Snake face, baby bird heart

I haven't posted much since I got to Florida on Monday and here is why: I've been trying to figure out what to say.

I love to be seen as adventurous and brave. I am both, I know I am, but it's the side I like to show off best. I like to post beautiful pictures and crazy stories and leave out the hard stuff unless it's funny or shows how tough I am.

I love being the person who lets a snake crawl up their face.

I adore my crazy adventurous job. I want to post pictures of mice and lizards and songbirds and Spanish moss and leave it at that. Would it be better if I did?

Or should I tell the whole truth? The truth is that in addition to being brave and adventurous sometimes my heart feels like this:

Gaping towhee nestlings we found yesterday.

And by sometimes I mean a lot. It's hard to admit but just as real and I am tired of trying to push it away or harden my poor baby bird heart.

This is the longest I've ever been out of the Midwest. I've had lots of little four month adventures, to Australia, to California, to Texas, to South Carolina, but this is the first time I haven't gone back. It feels right and it feels good and it feels terribly lonely and isolated and scary. I'm not even sure I can be homesick - what home is there? And I'm not building one here, I'll be moving who knows where in four months. I'm trying to become a turtle through sheer force of will.

No, not homesick - heartsick. I miss my people: not just in the Midwest, all over the country, all over the world. Everyone is moving or putting down roots and doing great things either way and I'm so happy for everybody but I worry a lot about the people I love disappearing or not knowing how important they are to me. To anyone who is or has ever been close to me (if you're reading this chances are it includes you) here is what I want to say:

Don't forget me. I hope you carry me around in your shell the way I carry you. I hope the next time we meet it will be like no time has passed, even if it's years (though I hope it's soon). I hope you like the pictures I post of snakes on my face and birds in my hands and I hope you have crazy beautiful adventures and share them too. And most of all I hope you know I love you and I miss you and I wish we talked more and you mean more to me than you think. Try to reach out from time to time? Even a little, even rarely. My baby bird heart will eat it up. I'm not great at it either but I'll try too, I promise.

Love,

Karis

Wild

Laying here, curled up in the grass next to the river, listening to the wind rattle the long-dead prairie grass, I realize that I am madly in love with the sky. That’s why I feel breathless on those winter days with thick blankets of low-slung clouds. I am longing for my love’s sweet blue face. The warmth of her yellow smile, even in the winter’s cold. I can feel it now, as I gently doze, stroking my face like the hand of a sweetheart. Although there is ice on the river I am not cold. I lay still, pressing my heart against the earth like a lover after sex, feeling snugly secure of my place between the earth and sky.

It has been too long. I always let myself get to the breaking point before I come back here. This is where I am me, but I am used to the cage that I accepted for most of my life. I’ve been getting bolder. Over a year now of slipping out of the cage, climbing over the back fence, roaming farther each time. I still come back though, lock myself in out of comfort, duty, habit. But I know that it is not where I belong.

I am not a true wild thing yet. “I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself” (D. H. Lawrence) and that is something I have been quite a lot in the last months. But I am growing wilder. My body is changing with my newfound freedom. I used to be all ample curves, not overfed but soft, domesticated. Now I am angular, bones and muscles and hard edges. I can go for longer between meals. My eyes can see better in the dark. I am no longer stricken by terror in the quiet, longing to fill my every moment with human voices to dull the fear.

And there is quite a lot of fear. Stuck halfway between, I fear both the unknown and the cage. I am more elusive than I once was. I do not trust myself yet but neither do I trust anyone else. It is exhausting, which is why I return so often to the safety and consistency of the cage, but that no longer feels like home. I run myself ragged, flailing and clawing wildly, feeling lost and alone and running in circles, trying to decide who I am. Eventually I always find myself here. Safely tucked between the earth and the sky, breathing into the slumbering grass, my face caressed by the last rays of sunlight. This is who I am. Remember. You already are everything you want to be.

