hope is so tricky.

I’m at the point where most of my friends are talking about getting older, and they’re grieving the fact they no longer have the same sense of possibility about their future like they did when they were younger. The essence is, “The world is no longer my oyster.” But have you actually thought about that expression?

I keep thinking about a song I first heard more than 20 yearsago called “Eg Ser.” Unfortunately, there’s no publicly available version I can share, but you can purchase the albumit came from. And YouTube offers numerous options, just not the one I’m thinking of. Anyway, “Eg Ser” is a Norwegian song, and the English translation I like best is:  I can see that you are tired, but I cannot walk all thesteps for youThey are yours to walk, but I can walk them with you And I will walk them with you I can see that you’re in pain, but I cannot cry any tearsfor youThey are yours to cry, but I can cry them with youAnd I will cry them with youThe song is what I imagine God, the Divine Beloved, Higher Power, whatever word you want to use, would say to us.

You may already know this, but AI safety researcher Mrinank Sharma resigned recently. That’s not really news in and of itself – people leave their positions all the time. No, the newsworthy part is that he left Anthropic, best known for its chatbot Claude, to study, drumroll please: poetry. Yes, poetry.The context is what makes the whole thing fascinating.

When life gets stressful or complicated, I notice a tendency in me (and in some people I know) to make things even more stressful, even more complicated. I don’t know why exactly, but I suspect it’s because when people are scared, they start scanning for threats and want to resolve them all. It feels protective to try to fix everything. I don’t know about you, but for me, that only makes things worse. More in this week's post about what "keeping it simple" means and practical suggestions for doing so.

You know how people say most of the things they’re afraid of never happen? The opposite is true for me – most of the things I’ve feared have happened. Not the fleeting, “I’m scared I’ll miss my flight” things, but the “I’m scared I’ll be broken into” things. The recurring fears, the ones that cause my stomach to roil and my chest to constrict. But I've learned something as a result.

Something that’s on my mind a lot is the desire for one-and-done. I want the magic pill, the silver bullet, the “do this once and everything is fixed” solution. I see this in myself but I also see it in the rhetoric we use when talking about the world writ large. “Save the world,” we say, as if the planet is in need of rescuing. That’s what “saving” means, by the way, to rescue from impending danger. Here’s the thing, though: When in human history have we as a species not been in impending danger? Seriously, when?

Something I heard recently: “No one really wants the truth. Not when the truth is ugly, and the liar is beautiful.” Yeeees. The truth is ugly, uncomfortable. It often asks something of us. It forces us to look at something we’d rather not look at because it challenges our worldview or a belief we have about someone or ourselves. It’s much easier, in some ways, to keep living a lie.

I had an interesting experience with certainty on Saturday night. I went to a Democratic Socialists of America teach-in where they discussed how veganism feeds anticapitalism and vice versa. They served dinner and I was SURE I’d be able to eat almost nothing because while I’m vegan, I don’t eat onions and garlic, which are basically in everything. It turns out they ordered food from one of a handful of restaurants that don’t cook with those ingredients! And then on the way home, all the transit apps said my bus was on time (it wasn’t). I was certain I’d missed my connecting bus because of the delay, which, again, all of the transit apps said would be the case, but I didn’t! The connecting bus was also late, which meant I waited a grand total of 2 minutes rather than the 15 I begrudgingly anticipated. Here was the trickster working in my favor. I usually think of the trickster as the disruptive force that makes it rain on your wedding day, but sometimes the trickster can work to your benefit.These experiences

A few people have said to me they don’t feel particularly motivated right now, that they’re low energy, and just generally not feeling amazing. What keeps coming to mind is a post I wrote in November 2021 about letting things be terrible. Even though I’m not recovering from a car accident or participating in the now-defunct NaNoWriMo organization challenge, this post still feels relevant. Enjoy.

I just finished Elizabeth Gilbert’s latest memoir, All the Way to the River, and a few lines jumped out at me. In one art piece (because the memoir includes her doodles), she writes, “Replacing fantasies with different fantasies is not a good idea. Trade fantasy, which has a storyline, with mystery, which does not.”As we open this new year, that feels like the best possible advice I could hear. More in this week's post.

One of my guiding principles is that the universe is always communicating with us, so when something unusual happens – like this week – I pay attention. The other day, something small and slender drooped from the top bar of my shower stall. Was it caulk? The glue unfurling? No. It was a millipede. Listen to hear what the millipede had to tell me.

It’s funny, or perhaps timely, that as we approach the longest night of the year in the Northern hemisphere that I’m thinking of light, both literal and metaphorical. On the metaphorical level, I very much relate to the story of the Golden Buddha.

I have preconceived notions of what my life will look like and how I will get my needs met. What I’m finding out, though, is the universe takes care of me in ways I didn’t think it would.