Refuse to Yield
And create in a spirit of kindness and generosity
"Death is the only wise advisor that we have. Whenever you feel, as you always do, that everything is going wrong and you're about to be annihilated, turn to your death and ask if that is so. Your death will tell you that you're wrong; that nothing really matters outside its touch. Your death will tell you, 'I haven't touched you yet.'"
~ Carlos Castaneda
I began this year with the quote “Live every day as if death is sitting on your left shoulder,” purportedly by Carlos Castaneda, playing on repeat in my brain. I’d written in down in a journal after hearing it in a documentary two years earlier, and I ran across it again around the time my mother-in-law died on Christmas. What the line seemed to say, that death is hovering near by, ready to sneak up unawares on you or those around you at any time, felt accurate in light of my mother-in-law’s sudden and unexpected death, and it’s continued to ring true as other people in my life have died over this first half of the year, with varying degrees of unexpectedness but always a profound sense of loss. The quote seems like a variation of “live every day as if it’s your last” or “make the most of every moment” and similar inspirational/self-helpy kind of advice that’s at once motivating and also completely self-defeating (because after all every day must be filled with all kinds of mundane tasks that no one in their right mind would waste their last moments on, given the choice: going to the bathroom, paying bills, driving, grocery shopping, sleeping). In other words, useless advice.
And yet the phrase has lingered in my brain, until today, when I finally looked it up and found that it is a total misquote (whether my transcription or the documentary got it wrong I don’t know) of the original, seen above. Now, as a caveat, I have not read Castaneda’s Journey to Ixtlan, the source of the quote, but what I see in it has nothing to do with living every day to its fullest and everything to do with not succumbing to despair, and as such has extreme relevance for our current time when everything feels really, really awful: fires burning the Canadian forests for the third (fourth?) summer in a row (and it’s not even summer yet); innocent people being kidnapped off the streets by government thugs in unmarked vehicles; more government thugs handcuffing sitting US Senators; police shooting rubber bullets at journalists; and so on and so on. It’s all so grim. And yet, here we are, alive. Our death has not touched us yet. And so we continue on, refusing to yield to despair.
INSIDE
Since I last wrote, my older son moved to New York City (and I could not be more thrilled for him living his dreams), the other two moved home from college, my husband switched to his summer schedule (i.e. home a lot more than usual), my sister visited for a few days, and I traveled to Colorado for a little over a week. All of this (except for item #1) is my excuse for not getting more writing done, for continuing my months-long dry spell. But in the last couple of days (now that I’m settled back home and the kids are more or less in their summer job routines and my husband has resumed teaching summer school) I’ve made some slight progress on two writing projects. I don’t want to jinx it by saying more, but keep your fingers crossed for me.
I attended two memorial services last month, and I was struck, as I always am at funerals, by the things people are remembered for: their readiness to share a smile or a kind word, their generosity with their time and their spirit, the ways they used their creativity in service to others, whether it be cooking a meal for someone with a broken heart or creating masks for a community dance, the ways they made the world a little more beautiful, with a story, a laugh, a sumptuous feast, a bountiful garden, a musical spectacle. This, I think, is another way to look at the “live every day as if death is sitting on your left shoulder” misquote: not to try to get something out of every day for ourselves, but to put something out there every day to make the world a little more beautiful for others, to do our creative work in a spirit of kindness, generosity, and beauty.
OUTSIDE
I step outside on a misty gray morning, binoculars around my neck. The spring migrants have mostly moved on to their breeding grounds farther north, and the ones who stay have grown quieter in recent weeks, now that their territories are established and they’re getting down to the business of making babies. The trees have also fully leafed out, all of Maine dressed in cartoonish green mounds of fresh growth, making actually seeing any birds that might be out and about a challenge. Still, I make the effort once or twice a week, and today is the day.
As I pass the barn, I see a sleek brown weasel poke its head out the door, a fat mouse hanging limp from its jaws. It sniffs the air then slips back inside, apparently aware of my presence, and I move to so that a fully leafed-out apple tree obscures most of my body but I can still see the barn door. A moment later the weasel reappears, decides I’m no longer a threat, and trots over to the woodpile, alternately disappearing and reappearing among the pallets of kindling and firewood until it reaches a rock pile near. From within the rocks it pokes its angular head out, sans mouse, and studies our two (remaining) ducks, possibly weighing up how much effort it would be to take down, and then carry, an animal five times its size. Eventually it dips out of site again and I go on my way, certain our ducks are in no danger, for now.
When I return from my walk a half hour or so later, the ducks are still present and accounted for, but the phoebes are making a ruckus under the deck. Usually they build their nest on the propane regulator, but this year they chose a length of stove pipe wedged, for some reason, on a support beam, making their young easy pickings for the weasel who was now nosing in the nest. I clapped my hands, and shouted some version of Yes, please rid our barn of troublesome mice, but stay away from the phoebe babies you villain! I chased it out from under the deck, but it merely dodged around the propane tank and a few trees and slithered its way back to the nest, where it picked up the last baby and shimmied off to wherever its own babies waited for breakfast.
WRITING NEWS
You can read my article “People Powered Science” about citizen and community science in Maine in this season’s Green & Healthy Maine Summer Guide, available at coffee shops, natural food stores, and other like-minded businesses around Maine.
I have an essay forthcoming in the collection More than Hope: Lessons from the Colorado Trail, edited by Jared Champion, which will be released imminently. I’ll keep you posted with ordering details when it arrives. There will also be a live book launch event in the Denver area on July 12, time and exact location TBD. Unfortunately I won’t make it, since I just got back from Colorado, but if you want to go and hear from some of the other contributors, I’ll post the deets on my website as soon as they are finalized.
To see what I’ve been reading, you can check out my April Reads and May Reads posts.
And if you haven’t read it yet, with hiking season on the horizon now would be a great time to pick up my book, Uphill Both Ways: Hiking toward Happiness on the Colorado Trail.
Enjoy these green days of June, dear friends, and stand up, create, and be kind.