We Overlapped for a Moment, in the Late Summer Sun of October

The world is on fire, but maybe we are the water.

I just want everyone here to know, that no matter how alone or hopeless or anxious or exhausted or anything else you’re feeling right now, you are not alone. We’re all here with you. Remembering that, my loves, is a small act of grace. And grace takes up more space than fear.

Hello Beautifuls!

Welcome to all of you who are new here this week! And there are a good bunch of you. The deepest thank you to everyone who is here, new and old, I am honored and deeply moved by this community.

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Me in my pool earlier this summer.

My sister and I talk once a week, every Thursday evening. We've been doing this, one night of the week or another, for several years. We talk about mortality and flowers, perimenopause and creating art. We almost always touch on some form of existential anxiety, and a few weeks ago, she shared a phrase she'd heard that is supposed to bring us back to the present, "These are the good times."  

I think the phrase isn't meant to be taken literally. Maybe these are the good times, ask me in November and I'll tell you how much I can see a silver lining. What these are though, are the only times. And I am exhausted from hoping, expecting, needing the good times to be somewhere in the future, rather than right here. 

I think a lot these days about the White Stripes song, "Take, Take, Take," where the narrator goes from his comfortable chair at the bar, which is all he needs, to a celebrity sighting, which is all he needs, to an autograph, which is all he needs, to a photograph, which is all he needs, and then to feeling slighted when the celebrity leaves him without a lock of her hair. 

It feels like I am in my own season of take, where nothing is quite enough and I'm often looking for something to distract me or make me feel better. I'm not sure there is a feeling better right now though. The election is 20 days away, which feels like 20 days left of sanity, and then, well, I just don't know. The what if is too huge for me to hold. Even if it does go to Harris and Waltz, the rest of the world is still on fire and there are not enough planes or fire retardant to put it out. But maybe, just maybe, we are the water.

As I work with my chiropractic energy healer to unbind my nervous system from decades of hypervigilance, I can feel the layers of tension, how they have built up and reinforced each other within my body. I think it must be the same for everyone. The layers, built up over the last eight years. For some of us they are layers of uncertainty and fear, for others, of hate and righteous other-making. I do not know how we come back from this, if we come back from this. 

What I do know is that it is up to me to decide whether these are the good days or the bad days, knowing they are the only days I have. 

My neighborhood has a community pool, and I am there most days, sometimes just for a few minutes, other times for hours. The water is a balm and I seek it out. It's a pretty pool, oval rather than square, and there's something about the shape that feels friendly and less institutional, like this could be a ridiculously large pool in my own backyard. There's a sloping hill with grass, two big oaks, two bigger sycamores, Italian cypress lining one edge of the property. While it was very hot over the summer, I swam every morning, the temperature and humidity 80-something at dawn. Too hot to run, too hot to hike, the water warmer than my body, an amniotic refuge to start my day. 

Now that the evenings are dropping into the high 60s and the days are only in the mid 90s (this is what passes for fall in Austin), the pool has cooled off. The kids have gone back to school and it's quiet there, even on the weekends. Dried leaves float on the surface and some sink to the bottom, the grass is a dusty buff color, the sunlight thin and golden. There are other pool regulars, but I am not a talker at the pool. I prefer quiet with my water and my trees. 

Over the summer, there was a young man who was often there at the same time as me, and after three days of just the two of us this fall, he finally hollered across the water, "Hey there!" I said hello and focused back on my laptop–sometimes I take work to the pool. "You're here a lot!" he shouted. "Yes, I'm here all the time." A beat. "I'm Scott!" I paused a little too long, and he followed with, "What's your name?" I stopped working and told him my name and we talked, of course, about the weather–he thought Austin wasn't all that hot, but this was his first summer here. I told him this was the coolest one in six years. He said, "I'm from Minnesota, so the heat, well, it's really great!" 

As the afternoon turned into early evening, some other people showed up, and I noticed Scott was leaving. He waved at me and I waved back, a big wave, a big smile. I surprised myself. I was sad to see Scott go. We'd barely talked, and then sat on our opposite sides of the pool for hours in our own worlds. But we had overlapped there for a moment, in the late, late summer sun of October. 

Perhaps this is the way we come back from this. Small steps of communion over things we love, one stranger to another, sharing simple joy, simple rest, perhaps loss and grief too. Noticing our similarities, that we are all experiencing the human condition, in all its gory and ecstatic complexity. 

If these are to be the good days, they must be the ones in which we find ways to connect in spite of the larger world, the ones in which we narrow our focus back to what is right in front of us, another human heart with just as much capacity for joy and love and hurt and healing as our own. We just need to find the doorway in. And maybe it's as simple as, "Hello.”

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Someone left these beach balls in the pool. They move wherever the wind takes them and I’ve taken to going to the pool just to watch them. It’s very meditative.

The White Stripes, “Take Take Take”

And just because. This is my favorite The White Stripes song: