For the last few weeks, I’ve felt like my brain is floating about ten feet above my body. I start working on one project, walk away to get a drink of water, and an hour later, there’s dirt under my finger nails, raspberry thorns stuck in my arms and legs, a pile of garden clippings waiting for the compost, and my dress (which makes a great bag when pulled up past my bellybutton) is full of green beans, cucumbers, and a gigantic ripe tomato. When I step inside to empty my dress-bag full of veggies, I get distracted by the unfinished oracle deck card sitting on the dining room table. Last week, I forgot about the laundry in the washing machine because I took a nap then had to rush out of the house for an appointment (honestly, this happens almost every time I do laundry).
I’m generally an easily distractible human, but the end of summer always ramps up my tendency to hop around from project to project like a feral rabbit on amphetamines. This morning, I sat down to write this post, but now it's almost 2pm. During my writing time today, I made a pie crust, fed my sourdough starter, worked on ANOTHER oracle deck card, submitted a manuscript to a poetry contest, and spent twenty minutes looking at the sale section on the website of a company that makes pants that actually fit my booty-ful body but are way too expensive to buy full price.
If I’m not careful, I can flit around all day and never get to the things I really want to do (like write and read and draw). If I’m not careful, I can use up all my energy hopping around from project to project and end up with a lot of unfinished projects. But sometimes, the flitting is fabulous. I’ll have five things going all at once, but somehow, in a very non-linear fashion, everything gets wrapped up, and my inner feral rabbit licks her paws with joy.
The magic of an August afternoon spent flitting around from project to project is something to savor. In two weeks, these floaty summer days filled with vegetables asking to be picked and half finished creative projects scattered around the house will be replaced with the fullness of family-time in Texas. And then it will be fall. And fall means grading.
On Sunday evening (the day I filled my dress with veggies), I poured a glass of wine and put on Natalia Lafourcade’s album, De Todas las Flores because it reminds me of my baby sister, Mari, and her sweet family [We listened to it in those quiet, timeless days when my niece was fresh to the world. Watch the YouTube lyric video of the album. It’s like witnessing a healing ritual held inside an effervescent bottle of joy. It's like the sigh your body releases when you slide into a warm bath. One of my favorite songs, “Llévame Viento” (Carry Me, Wind) begins, Wind, carry me to where the noise cannot reach me, where the birds are singing and the water can save me. Raise my legs, shake my body, and sing. Sing, Wind. Lift my body like leaves kissed by autumn.].
Very few things bring me back to the earth like the long exhale of a Sunday evening spent with wine, music, veggies fresh from the garden, and a new recipe to explore. “You should write about tonight for this week’s Joyful Practice post,” Yme said, “You’re totally blissed out.” It’s true. I wanted to purr from contentment. Earlier in the week, Yme made labneh (a strained yogurt-cheese from the Middle East) with yogurt Jenn made from her cow’s milk, and we still had lots of eggs from her weekly egg-drop-off, so I decided to try out a recipe from a new cookbook that called for eggs and labneh. The best part of the evening was sitting in the backyard with more wine and music and sharing the meal I’d made with Yme and my dear friend, Sarah.
Flitting can be fun. Flitting is a fine way to spend a day if you don’t have any pressing deadlines, but cooking is like listening to Natalia Lafourcade. Sensuous and rooted in the earth. All that scattered energy is expended, and my brain returns to my body.
Yesterday, Jenn and I met over Zoom to work on upcoming Joyful Practice events (I’ll share links and descriptions at the end of this post!), and I was distracted by a hummingbird eating from the jasmine blossoms that grow around the window in front of my desk. I told Jenn I should stop watching the hummingbird and focus on the computer screen. She told me that the opposite is true: I should stop focusing on the computer screen and pay attention to the hummingbird!
There’s a hummingbird in the jasmine again, and I’d rather watch it than stare at a computer screen, so I will leave you with this recipe for fasolakia (a Greek green bean, potato, and tomato stew that is delicious! When I made it on Sunday, I added yellow squash and dill because yuummmmm). And here is a recipe for Cilbir. When I made it on Sunday, I used a recipe from Third Culture Cooking (by Zaynab Issa) that calls for soft boiled eggs instead of poached eggs–this dish blew our minds!
May your weekend have moments of glorious distraction followed by moments of delicious absorption in something that makes you feel gleeful.
PS: Here’s a poem about the kitchen table by Joy Harjo: “Perhaps the World Ends Here”. Listen to her reading. It is magnificent.
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Upcoming Joyful Practice Opportunities:
Free Workshop at Browsers: Jenn and I will be upstairs at Browsers again on Saturday, September 6 from 2:00-4:00 PM for a free 2-hour generative workshop on Joyful Practice. Bring pen and paper to explore open-ended writing in a fun & casual community setting. You show up with your unique brain, your worries from the week, your dreams, your pleasures, your sorrows, and we will show up with prompts designed to connect us back to ourselves, to each other, and to the thread of creativity that ties us. This is a free one-time workshop. All are welcome.
You can register here.
Sustainable Writing Summit: On Sept 10-13, my friend Sloan is hosting the Sustainable Writing Summit, a free event aimed at helping writers keep the creative spark alive and keep showing up to the page — even in difficult times. Jenn and I are offering two sessions: a pre-recorded discussion that offers a brief introduction to some of the essential aspects of Joyful Practice, complete with tools and prompts designed to expand your sense of play, and we will facilitate a live one-hour Joyful Practice introduction workshop. It's free to sign up, and you'll also get access to 20+ more presentations and interviews that will help you make space for your art and figure out your next steps. Each session will have a replay available for 24 hours after it launches. And if you're interested in extra resources and accountability, there's an optional paid upgrade that includes extended access to all the sessions, as well as bonus resources and co-working sessions.
You can find more info here.
Joyful Practice Workshop, Round 3: Coming soon–information and registration for our next eight-week Joyful Practice Workshop session, which begins in October.