Breathing Argon
Friday Bricolage
Greetings!
It snowed here in Chicago yesterday. It was cold where I sit next to the window so I bundled up in a way that living in drafty places and sleeping on the floor at various times has taught me to do. Sweater, scarf and socks while the snow flurries continue on. The weather app tells me it “feels like 12 degrees” outside so I don’t go out.
I talk about the weather here often both because the weather patterns here in Chicago where I am visiting are different than those in Seattle and because I have found that weather connects us as humans. It transcends culture. It reminds me that we inhale and exhale back 10¹⁸ atoms of argon and how these atoms remain in the atmosphere essentially unchanged, to be inhaled again and again throughout time. Argon connects me to Cleopatra, to Jane Addams, to Noam Chomsky, to Clarissa Pinkola Estes (and the wolves she champions), to my ancient ancestors in Northern Europe, and to you, dear reader.
We’re here together on this beautiful planet breathing the same air and trying to work it out, make sense of things, and, in my world at least, find ways to share and care. I love and try to open to love a little more each day. I keep going.
Please enjoy this interlude of me singing a bit of a Jamie Woon song on the shores of Lake Michigan.
Scattered Seeds
I talked last week about slowing down. As part of my own meditative practice, I took a long, slow walk on the shore of Lake Michigan. It was quiet and calm outside. A peace flag was flying at half-staffed, and eventually, rain started to fall. I ended up at the weathered piano that I shared a video of on Wednesday’s Deep Dive and took this last shot before walking back. This is patch of grass that was set afire in late September. Shortly after it happened, I talked with a neighbor and his dog about how the grass would eventually grow back.
I said, “Like after a wildfire, right?” and he agreed. I told him that reminded me of the pandemic and how we’re still working on bringing ourselves and the world around us to back to life after that devastation.
I saw quite a bit of new, green grass before autumn turned it brown and on Sunday, when I saw these discarded pumpkins I wondered if pumpkins would also be growing here next year along with whatever other seeds found their way into the ashen soil. It’s certain the grass will be restored because nature tends to heal itself. I take comfort in that.
Will I personally have a promise of growth? As Marcus Aurelius says in Book 2, XII of Meditations:
For as for that which is either past or to come, a man cannot be said properly to part with it. For how should a man part with that which he hath not? These two things therefore thou must remember. First, that all things in the world from all eternity, by a perpetual revolution of the same times and things ever continued and renewed, are of one kind and nature; so that whether for a hundred or two hundred years only, or for an infinite space of time, a man see those things which are still the same, it can be no matter of great moment. And secondly, that that life which any the longest liver, or the shortest liver parts with, is for length and duration the very same, for that only which is present, is that, which either of them can lose, as being that only which they have; for that which he hath not, no man can truly be said to lose.
So, this is it! This life, regardless of how long or short, is the one I have. What is gone is gone. What is in the future is beyond reach. I have today.
Carpe diem, baby!
Today, I am so cold. The radiator has its own ideas of when it decides to turn on. I choose to ignore the cold and keep writing because this is a commitment.
One of many.
Movie Recommendation
This week’s movie recommendation is The Journey of Natty Gann, which I watched all snuggled up with my daughter while the snow fell outside yesterday. It’s an adventure story with a female protagonist. It connects Chicago and Seattle. And there’s a wolf companion(!!). Alexandra heard about it from watching this video from Pop Culture Detective.
This film is just fantastic, my friends. It not only offers a window into the lived reality of people during the Great Depression but also shows how someone can navigate the world with autonomy and without concepts of ownership. It quite deftly holds the existential tension of freedom and belonging which I have been a champion of throughout my life. While this isn’t always met with favor, it’s worth striving for. Seeing this adventure helps me endeavor to keep living out my own adventures more fully.
And yes, that is baby John Cusack in the film. I suspect they put his face there because a girl and a wolf by themselves may not have sold enough tickets. Sigh.
Adventures ahead!
When I was a girl, I never wanted to be the human protagonist. I wanted to be the dog or the wolf. I can look back and see that this is likely because the protagonists in the books I read were almost always boys or canines.
My current imagination holds more possibilities than that.
Natty, Marcus, the Wolf, and my own Soul are igniting my spirit of adventure. I don’t know where it’s all going but that’s where I’ll be putting my focus. That’s my next merit badge.
Please wish me good fortune!
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All my love,
Kymberlee
PS, Here’s a Chicago video postcard from me to you which is a teaser for next Wednesday’s Deep Dive.
PPS, Think someone might dig this newsletter and want to share it? There’s a button for that! Thanks in advance. :)
Loved hearing your voice!