1.
Bombarded — a poem by Malen Mendoza-Baxter
From the Community
Bombarded
with pointless thoughts
ambivalent emotions
restless and spinning
out of control
the head is full and empty
rubbish dominating its space
you need to go away
glass breaks
shards everywhere
deep breaths
in the pits of darkness
there is silence
shards settle
ssshhhh…quiet
it all drops to the ground
cold as winter
yin and brave
it finds its roots
in the energies of the earth
time stands still
nothingness brings richness
the promise of spring
is about to begin
- Malen Mendoza-Baxter
For the last few issues of Three Things Weekly, I’ve talked about the anticipation of Spring’s arrival. And as is typical - it arrives in fits and starts, leaving ‘breadcrumbs’ for you so you’re left feeling like a sad Tinder date.
But what also happens… is that there’s a whole secret world underground that’s busy with a plethora of activity. There are huge turbulent swirls of energy underneath our feet that keep the fire of the earth alive over winter. The stillness of time and the nothingness of winter has a counterpart of deep vitality that makes spring possible.
2.
A Road from a Flood — a music video by Revere
From the Internet
In a rare moment of idleness, I looked out of the window and watched the road outside my house become a fully-fledged river, with currents and everything (it’s a slight exaggeration, but only slight). I looked at the cherry tree outside the house that still hasn’t blossomed, and somehow the mood reminded me of this song that I haven’t listened to since about 2015.
Enjoy!
3.
On our no-thing-ness — a quote from Bayo Akomolafe
From the Ether
Some words about the intra-connectedness of existence, and our ‘No-Thing’-ness. It may not be something that makes sense immediately, but I found it a worthwhile… consideration. Something to sit with, and have in the background like a… possibility.
This is what it means to be entangled:
It is to see that we are not complete, removed, or boundaried.
We are not independent.
To speak from a place of manicured morality, to attempt to stand outside the mess of it all, to try to be sincere, is to be blind to our rapturous entanglement with the multiple.
A ‘flower’ doesn’t ‘begin’ at its roots and terminate abruptly at its petals; it is the ongoing intra-activity (notice I do not say ‘inter-activity’, for this would suggest that ‘things’ pre-exist relationships) of clouds, rain, sunlight, swirling dust, the keen attention of the gardener, and a cocktail of colourful critters and ecosystems of organisms.
One might say that there are no ‘things’ at all.
To come to the edge is thus to come to the curdling middle, where wild meets wild, where we meet the universe halfway in acknowledgement of our intra-dependence and co-emergence with ‘movements’ we cannot control or assuage.
Perhaps in situating his home at the edge of the village, the indigenous healer reminds himself and everyone else that we are not the central concern of an unspeakable universe.
We are reminded of the ineffable, that words are not little epistemological mirrors that can reflect the state of things.
We are part of the world’s ongoing complexity, yes, but not its prime movers, sole actors or longed-for apotheoses.
As such, all the qualities we think of as unique to humans – thought, agency, will, intentionality, creativity, subjectivity – are performative qualities of a larger field in constant flux.
Thus in order to really account for ourselves, in order to tell the stories of what is happening, we must come to the ends of ourselves, we must gravitate towards the edges in the middle…towards the incomprehensible, where wholly new ways of thinking are gestating in puddles of the forgotten."
— Bayo Akomolafe
We are both a part and a whole. There is no ‘me’ without ‘you’ and we are one, and not. There is no spring without winter - both are whole unto themselves but part of a whole phenomenon called ‘the climate’ of this earth. There is no earth without the sky, and the universe is not the thing. 🤷🏻♀️
HONOURING WINTER
Anyway. Speaking of honouring winter, here’s a nice short blog about that, and yoga. And an unrelated picture of Leo Bops, the dog.
#060: Nothingness
But after spring comes summer
And after summer, winter
And everything will start again
No need to go further
Just see to enter
In your black hole