"Never go a second hushing the percussion of your heart", or: Becoming a hermit is probably not the answer to all your problems

This morning I had a very hard time getting out of bed. The news of the last few days: the attacks in Paris, in Beirut, those in Kenya several months ago that I hadn't even heard about until they were brought up in comparison to Paris, the worry for the Syrian refugees who fled to Europe to escape ISIS only to face more bombs and guns and increased xenophobia on top of it, another unarmed black man killed by police in my own city of Minneapolis, the fact that before all this #paris was going to be a call to arms for the climate fight, to hold our leaders meeting there accountable for finally making and sticking to big commitments in the face of climate change...added to my own anxiety/self-pity/shame spirals and the atrocious darkness of November which had already been pretty effectively keeping me down.

It is, of course, a privileged position to be able to respond to all of this by disengaging, by going numb. I am incredibly lucky to be able to lay in bed with a blanket over my head and feel safe. It is easy, in this position, to allow these stories to feel far away, to feel powerless and exhausted and like nothing I could do would possibly make a difference so why should I do anything at all? I can hear King Theoden at Helm's Deep in my head, "So much death. What can men do against such reckless hate?"

I heard a woman on NPR this morning talking, not about terrorism at all but about National Parks, but she paraphrased Karen Armstrong saying, "Compassion is not an emotion, it's an act. But if it were aligned with an emotion it would be most closely tied to discomfort...It is so important for all of us at this moment in time to cultivate our discomfort because if we allow ourselves to feel that pain, that unrest, that discomfort, then we will act on it and that becomes an act of compassion. But if we continue to avert our gaze...then the world continues to suffer and we are not engaged in that suffering."

So Step One is don't shy away. I mean, take care of yourself first, that's important, but when things hurt they hurt for a reason. Don't numb the pain with escapism, even though it is easier and abundantly available. Living to avoid pain drains your life of meaning.

Step Two is act. This one is hard for me. What can I do? It's easy to make a gesture that is largely symbolic - like posting something heartfelt on the internet - and then move on and feel it was good enough, especially considering the vastness of the world's problems and how small and helpless it feels to be a human. It is a start, but that's not really acting, it's just talking. Which can be important, but it's not enough. What would be enough? If I can't affect change all by myself then it doesn't matter what I do, might as well just try to make myself happy while I can and ignore all the rest, right? In the scope of the world does it even matter what I do? This is a trap I easily fall into.

There is a quote that addresses this perfectly. At first I thought I made it up, then I thought I'd heard it from a friend or maybe from a book...I am somewhat embarrassed to admit that it is from Angel, a fantasy show that I don't even particularly like. Be that as it may, it is a truly excellent quote: "If nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do."

Compassion is an action, love is a verb.

You can't possibly do everything but everyone can do something. Make art, make love, make food. Reach out to someone. Donate time, money, or blood. Listen deeply to someone, especially if they are telling you what they need. Try to give it to them if you can. Look for the helpers. Join the helpers. I guarantee that there is someone somewhere working towards a cause that you care about and they would love an extra pair of hands. I guarantee that there are things that you want to do and that you are good at that will make the world a better place. Find them. Pay attention. Stay engaged, have civil conversations with people you disagree with and listen with empathy, compassion, and openness. Learn things. Share things. Love even when it's hard, even when it's not returned. And when something tragic happens you do not have to shift your focus, although it can feel completely overwhelming, like there are just too many problems to solve and you are just one person...but you don't have to do everything. Just do what you are doing harder.

It's dangerous to write this all down because the pledge to act can feel as satisfying as actually acting and it can stop you from actually doing the thing. I don't want to do that. I don't want to post some fancy quotes, make an appointment to donate blood, throw a few dollars to a charity and move on. I want to push myself to live better. Understanding and awareness are good first steps that I feel like I've begun to master (you are never done) but now it's time to walk the walk. A lot of what's been holding me back is the fear of doing something wrong or of being an inconvenience (I am from Minnesota, after all). That's stupid. The knowledge that my fears are stupid has never actually stopped me from having them before, but it's too important now for me not to try to push through them. So help me out, would you? Do what you can. Start small and grow. Push me (and those around you) to do what they can. If you want help with something, let me know. I want to help. And whenever you are feeling defeated and small, listen to this absolutely beautiful poem by Andrea Gibson.

