In My Room

“In this world I lock out all my worries and my fears…” -(the now late) Brian Wilson

Mental health check-in, anyone? 

Stop your doom scrolling. Check your breathing. Clock your heart rate. Think of that personal mind-palace comfort zone. Remind yourself it’s okay to take a break, you can’t keep up with all of the wrong-doings, and fixing the world doesn’t rest on your shoulders.

My own mind is a clusterfuck of questions. Why are we all talking about Labubus? Who’s telling this news story and what’s their angle? How am I supposed to read between the lines when the lines are already unreadable? Why can’t men stop messing around with bombs? Will our constitution hold another day, and for whom? Exactly what new bra will serve me best, and can I find a NWT option secondhand? Are all these people at Bezos’ wedding in some kind of cult? Have I done all my chores? How can I be prepared if ICE shows up at the restaurant? Am I thrifting because I’m stressed, or is the added decision-making making me stressed? what’s next? what’s next? what’s next???

  


As this peek into my brain should tell you, I’m not actually a great information synthesizer, and my optimism is irrationally childlike, so I can’t offer a hot take on the news or tell you what we should all be doing — (though we should all have a trusted confidant for that. I have a super smart work bestie.) If I can offer any advice, it would be to find balance amongst everything unfolding. For those who bear perpetual concern about the state of our world: you’re allowed to pass the torch for a time and recharge. If, however, you’re more inclined to avoid engaging with these big scary topics, resist your urge to tune out or scroll past the next opportunity for education. Get outside your own head. Leave the security of what you know. Lean into what you don’t understand and absorb all the opinions until you can say with confidence: I stand here.

This is what I’m striving to do, as a room-dweller by nature. My room, my mind, my imagination has always been my safe place. But when the world isn’t safe for our neighbors, we must be brave enough to step outside. 

Ballerina Patina

You know how a worn leather or bronze develops that oxidation layer which gives it a kind of three-dimensional, weathered beauty?

Well, sometimes I like to imagine that’s how my past dance classes settled into my body — a ballerina patina.

I will always be indebted to ballet for teaching me the silent language of body lines. Body lines were the reason we weren’t permitted to keep anything on our wrists in dance class. Even the innocent presence of a spare hair tie could break the line of our arms, one of the most important instruments of ballet storytelling. 

I wasn’t a particularly graceful student, but I learned by observation of these lines how to assemble myself in space in a way that reflected beauty and poise. 

When our teachers would waft about the room, tilting our chins, nudging our knees, and arranging our elbows just so, I was always astonished to feel a sense of gratitude for my body. I marveled at the lines it yielded, rather than pulling and plucking at what couldn’t be changed.

The dark side to dance of course is that it can make you *too* aware of your body. These days, as I bump up against my decades-older self in photographs like these ones, I’m inclined to notice other lines — burgeoning varicose veins and increasing forehead creases, to name a few.

But even alongside those, I catch sight of the beauty ballet taught me: the placement of twisted hair at just the right angle; the je ne sais crisscross of legs, arms, and fingers; the direction of my eye-line guiding yours through and off a page, a stage. How all these lines together create a web, build a dance, tell a story.

Happy Earth Day

Lately I have come to regard Earth Day as my Easter.

I’ve long thought of the trees as god(s); I’ve worshipped at their roots, found support in their branches, rejoiced in their gifts of fruit and oxygen and shade.

( When I was a child I climbed up pine boughs with my journal to a congregation (church?) of one; the closest thing to heaven I knew: the treetops. )

And now, like the buds and blossoms before me, I am born again in the sun of spring; I let it call me away from the cozy den where I’ve passed the winter.

In April, I strive to be extra-holy, resisting the temptation to pillage and consume all that is made available to me, be it baked miracles or fermented vegetation pressed into sweet juices or generous conversation or even secondhand treasures I flatter myself I might save.

I redefine sacrifice by what Mother Earth has already given up for me. I remember the lambs I stopped eating in the name of our shared name — may another Rachel do the same?

I stop to observe the bravery of the rain-soaked worms, marvel at the bright yolk-flow from my morning egg, and kiss back the flirtatious wind as she dances with my hair. I think about how one of these wonders holds no more power than the other, holds no less worth than me.

In water I’m inclined to consider my imperfections. I imagine rinsing them away in abating ripples. In spite of this, the waves buoy me; a floating forgiveness.

To sin and scripture I have not subscribed, and yet I find salvation in all these earthly things.

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