/reader

 

I knew when I took the shot this morning it would be a triggering moment for Sawsan who swoons over Sparrows.

Then I posted the shot on Instagram. In seconds, a text message comes flying in: “POST the Sparrow, PLEASE.”

Then message alerts won’t stop: Ping Ping Ping Ping Ping PING. PING. She lights up my inbox after I ask her to share a few thoughts on why I should post the picture.

I was a bit taken back — she said ‘PLEASE‘ vs. the customary JUST-DO-IT. Finally, a wee bit of control over Her on Something. I feel such joy over this…

Sawsan said it all started here with my post: Riding Metro North. With “My” Little Bird.’

Then she shares a passage from Thoreau in ‘Walden‘: “I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance that I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn.”

I had to look up “epaulet.”

I re-read the passage, and thought about the summer afternoon when the kids and I went to Cove Island Park. I had Birdie (our Sun Conure) on my shoulder — and, the kids were a least one hundred yards behind me, belly crawling in the grass, nope, don’t know him, never saw him before in our life.

But we digress.

Sawsan gets bold — and shares one of her poems. Also, in small print, a directive not to attribute the poem to her.

A few second pass…and my message alerts light up again.

“do you find it suitable” –

“does it fit your blog?” –

“it really doesn’t fit” “

“so let me think”

“no, don’t post it – just post the photo of the Sparrow – and the fact that Sparrows were the only birds that showed up at Lake Michigan during the polar vortex. No other creature.”

So, I think about it for less than 1/2 a second, and think, HA!. Don’t post it? Good luck with that! Don’t attribute it to her? More good luck with that!

Here it is:

Things you say turn into metaphors in my stomach.
A sparrow that keeps flapping it’s wings until I open my mouth for it
to come out.
And I have to translate what it’s saying.
So, I started writing this book from both ends.
From one end I’m writing your song.
From the other end I’m writing what the sparrow comes out of my
mouth saying.
It wants to sing your song. It wants to go back home where it came
from.
Tethered by a book spine.

And I think, WOW, who knew that Sawsan had any talent at all.

Beautiful!

Notes: This morning’s photos of the Sparrow and other birds here. Photos of twilight to daybreak here. Short video of the waterfalls here.

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A song I’m loving:

One //
Once, my “truest self” was a fourth grader who had surgery to remove the gap between her two front teeth. She was tired of being self-conscious about it. She wore rainbow-striped pants to school and the group of popular girls encircled her and called her a lesbian, cackling like hyenas. She traded stickers on the hill by the basketball court and wrote poems about flowers. That version of me was desperate to fit in, and she was true.

Once, my “truest self” was a high school girl who had bleached straight-across bangs and a bowl-cut done with a Flowbee. That version of me called into Live 105.3 every Sunday night (indie night) to try and win concert tickets; she swayed to her favorite bands and brought them a CD with a handmade cover full of songs she wrote. She used safety pins and scissors to scratch her arms until they bled. That version of me wanted to escape, and she was true.

Once, my “truest self” was a 19 year old riding the bus from San Rafael to Richmond. That version of me took BART to MarArthur Station in Oakland and walked alone at night to my boyfriend at the time’s co-op on Apgar Street. She took pills and acid to try to blend in with the other punks and went to house shows and once scrounged her boyfriend’s room for enough change to buy a to-go box of spaghetti from the cheap take-out place by UC Berkeley. That version of me was wildly lost, and she was true.

Once, my “truest self” was a 24 year old who walked through the redwoods at UC Santa Cruz to get to classes. She had to re-take calculus the summer after graduation because she failed her final. She went through a break-up that catapulted her into self-responsibility. She listened to For Emma, Forever Ago on repeat while driving up and down West Cliff Drive, watching the surfers and wondering when something would finally click. That version of me ached for more, and she was true.

Once, my “truest self” was a graduate student who worked full shifts at Trader Joe’s before going to night classes until 10pm. She read Jung and Rogers and gulped up anything related to human growth and potential, all while not quite feeling her own. She wanted to be seen as helpful, as altruistic, as caring. She was desperate to make a difference as proof of worthiness, but also because it’s what her heart was always called toward. That version of me was confused, and she was true.