"And this is for that moon
On the nights she seems hung by a noose
For the people who cut her loose
And the people still waiting for the rope to burn
About to learn that they have scissors in their hands"

Rest in Peace, Joe Brown

"You haven't met Joe Brown?! You need to meet Joe Brown."

I met Joe Brown, at Captain Tommy's insistence, in my last week in Texas, watching the sunset from his fishing pier and drinking. He was at least thirty years older than me, we had nothing in common, and we spent almost the entire time we knew each other drunkenly arguing about politics, but our brief friendship was absolutely one of the highlights of my time in Texas and definitely changed my life. I am incredibly sad to know I won't get to tell him to shut up and let me talk again.

He described himself as an "anarcho-capitalist" and had worked for and was friends with the Koch brothers. There was really no reason for us to like each other at all and in fact I think that is why Capt. Tommy introduced me to him, basically just to watch the sparks fly. But he was a genuinely nice and thoughtful human being, in addition to being funny as hell. After a long night of yelling at each other he gave me a hug and invited me to come to an Argentinian wine tasting with him and his wife ("She will love you." he said).

Even though we did not agree on anything and he really had no reason to listen to an idealistic Millennial slurring her way through Feminism 101, Why Ayn Rand was Wrong, and even Why Tattoos are Good, he did. He thanked me for interrupting him when I got impatient with his rambling tirades and then sat with rapt attention while I told him all the many ways in which he was wrong. We both argued passionately, explained ourselves fully, sometimes flat-out yelled, but then shut up and really listened to what the other had to say. Sometimes we even found things we agreed on. And admitted it. He thought about everything I said, asked me questions, and thought about it some more. It was magical. Nobody does that. No one.

I'm not positive that I changed his mind about anything, and he didn't necessarily change mine, but we absolutely got each other to think about things in a new and different way. And it was fun! And fascinating. He single-handedly gave me hope that there are people who are willing to have real discussions in this world. That people can believe things that I hate and still be reasonable and good people. That we can drop useless politeness but still respect each other and speak from the heart. That it is possible to change minds and to share across generations and political ideology, not just preach endlessly to a choir or scream at each other with our fingers in our ears. That there are people who genuinely want to know what other people think and will shut up and listen to what they have to say.

It is heartbreaking that there is one less of those people in the world now but he gave me hope that others exist. And for that, as well as for the welcome and the wine, I am forever grateful.

Perfectionism Part 2: Too Many Metaphors

A note before I start: This is a post I've had in my head for probably at least four months and in draft form for at least one. I've been holding on to it because it wasn't quite right, because there were far too many conflicting metaphors, because I was too afraid to share. But that's exactly the point, right? So here goes...

It's funny to try to trace your long-held notions back to their root because often you will find that so many of the problems you face stem from the exact same origin. You've been trying to hack them off at ground level separately for years only to find that they're all connected feet below the surface and you are going to need to break out the heavy machinery and dig it all up. And by you, of course, I mean me.

I have always been a rule-following kind of kid. If there's a rule, it must be there for a reason, right? Better to follow it, just to be on the safe side. Who knows what could happen if you break it. For a long time it baffled me how I got this way. My parents were more lenient than most of my friends', I wasn't raised with any particular religion...I think it was just never getting into trouble that led me to believe that it would be the worst thing I could do. The kids that tested the limits found out that the consequences were pretty minor, all things considered, and once you'd done it once it wasn't that hard to keep doing it. I lived in constant anxiety because I didn't know what would happen and a mark on my unblemished record would destroy all I had built.

I have already pontificated on being a perfectionist in recovery, but recently I've been thinking a lot about perfectionism and the concept of building, particularly "building a life". I think this concept is what has caused me a lot of problems, both in terms of "success" (good grades in middle school were important because they were important in high school because they were important in college...sweat all the small stuff because it all adds up!) and in terms of relationships (of all kinds).

