I am grateful for the abundance of living vegetation in my neighbor.
I asked my friend, who is an arborist, “What happens to the plants and trees when there is smoke from the fire in the air?”
He responded, “They like the CO2 from the fire, it is like fertilizer to them”.
Abundance. Look around and gather the garden vegetables, pumpkins, squash, plums, blackberries, apples, pears, late strawberries dripping from branches. And there are tall trees, shrubs, plants and flowers. I am harvesting not only the produce, but also the emissions from photosynthesis by the green leaves and needles.
Harvesting air by breathing.
Oxygen is food for your cells, breathing has the ability to excite to readiness or to calm and expand. I practice diaphragmatic breathing. During an inhale, notice the expansion of the lower ribs (points for contact with the diaphragm) to the front, back and sides. At the end of an exhale, the next moment all things are possible. At the end of an inhale, all is abundant.
The green leaves and needles that live around me, offer their silent photosynthesis. Today, I visit these neighbors and breath with them.
xo,
—Alex
Tag: harvest
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harvest season
It’s harvest time, so of course here’s the obligatory golden field of wheat photo. I’ve definitely noticed more corn around, and the bigger, thicker squashes in people’s urban gardens (so envious, my tiny container garden right now consists of a few scraggly cherry tomatoes and kale that is 90% eaten by caterpillars).
The wheel of the year has a cross-quarter celebration August 1st, one of the ones halfway between a solstice and an equinox. This one is Lammas, very much a celebration of harvest — of what we planted in the spring at Imbolc (February 2). I’m thinking back to the intentions that I planted and noticing that I really am in a different space, and really did plant energetic wishes that are now blooming.
Here, the wild blackberries are also really ripe, so our plans have been to make some bread and some blackberry jam (which will probably actually be squashed blackberries, not formal jam with the boiling of the jars and all that). I haven’t made time for that yet, but it will happen! I feel flexible with my celebrations, though I like doing a little something, at least, day of.
This year, I did a tarot spread (I know, shocker) from Little Red Tarot, who I found because they have a “Queering the Tarot” series that has been fun to read. The article with the spread also has more information on lammas and the energies of this time of year.
Enjoy! And happy harvesting, of whatever it was that you have been planting, nurturing, and growing.
— Zed
PS: Exciting announcement — Erotix: Literary Journal of Somatics is almost ready! It’ll be out at the end of August.
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it’s time to pick all the blackberries
Everything feels cluttered lately, as if all the shelves, nooks, closets in my home are swollen with Things. Objects. Items which are symbols for feelings or status or power or appreciation or function. So many of these Things are beautiful, useful; they add value and pleasure to my life. But of course, so many of them don’t.
I tend to be neat, to nest and decorate and sculpt my home, but I also come from a family of collectors. Sometimes I need reminders to really pause with an object and consider if it needs to take up physical space in the my house, and psychic space in my mind’s inventory of What Is Mine.
I keep a give-away box tucked in a corner most of the time. When I find something I just don’t need, I toss it in there. I (like much of the US) devoured The Live-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, illustrating the konmari method, and I go through phases of applying that concept to everything — does following this person on Twitter spark joy? Does looking at this art on my wall spark joy? Does this unconscious habit of mine spark joy?
Right now, I feel a desire to clear, to clean, to declutter. To purge all the cobwebs and really look at what I have. Sometimes I even ponder the question what would I keep, if I only had 100 things? Maybe it’s because we are back-to-school which, as someone who has always oriented to the academic calendar, is the beginning of the year. The witch’s new year comes up at the end of October, and the Jewish new year, Rosh Hashanah, is in just a week or so. The calendar is resetting — how do I want to start anew?
Plus, it’s the harvest. Time to bring in all the fresh tomatoes and make another batch of 67 pints of salsa (like my aunt just did), or pick all the blackberries within reach and freeze two big bags for winter pies and smoothies and compotes (like my boy just did).
It’s time to digest last year and take in what is ripe right now.
For me, that has been a home purge: cleaning off my altar and bringing new symbols down to focus on, peeking in the closets to see what has accumulated there, moving the furniture to get all the cat hair this time. It’s been a digital purge: what are all these things on my desktop? Why is everything in my download folder? It’s been a nutrition purge: beginning a 3-month restriction to reboot my digestion. It’s been an intake purge: I muted the words “white house” and “president” on Twitter, because I’ve just had enough for now.
I’m making room for ready for something new. Readying to push my edges a little bit. Do something daring, maybe even dangerous (with the right kind of training!). Stretch. Manifest one of those tickling desires that is still there in the periphery. Gather the fruit up into my open, outstretched arms, bugs and stems and scratches and juice and all, and take them home.
— Zed