Twenty Things

the big #40

I recently joined my local composting center at a nearby church in Hastings. Since living in the UK, I haven’t been composting, and I’ve felt something tear me apart inside because of it. Something visceral and disruptive has been lurking every single time I put a banana peel in the trash, when I tediously peel the skin off carrots and potatoes and then I just have to put them in the bin... I think once you start to compost, you realize it’s so easy that it becomes second nature. Shout out to my friend Zenat, who encouraged me to start many years ago, and also to my mother, who has been composting since I was a child. I didn’t realize, until I did it myself, that it directly shifts your relationship to life itself. I don’t want to be divorced from the ick and grit. I want to get my hands dirty.

I’m currently in Lisbon teaching my first in-person Grief Studies course at the incredible Salted Books (shout out to Alex Holder, the founder, who’s a real one!), and it’s been quite magical to be by the water in the heat wave. I never expected to teach Grief Studies for so long. I assumed I’d teach it once and it’d be done. But people are full of grief, and that’s what the space has become—a place to process, mourn, and understand grief (yours and others) a little bit more. Once my friend H told me about the Lebanese ritual of professional mourners (mainly women who were Maronite Christians) crying at funerals. Their presence allowed others to express or even understand their own grief. Recently, my students from the first Grief Studies class announced the publication of their Grief Zine, which you can pre-order now!

We are all so grief-stricken. That’s something I’ve noticed a lot recently. That we are all struggling. Being together in ritual allows for us to understand that the life we are fighting for requires an acknowledgment of what’s at stake. There is so much to live for, so much to experience and be with. I’ve been thinking a lot about the beauty of the world and what we are fighting for — our livelihood, but mainly this beautiful, profound Earth. Yesterday, I did a workshop entitled Writing Through The Portal with Heretics Club run by the incredible Sara Jin Li. I met many like-minded writers wanting reprieve and understanding, how to channel their rage, their feeling into words? It was a beautiful class that reminded me why I do this work.

I started Twenty Things to talk about the twenty (sometimes many more) things that are moving or exciting me. Frankly, it’s been hard to do this consistently over the last two years… how can any of us feel anything other than sadness, frustration and dissolution? But we must find beauty. I often think of the John O’Donohue interview with Krista Tippett, where he mentioned that one way people survive trauma is by turning to beauty. “You should always keep something beautiful in your mind. And I have often — like in times when it’s been really difficult for me, if you can keep some kind of little contour that you can glimpse sideways at, now and again, you can endure great bleakness.”

Let these images console you, may they be a reprieve, a moment of tenderness, and a reminder that we can go on.