Reading 2025 pt. 1
For the first time this year, I decided to try to keep track of all the books I read. In the past, I have made half-assed attempts to chronicle my reading in my journals, but never really manage to keep the effort accurate. This year, I’m a little more serious about it all. I created a notebook to keep on my night stand to chronicle every book I finish this year.
Finishing, as opposed to start or buy, is a huge distinction here. My attention span and ability to stay focused on one topic long enough to finish a book seems to be at an all time low. I think that is part of why I started this little note book and list. Perhaps, I am hoping that adding a title to the list will give me motivation to finish what I start.
“Reading” also has a pretty expansive definition for me. I don’t care about format, reading is any engagement with a story, fiction or non-fiction, written by someone else. That means I could have read a physical book, an e-book, or listened to an audio version of the text. It all counts as reading for me. As I try to keep myself in the habit of posting, I will periodically share something from my list here.
The first book I finished this year was Solvej Balle’s On the Calculation of Volume Book I, translated by Barbara Haveland. Balle is an a Danish author writing a book set in France that at first sounds like a re-hash of the Bill Murray film Groundhog Day. Tara Settler, an antique book seller, becomes trapped in a repeating November 18th. Book one of this series follows her attempts to understand and cope with her new reality. (I am only part way through Book II, so I can’t actually let you know how this works out.)
Given how little I enjoyed the film Groundhog Day, how much I enjoyed On the Calculation of Volume surprised me a bit. Comparing the two works isn’t really possible. Their different genres, purposes, and universe’s far outweigh any similarity in their premise. On the Calculation of Volume is a quiet and subtle exploration of time, self, and relationships. Perhaps I love it most, though, because as Tara recounts how she started chronicling her experience, counting and describing the nuances of her different November 18ths, she says, “Maybe there’s healing in sentences.”
Perhaps that is what I am attempting to do as I tear through books this year – allowing the sentences other people write to make their imprint on me, to heal me through recognition. Perhaps, even more strongly, that is what I am attempting to do here, to heal through my own sentences.
Ebb and Flow 2.0
I’ve quite the collection of drafts from this month and very few actual posts. The world around us all has been chaotic and hard this month. I uploaded this picture of mine to the media folder for a draft about feeling hollow. The post was raw, written at around five am after glancing at the headlines and feeling completely vulnerable and helpless. It also wouldn’t post for reasons I still haven’t figured out.
It was difficult to find a picture in my photo library that captured the hollow feeling flooding me. This shot from the Oklahoma City Myriad Botanical Garden came closest. The empty spaciousness of this large room, the cool, shadowy nature of the space felt right. That morning, the bright light of the outside world, the trees, their shadows, the warmth felt so far from where I was, where we were, though, that I almost didn’t use it. It felt too much like a hope I couldn’t muster.
To me, the saddest thing about losing that post from last week is that I don’t remember what set me off, what made me feel so completely depleted. I don’t remember because the blows keep coming; I don’t remember, because the specific blow doesn’t matter any more. I’d tentatively titled that post “Ebb and Flow,” I know I was trying to remind myself that becoming hollow creates space to refill.
Refilling is what I’ve tried to focus on the last couple of weeks. Enjoying the brief time I had with Ouiser, catching up with people using actual communication – not just memes, creating the best environment possible for my team, and remembering to practice self-compassion. In her book Self Compassion Kristen Neff provides a mantra for hard times that came back to me as I re-shelved books in the new office.
This is a moment of suffering. Suffering is a part of life. May I be kind to myself in this moment.
I’ve often adapted this mantra for whatever situation is wearing me down, and I find it helpful. The reminder to be kind to myself prompts me to focus on refilling and rehabilitating myself. Taking the time to do the soft things like take a candle lit bath in my wonderful tub, sitting by a fire pit for a glass of wine in the evening and a cup of coffee in the morning; and doing the hard things, eating well, getting movement into every day, writing, maintaining my restorative practices even when I don’t “want” to.