That phrase has been stuck in my head for a while now. I heard a friend of mine talk about "building a life" with their significant other and my first reaction was intense jealousy. I thought that was everything I wanted. It is certainly everything I've been taught to want. But the more I think about it, the more I realize that it isn't what I want. Not really.

Building a life implies that there is a firm foundation, that if the soil you started on shifts there can be no shifting with it, only crumbling. In my relationships I am usually the one who builds faster, trying to lay bricks precisely and quickly, following the blueprint I have specifically tailored to everything I think the other person wants so that they will agree to stay in this house we've built together...then when it's clear that they are no longer building in the same direction as I have been I am already too high in the scaffolding and refuse to jump.

When, usually months later, construction finally does cease, the building is left vacant, unfinished, and desolate, but it does not disintegrate. It stays, in a row with the others, haunted by the ghosts of failure, of what could have been. If I had changed the blueprint, if we had worked together, if it were fancier, if it were smaller, if I had tried harder, if, if...

It is of course reasonable, natural, and expected to feel sad when something ends. What I hate is the feeling of loss, not of the other person but of the structure we were building together. I never want to be sadder about losing an imagined future than I am about losing someone I care about.

Also, though I crave safety and security, I am also deeply claustrophobic. I don't want to build a life because I don't want my life to have walls. Instead, I want to share my life.

It is scary to think about it this way because my terrified little perfectionist heart wants to build a perfect fortress with a perfect partner, and be Done. Like it's supposed to be, right? But you're never done until you're dead. You can keep building forever, hoping that the shifting sands will not topple your castle, trying desperately to keep each other within the confines of what you've built, or you can give in to the fluid nature of existence and not try to force it into any particular shape.

I want my life to wash across the soil, picking up and depositing debris as it goes. I want my life to collide with others and create reactions, to mix into a volatile solution, to pool for a time, to recede, to course and change and be changed by those around it. When streams diverge around a solid object in their path that they could not break through together they do not mourn for what could have been. They carry on, permanently and fundamentally changed by the experience of swirling together for a time over the rapids. I want my life to be vast, to flood the landscape, to be fed by many streams at once, to grow and change and keep growing. I want to take the love and experience with me, to give it freely and let it multiply, rather than entombing it within walls, hoarding what I have jealously.

Of course, thinking up pretty metaphors is easy. I am still a scared little rules-obsessed kid whose biggest fear is screwing up. What if I hurt someone? What if I make a mistake? What if I can't take it back? What if I ruin my life? What if I loosen my grip and lose everything? How do you uncurl your fingers after a lifetime of clinging desperately? Thinking about it is easy but feeling and acting on these thoughts gets hard, scary, and messy almost immediately and, all things considered, my life is still pretty pristine. I am lucky. I have planned well. I haven't felt a lot of consequences, and when I have dealt with life's difficulties I've been quick to forget how well I handled them. Maybe next time it will be different. Maybe next time will ruin everything forever. Better be on the safe side.

I wrote this all out because I think it is Important. Because I am exhausted by trying desperately to cling to what I have and where I am. Truthfully, none of this is new. I've been working on this for a long time and I've been making progress, getting braver, but I'm getting to a point where I have to let go of the cliff and jump to get to where I want to go and I know I can do it but I'm too scared and the longer I sit here weighing my options the more my muscles grow weary and start to shake. I've been trying so hard for so long to hold on to everyone I care about all at once and to be completely honest I do not trust the people I love to hold on to me back, even though many of them have proven that they will. It's just safer if I do it all myself. But I am sick and tired of being scared, of holding on for dear life. I want so much more than safety.

So, deep breath. Here goes. I hope if you're reading this you'll stick with me through whatever happens next.

Victory!

Okay,  so this feels weird to announce but I just had a huge life breakthrough and I am really proud so I'm going to.

Today I was feeling incredibly shitty and for the first time in my entire life looking at my body in the mirror made me feel better instead of worse.

It sounds really small, but it is actually a huge accomplishment that has taken my entire life.

Not that I've never felt good about my body before (although that in itself is relatively recent), but it is usually on a day when I feel really good, on a day when I put effort into looking good, or right after I work out.

