Social Sparrow

Today I am forty-seven. I prefer to write it out, the length of the letters giving it a little more heft. Honestly, I might have told you I was forty-seven earlier this year – sometimes I don’t quite keep up, and we are now at a time and place where the actual number doesn’t matter so much anymore. I am – and have been – many different things in that span of hours and days. On the whole of it, really, we all descend from stars, somehow born of all that is ancient and timeless, while simultaneously, in temporary, careless bodies that are warp and weft from plants and soil and the dreams and fears of our parents— all come and gone in the sliver of a whisper of a blink when it comes to the terms of the age of the universe.

I have been an awkward child, an overachiever, and emotionally messy teenager. An acquiescer, an activist, a spiritualist, an environmentalist. A pagan and a scientist. I have been a political party officer and a non-profit board member, a volunteer, a project manager. A process creator, a painter, a disheveled lost person. I have been homeless, I have been broken, I have been cruel. I have been a survivor, a runner, a weight-lifter, a hiker-rock-climber-chasing-up-mountains-and-soaking-up-the-skyer— someone trying and seeking to build strength and confidence over the shadows of uncertainty and the emptiness of never feeling “enough”. I have been a clutz and a fool, a tension breaker, a sense of dark humor, the giggle at the funeral. I have been a creator of spaces, a tree hugger, an organizer and sign-maker. Both a parent and parentless. I am becoming the wise and sharp old crone and the curmudgeonly yet-soft-hearted wizard (I don’t think I am required to make up my mind on which, not just yet). I am a writer, a poet, a loner with a deep and reverent heart when it comes to the Earth, her systems, her boundless life, her solid minerals, her surprises. I am both a protector and an enabler, and I think, after reflection, the line between the two may just be a hair’s breadth. I am a recycler, a fixer, a make-it-last-er, but I am also the recycled and repaired, cracks full of gold or epoxy, as time permits. I am a documentarian, an editor, a re-framer. Warrior. Navigator. Terrible secret-keeper. Connoisseur. Grudge-holder. Forgiver. Serious, and then – not so much.

In forty-seven years, I have never been one set thing, but no one ever is, are they? We are everything and everyone that has ever come before us, that has ever touched our lives, small actions and pieces of ourselves that we glean and gift or burden to each other. We are the stars and the rocks and the ocean, the trees and the foxen and the beetles and the lichen. I am the echoes of my great-grandparents, Irish immigrants who lived in clapboard houses and swept yards of white sand and knelt in barren fields to conjure food from nothingness; the legs of my parents and grandparents, endlessly plodding forward with handed-down stories and hard-grained ethics and hints of prejudices which had to be cast away; the voices of my found family, who accepted me outside of common blood or soil but provided me a raft when I was adrift; the hands of those who loved me just as I am, a shifting, turbulent mess of blood and muscle and bone; a set of memories and years and emotions that live on in the bodies of my children. And so, I am also of you, friends and fellow writers (veteran or new), because we have passed our magic and our wisdom; confessed our sins and faults and failures; connived and strategized and whispered secrets; raised our glasses and limbs in highlights of success; held one another in times of loss. This is the purpose, I think (I would never presume to know). To carry on, each of us breathing and giving or taking or breaking – habits or patterns or bodies or relationships, words or paragraphs, tokens or tools, endings and beginnings. We are here to dance together, to tangle, to reach out and grasp fingertips and open arms and embrace, to laugh and sob and cling to one another, on this vast turning rock amidst this galaxy of stars in this great, great expanse of mostly nothingness.

So, yes….today I am forty-seven, but, as I have alluded, the number does not matter so much. How joyful, to have made it to this next revolution around the sun, to hear the crows call across the woods as the cicadas scream in harmony, to feel the breeze before the storm that carries the moisture from ancient mountain chains, to taste the dust of woodland smoke and overworked midwestern fields, to know the salt of the Gulf and the bite of the Arctic are all right here, in you, in me. This is why I invite you to sit, stranger or no. Rest a moment. Enjoy the gentle rock of the ceiling fan, the whispers of the oaks and hickories, the quiet warnings of the tallest pines, their undergrowth beginning to fall away. Stay a moment. Share. Look, the wind is rising, the rain will be here momentarily, you have time. Let us pause to trade pieces of ourselves and see that we are not so very far apart from one another, if at all.

This is an Introduction for Week 0 of therealljidol. If you're interested in playing along, the sign-up sheet is still open here.

But if there is anything I have learned in the last year of my life, there is nothing like taking a good, hard, honest look at yourself - flaws and all - and realizing there is something to honoring the voice that spills out and the soul rushing forward to touch and experience the world, even if it is messy, or ugly, or shamed, or chatteringly happy, or jubilant, or awkwardly giggling for no reason, or just sitting, relentlessly hopeful, where the stream flows over the rocks.

This is a slightly dramatic but mostly unserious way to declare my intent to play in therealljidol. It is the 20th anniversary, so it seems I should at least show up. (Does anyone know an appropriate gift for this sort of thing? I just have this dusty old pair of boots, but not quite sure clauderainsrm has a use for those anymore.)

The sign-up sheet is here, for those inclined to join the revelry.

P.S. I 100% have absolutely no actual time for this. But the notebooks are taunting me.