This is a moment of suffering. Collectively and individually we are suffering, and we don’t know how long this moment will last or how deep it will become. Suffering is a part of life. It is natural and okay to feel hollow, to feel depleted when the suffering is so large, when it just keeps coming. Up right and breathing is sometimes the absolutely best we can do in a day. Recognizing and naming the suffering is the first step that will allow us to start ameliorate the suffering. May I be kind to myself in this moment. This mantra helps me remember to be kind to myself when I start calling myself stupid and lazy for not doing all the things right all the time. It also helps me remember to be kind to others when I can.
Remembering to be kind to myself and others is always the first step in refilling myself. We don’t have much time to refill these days. The blows come swiftly and drain away the little reserves we have. It’s okay to feel hollow, to have days that feel hopeless. It’s natural, but so is refilling. We just have to keep going until this moment passes.
All this has happened before …
The important work is done. The guest bedroom is complete, for now. Ouiser will even have her own TV to enjoy while she is here. The new office, well that is another story, it’s not so complete. There are piles of books and stuff all over the floor. My new desk is in its place, though. And I’ve cleaned off just enough space to write at it.
Dragging the piles of things from one room to the other, I stumbled across this old post-it note titled “Daily Quarantine Questions” from 2020. I don’t remember when I copied down these questions, or where I got them from, maybe Brene Brown. I’m so glad they survived the last five years, because they were an amazing reminder of how to get through chaos and overwhelm.
- What am I grateful for today?
- Who am I checking in on or connecting with today?
- What expectations of “normal” am I letting go of today?
- How am I getting outside today?
- How am I moving my body today?
- What beauty am I either creating, cultivating, or inviting today?
I am 97% sure I don’t need to explicate for you why these questions felt so relevant and perfectly suited to this moment. This is a blog, though, and that kind of thing is kind of what we are both here for, right? Don’t worry, I’ll keep it brief. The sweeping scope and pace of change in the first two weeks of the current presidential administration has felt chaotic, to put it mildly. Announcement after announcement has kept everyone on edge; it’s been hard to find the space to pause between the stimulus and response, to paraphrase Viktor Frankl.
These questions came back to me at the perfect time. They provide a path, showing us how to find the space for ourselves. They also made me realize how much we’ve all internalized since 2020. Of all the things to be grateful for in the past two weeks, the greatest has to have been realizing how we’ve learned to check in on each other when things are hard. Yes, I am purposefully using an expansive “we” here. I don’t think it is just my small circle of friends who have spent the last few weeks, sending a couple of extra texts, making overdue phone calls, and maybe even sending the occasional piece of snail mail. These questions and these practices are the skills we learned five years ago that are going to strengthen us today.
![They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us by [Abdurraqib, Hanif] Book cover. Blue background, picture of wolf head and chest on a man's body wearing a red track suit with white strips down the shoulders and arms, and a thick gold chain around its neck.](http://grabow.co/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/TCKUUTKU.jpg)
Finding the questions also made me curious about what, if anything, I’d posted about the questions in 2020. I looked back through the archive, something I rarely do, and found this entry, “Unexpected Joy,” from February 2020. If you are new here and haven’t read this book of essays by Hanif Abdurraqib yet, you should. They are great. The post, written in 2020, actually talks more about 2016. It doesn’t mention the questions, but it does address what the questions are meant to help you find – the unexpected joy. Like connections, and maybe even growing out of our connections, joy is essential to our survival, to our healing, to our resilience. I think I say it best at the end of that entry.