Once, my “truest self” was a woman driving across the Golden Gate Bridge to meet her birth mother for the first time at the ferry building in the city. She wore a black polka-dot dress and shifted from side to side as she watched her first home walk out of her Uber and run toward her. She thought she needed a certain outcome or ending in order to be whole. She assumed reunion was the one thing that would bring true healing. That version was longing for belonging, and she was true.

For so long, I believed my “truest self” was an idealized version of myself, someone always out of reach. Maybe it is to some. Yet thinking about it this way gives me less compassion for all the versions who didn’t yet know how to remove the armor, come out of the turtle shell, be fully seen and known, move toward what she wanted — and the parts of me who are still practicing those very things. It feels like a disservice to call those versions of me less true, less real. Because they were and are so very real. They ushered me into who I’ve become, just by being who they were. I hold them in me like sacred kin, each version real in her own way and no less valid or deserving of respect than the wiser version of me that exists now. Naming each part and version of me as real feels like love. This is the way I want to treat all of my parts, all aspects of myself, including the ones I’d rather no one knew about. I can only hope in ten years, I’ll be holding the current version of me with similar care, with a depth of understanding that obliterates an inner hierarchy and allows for the whole.

I want to keep obliterating the inner hierarchy — keep allowing the whole.

Two //
I’m realizing how much easier it feels to say I don’t know sometimes than it is to honor the clarity. I don’t know leads to indecision; I’m clear leads to deciding. I don’t know sounds softer than I’m certain. And sometimes, deciding is terrifying. Choosing is nerve-wracking. Claiming your knowing is intimidating… especially if non-action, stagnancy, and haziness feels more comfortable than Going For It.

I always wished I could relate to people who over-work, who are constantly busy, who have endless energy they’re trying to burn, who do The Most. It’s long been the opposite for me; living with depression usually made it hard to find energy for much outside the bare minimum. I regularly felt lazy compared to most of my peers. I at times grieve the living I’ve lost to the pain. Only now, in this season of life, do I feel that shifting — I feel this newfound life force within me that had been hiding there all along, and I’m having to navigate where to put it all, and it feels like such a gift but an overwhelming one. When the overwhelm arises, I feel an old version of myself creeping forward: the I don’t know version. I keep softly turning back toward the current version of me who actually does have some semblance of knowing, who actually is clear on certain things, and listening to her. It is teaching me something.

Three //
There has been much happening behind the scenes the last year that I don’t share publicly, and it sometimes makes me feel like I’m lying or hiding. But the truth is that privacy has felt so good. Going places no one knows I went feels good. Sharing significantly less on social media the last year and staying logged off more and more feels good. Grieving without an audience feels good. Being in my life feels good. Tending to my longings and visions for the future feels good. Working on things that might be a surprise to many, including myself, feels good. Keeping most things just for me and those closest to me feels good. Re-centering being of service feels good. Spending a lot of time thinking deeply about what I want the next seasons of my life, my parenting, my work, my creativity, my free time, my energy, and my space to look like feels good. Getting less feedback and input feels good. Having more tender, intimate conversations with beloved people in my life feels good. Meeting new friends feels good. Finding a renewed sense of meaning and returning to long-held callings I thought I no longer had the capacity for feels good. Being clear on my values and morals feels good. Doing all of this in ways that don’t require sharing or showing or validation or even an external gaze feels good. I think doing what feels good is important, and sometimes hard, and we can practice it anyway.

Four //
We really do get to be containers for everything. We really do get to feel and experience and hold many contradictory parts. We really do get to change our minds and grow new beliefs and embody different ways of being. We really do get to be multidimensional, no matter how inconvenient it is in a world that wants us to brand/identify/sell/stay “ourselves.”, as though our Self is not ever-changing. To be human is so wildly inconvenient to so many of the structures we’ve been told to live within, and the continual practice of breaking out of them feels like courage.

Five //
“One thing is certain, and I have always known it—the joys of my life have nothing to do with age. They do not change. Flowers, the morning and evening light, music, poetry, silence, the goldfinches darting about …” This is from May Sarton’s At Seventy and has me thinking about the joys of my life, how so many of them haven’t changed since middle and high school: Photography. Thrifting. Being in nature. Poetry. Music. Writing. Good listening. Solitude. The forest. Long drives. Flowers. There are so many that are so simple, so accessible. I imagine myself taking photos at age seventy and feel deep joy. I am asking myself, how can I center these joys more? How can I notice them more? How can I share them more? What would shift if I did? I hope we can all ask ourselves these questions, especially amid the chaos of the world, and let joy be a guidepost as much as the harder stuff is.