Today I did not feel good. I did not work out or put on makeup or nice clothes. I crawled out of bed at 11:00, reheated a huge bowl of yesterday's cheesey grits, and went back to bed to eat them while watching My Drunk Kitchen.

It's been a rough time for me lately. Actually, it's been rough for kind of a while. But the fact that I can drag myself out of bed at 3:30 in the afternoon all greasy and disheveled on a "cry on the phone to your best friend" kind of day, look in the mirror as I'm getting into the shower, think "Well, at least I look good", and actually smile deserves to be celebrated.

An Earth Day Rant and CHALLENGE

So it's Earth Day again, that magical day when people who rarely spend more time outside than it takes to get from their car to the mall entrance pretend to care about the environment. Hooray. Everyone post a picture of the planet with a little banner about how pretty trees are so you can feel good about yourself and then continue taking thirty minute showers, using four paper towels when you needed one, leaving all the lights on and everything plugged in at all times, and consuming plastic and fossil fuels at an alarming rate.

See? Everything's fine now!

Oh, did that sound a little bitter? Look, I know that a lot of you reading this are not the people I described above. I know that a lot of you honestly care and want to fix things just as much as I do. The thing is, we're not doing it.

I am included in this. I try to do what I can: unplug things, turn lights off, take short showers less frequently, pick up litter, reduce, reuse, recycle, work for a conservation organization, etc. But there's only so much you can do. You can bring reusable bags to the store but everything you buy comes with a pound of plastic packaging. The fact that I do work for this conservation organization means that I don't have enough money to buy all organic, it's often hard to buy local, and I drive an enormous gas-guzzling car now because my tiny fuel efficient one got wrecked and my parents offered this one to me for free which was incredibly kind of them and I was in no position to pass it up. I hope to buy a fuel efficient one in the future but I'm about to drive this behemoth 1,400 miles and I feel kind of sick about it but it's what I have to do.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has changed its language. It no longer talks about what we can do to stop global warming. It talks about what we can do to limit it to two degrees (Celsius). Spoiler alert: We're not going to do it. The big businesses are actually trying to get regulations loosened, the government is wishy-washy at best, and the media is still focusing on whether or not the people believe in climate change. I wonder how many people and animals will have their homes destroyed, starve, or run out of water before people will stop caring about everyone's right to their own opinion and start taking action based on the science. Obviously, it will be too late. It's already too late.

"Conservation is getting nowhere because it is incompatible with our Abrahamic concept of land. We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect. There is no other way for land to survive the impact of mechanized man..." Aldo Leopold wrote that in 1948. 67 YEARS AGO. And if anything it is more true now than it was then.

Everyone knows that fracking is using millions of gallons of water while much of the country is in a prolonged drought, that it poisons groundwater, that it ruins habitat, that it is detrimental to the health of anything living anywhere near the mines. But who cares, right? It's natural gas. Natural means good! We'll have a cheap solution for a few years until we use all of it up just like we're doing with oil and then we'll all be fucked again. But why would we waste money figuring out solutions now when we could make money by pushing the problem onto future generations?!

All of this makes me want to scream and punch people and throw up but it also leads to that age-old question: So what do you do about it? I've been thinking about this a lot lately in terms of my career as well as my personal habits. I might make a separate blog post about that later, but for now the short answer is: I don't know.

But I have an idea. I'm issuing a challenge:

I'd like to make Earth Day like New Year's Eve, where we all make at least one resolution. It can be small! It doesn't have to cost money! Just pick something simple that you know you can do but haven't been and try to stick to it for a whole year. A lot of them will become habit pretty quickly. Then next year, make a new one. We're going to make this a thing.

My Earth Day Resolutions:
1. I will remember to bring my reusable bags to the grocery store every time this year and be more emphatic about refusing plastic bags when I really don't need them.
2. I will master the art of the 5 minute shower.
3. I will go camping at least three times this summer.

Edit to Add:
4. I will use locally-sourced fruit, vegetables, and eggs when possible and actually research where in my community to get more local produce.