2024: The Year in Books

Here’s what I read in 2024 on Goodreads.

Since joining the site, I have participated in their “Reading Challenge” each year, where you select a numerical amount in January that you want to read by the end of the year, as I like keeping a record of what I read. I’d have to look back to see at what point I stopped sharing the total # of books read here; the number is irrelevant to me.

While this has been my view for a while, last year I selected “1” as my 2024 Reading Challenge goal on this website, to more closely represent this Inner Truth: it’s about the experience, not the measuring of the experience.

As in, person A could read 30 books this year, and each is a slog that they force themself to finish. This takes a lot of effort (as there wasn’t delight in the process), draining life-force and using up life-hours the person could have been enjoying something they actually like.

Person B could read 20 books this year, 15 books that some part of them thinks they “should” read, in order to be perceived a certain way by others. And 5 books required by some certificate or education degree, chosen by an institution or singular teacher.

Person C could read 5 books this year, each juicy and life-giving. Those 5 could be read in exactly Right Timing, reaching for the book exactly when it feels aligned, going at the pace that feels right in their body, being completely in the experience of reading while reading, (not finishing to finish). You get the idea.

A measurement of one piece of an experience does not tell us the whole experience. Read more

A Patchwork Quilt: Tell Story, Cultivate Power-Within, Imagine, Try on New Lenses

A patchwork quilt for you, today.

Letting thoughts be here as they flow, like in the early internet days of blogging.

Remember: All life is sacred.

[First, a freewrite shared with my intimate story+somatics group two days after the election. There is so much shared understanding in that group–which I won’t be able to name here–but one important piece is respect for and knowing that each person’s system responds differently. Everyone can be in their own experience. Our shares are not prescriptive. We are sharing our lived experience.]

I had a restful night’s sleep on Tuesday, and woke up Wednesday to get ready for a day of outdoor shed organizing for my housekeeping client. I did a news search to see the election results. I had a split-second “damn” feeling, and then, “well, okay.” Shoes on, let’s go breathe some new life into this shed on perhaps the last warm day of the season.

My body was able to accept what was. Challenging emotions didn’t arise. I stayed in my tactile life, and my daily purpose remained the same. This was very different from the me in 2016. I wonder if some part of me knew this would be the result, if that’s why I was pulled to read Melania’s memoir in October, why I wrote a public 3,400-word reflection about what she and I have in common–when I hadn’t written online since 2019.

The me who has emerged from these last 5 years, that dark night of the soul, is now deeply rooted in the unseen. In Truth. In divinity. In the Great Mother. In the knowing that we are all connected. I now know that waking life is only a fraction of the experience, and it’s unfolding in each and every moment, each breath. Most of what appears to be is illusion, or was built without loving intention.

I’ll never forget my shock and naivety the first time I worked at a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Refuge my first term in a conservation corps in 2017. Nevermind that we were spraying poison onto the plants, into the ground, into our food/water, our home. Killing plants which were simply being, living, adapting to changing environments as they always do, growing where they are needed, where the environment is right for them to grow. I couldn’t see that clearly yet. What shocked me was hearing gunshots, and subsequently learning that this was open hunting season. In a place called a “wildlife refuge,” people are allowed to come here with guns and murder the wildlife? I was confused. I’d thought “refuge” meant something, and had trusted that meaning. Until I learned otherwise. At the time I still believed thin-binary-narratives of words like “conservation” (good) and “invasive species” (bad). Language is powerful. The narratives that are crafted can last generations, keeping folks from asking deeper questions, from taking a second look. Read more

What Do I Have in Common with Melania?

 

Two weeks ago, I read Melania Trump’s self-titled memoir.

I love memoirs, and have much curiosity about people’s inner lives. What are they noticing? What’s their narration about their lives? What’s within their nervous system’s capacity? Which primary lenses do they seem to look through? What feels safe/easy in their body, and what is challenging for this person? What was the culture like where they grew up — both in their town and family of origin? It’s the unseen I’m most eager to learn about folks: their emotions, doubts, stories, beliefs, fears, joys, spiritual connections, and sensations.

From my own experience, I know that how things may appear to onlookers from the outside is not at all what living in my body with my soul feels like to me, on the inside. And, I also know that a memoir is only a sliver of someone’s experience. So much needs to be cut out to craft a narrative within a single book, not to mention all of the felt experiences which can’t be put to words. A book is a static entity, while authors keep experiencing and changing. The whole human-being thing. (I feel much restriction in my body knowing all that isn’t expressed in this very piece of writing! And, an article is not a person. A book is not a person. An interview is not a person. A song is not a person.)

Yet a sliver of someone’s experiences in their own words is wider and closer to truth than an onlooker’s external observations. As such, I was eager to hear about Melania’s life from Melania herself. Read more

Drink the Special Tea

I’m going through everything I own, preparing to fit back into Elereen—my Honda Element—asking if I want to bring each item forward into my next life season. I used to experience this more often, the going through things and packing, about once every six months or year.

Since 2006, this has been my longest amount of time (2.5 years) living in the same place.

“The place” since April 2021 has been shared government housing for seasonal employees, so the house is furnished. After so much time with short-term housing or tent-ing, I reveled in having a house and got items I couldn’t have before: a typewriter, a keyboard, a toaster oven.

Those were the first items in my donate pile as I began going through everything a last week.

The act of going through all my material possessions always illuminates helpful information, like I had that book when I moved into this house, and I still haven’t read it. Donate.

Another phenomenon that comes to light while packing—whether I’ve been living out of two suitcases, a backpack, or an SUV—is that I discover I’ve held on to something consumable, but haven’t used it because it seemed too precious.

I’ve become more aware of this over the years, consciously choosing to light the candles, burn the incense, send the stationary. Take pleasure now. Trust the abundance.

And still I’m finding precious unused things as I pack this time around:

Moroccan loose leaf tea that a friend mailed me in 2020. She said it was one of her favorite teas, very special and rare in her family’s traditions. So I wasn’t going to just drink it. I was going to save it for a ceremony, some special occasion. And here it still is.

Big sheets of handmade paper from Tibet. The manager of a Buddhist retreat center had gifted them to me during my six-month stay there, before moving here. I made a six-envelope folder early on, and use it often since that’s where I keep stamps. Yet as I sit here, three weeks before going back to that same retreat center, I still have a full black sheet, half blue, and a quarter beige of this Special Paper.

It happens, dear one. No sweat.

Now that I’ve noticed, I get to choose what to do with this information.

And so, this morning, I’m brewing pots of that Special Tea I received over three years ago and drinking it with presence, noticing the subtle changes in color and taste.

I’m folding a different type of folder with the Special Paper, because making things with paper lights up my soul.

To you, reading these words wherever you are, I encourage you: Drink the Special Tea, use your Special Paper, read the book or pass it along.

Bask in the joys — because today we are breathing, today we are feeling, today we are.

And isn’t life worth the most delightful celebrations?