Thank you, as always, for being here.

△ Thinking about John & Yoko’s campaign for peace a lot these days

△ Accounting for taste, from

△ “Be careful of those who demand you remain neutral in the face of oppression.”

△ I loved this conversation between two incredible writers

△ Reading beloved May Sarton’s At Seventy: A Journal and so inspired

△ I’ve been loving this season of Off The Grid

△ For Keeps

△ The bounty of lemon balm that just re-emerged in on our yard—

With care,
Lisa

I personally think this is a fair post, and right on the money. I really wouldn't have expected Ruben to receive any flack for something so...benign?

So I perused the replies, thinking to myself "can they really be as bad a Ruben is making out here?"

They were.

I decided while perusing the replies, I'd take some screenshots of them, so I can quote some of them within this posts. Very quickly I had like 20 screenshots saved to my phone. Then I came across this reply from @pamela, one of the admins on Ruben's instance:

Local Admin Note: We've removed a lot of toxic replies here, and have blocked and silenced a surprising number of accounts. Frankly, this has been an embarrassing response to a post encouraging empathy. Use your judgement before adding additional replies to it.

So the ones I saw weren't even the worst. Pamela & co. had already removed what appeared to be far worse replies than what I was seeing.

The fallout

Ruben wrote a blog post about this whole experience that contained some responses to the dross that he received in the Mastodon replies.

For posterity, here's some of the more "interesting" replies I read:

there is no sound reason for anyone to give up their freedom and support the prolonging of the moral disgrace that is proprietary software. And it's #GNU/Linux people.

Of course you're allowed to complain. But part of putting your opinion out into the word, is that other people might also have opinions, and they may tell you them. Oh no!

Imagine making a post "Boy, I sure do hate umbrellas", and then a reply mentions a really nice coat and you get totally butt hurt.

you mean Windows people like those who browse the www full of linux
servers?

We can complain anything we want when 'your' corporation takes over the space of fair companies, just for the sake of dollahs.

And that's what a VM is for!

Nope, they are by no means allowed to complain about the sh!t they threw themselves into.
As I am not allowed to complain about all the sh!t my NixOS setup with pure Wayland w/o Xwayland runs me into.

Ask for solutions to the problems and issues, sure. But Do Not Complain!

It's gnu-linux.

I think no, if you're running Windows you aren't allowed to complain.

It's either your choice to run spyware serving you ads, or it's your choice to use it for work.

If you have a job that forces you to install it on your personal device, then I feel sorry for you. Capitalism literally chained people to their working tools and worked them to death while letting them shit themselves. So no, I don't think Windows is there on the list of items that's OK to complain about.

wrong

you regret posting this? Good.

1. Look what's the name of your Mastodon server

2. I understand that some people are still living in serfdom, but I cannot stop repeating that it is much better to be free. (And whenever I am fixing my mum's Windows, she is 86, I just cannot believe what some people pay their money for)

I never do. I just say "it's your right to eat shit" instead. I'm forced to eat it sometimes too by the way (at work), not a big deal. The only thing I can't understand here is why are you so pissed off?

Sigh

For me, it's very sad to see the open source community be such dicks about this whole thing. Ruben simply posted an opinion. One that was actually, in my opinion, very level-headed. It's pathetic.

I've written about this kind of elitism before, and I've witnessed it in various communities more times than I care to remember.

I'm actually glad I no longer consider myself to be part of this insidious community. The sad thing is, the vast majority of people in it are really cool. It's a small number of wankers that give the entire community a bad name (isn't that always the case).

Personally, I don't think I'll be returning to Linux on the desktop any time soon. Not wholly because of the bad apples in the community of course (that would be ridiculous), but because I find Linux a waste of time to use.

To Ruben; don't worry mate. These things tend to blow over quickly. I've been on the receiving end of this kind of thing myself and it's utterly shit, so I know how you feel. Take a break and come back stronger for it.

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From the birth of ISP’s to AI snake-oil and giraffology. Happy sunday!