Abdurraqib concludes, “Joy, in this way, can be a weapon–that which carries us forward when we have been beaten back for days, or moths, or years.” And I remember how beaten down I felt in the years leading up to 2016. How alone I felt trudging from one crisis to the next just trying desperately to hold it together, to make sure I could provide for my family. Yes, there were moments of joy in those years, friendships made, but I remember how my smile rarely reached my eyes, and my guard never fully came down. In 2016, joy became my weapon. It carried me forward each time an event beat me down. Joy also became the weapon of my recovery. It flooded my life in the fall of 2016: the house full of friends at the birthday party I threw for myself, the renewal of old friendships, the long mornings and afternoons on the deck, the comfort of the dogs and cat as we settled into our new normal. The joy in those moments, big and small, salving my wounds, healing me, and carrying me forward.
Ask your questions, check in with your friends, and may you all find your joy.
Holding On
It’s hard to write after last week. All I can offer is natural beauty and a song lyric. I stopped on the way to work a couple of weeks ago to capture this unbelievable sunrise over the Potomac. Absolutely no filters or fanciness here. Just me and my iPhone. The song lyric running through my head these days is an Ani DiFranco classic, “The world owes us nothing. We owe each other the world.”
I hope you are able to find beauty and peace in your corner of the world.
Progress
I meant to post this weekend, but I got a little distracted putting together furniture. Since Ouiser is coming to stay with me soon, I am finally making some incremental progress on switching out the guest room and my office. My old office is still full of random piles of stuff, but I’ve mostly cleared out the guest room. To help motivate me I bought a new book case and desk for the new office space. They arrived remarkably fast this week, so I took it as a sign to get moving on this transformation.
As I worked to assemble these pieces into a book case. I realized how much I enjoy putting together furniture. Sounds crazy, I know, but hear me out. It’s a bit meditative for me. My part of my brain is occupied with following the instructions and assembling the pieces, but there is a portion of it that can also wander. It’s a little like when I listen to books as I do jigsaw puzzles. Only at the end of it, I have a piece of furniture I can point to and say, “Look what I did all by myself!”
Any one who has been around these pages any length of time, knows I have a complicated relationship with my independence and sense of accomplishment. I relish my independence, and can be pretty stubborn about doing things on my own. Because my experiences often reinforced the lesson that I needed to rely on myself. Yes, it can be an invaluable strength to have this kind of stubborn independence. It can also be a real challenge. Learning to ask for help is the lesson the universe keeps putting in front of me.
I could have asked for help with these pieces of furniture. Any number of friends would have come over and helped me moved the boxes up to the third floor of my townhouse. Instead, I unboxed them on the first floor and made multiple trips up and down the stairs before assembling them here in my new office. It all worked out in the end. Neither of these pieces required two people for assembly, and I get to feel a great sense of accomplishment in my office space! It may still be a bit of a struggle to get myself to sit down and write, but maybe that sense of accomplishment will transfer and push me to do a bit more writing.
Also, I’ve already asked for help when I eventually move that large dresser into the new guest bedroom. It is not, and never will be, a one person job. Even I know that.
January
My work anniversary, January 6th, didn’t disappoint this year. It brought a weather related base closure and more snow than I have seen in a long time. The year was kind to me, however, and this time I did not lose power, though I am pretty sure we got more snow this year. Between the base closure for Monday and Tuesday, delayed opening on Wednesday, and the national day of mourning for President Carter on Thursday, it was a very odd week. I still worked every day, except Thursday, but I never really felt like I had a good handle on the day or time. One of the women I work with summed it up nicely by calling January a month of Mondays. I am not sure how the whole month will go, but that was a very great description of this week. There just wasn’t much continuity built into it.
Continuity or not, I did survive the week. I enjoyed teaching. Although much of the content is the same, I have such a different group of students this year. It’s really nice. It helps that I have less going on personally this year, so I am able to bring more of myself fully to class. My morning routine isn’t completely locked in, but I have been able to read & write a bit nearly each day. Early morning coffee in bed by the light of my Kindle remains a magic time for me.
Around my birthday last year, I found this book: Tolstoy’s A Calendar of Wisdom. It’s set up like a devotional with a collection of quotations and short ideas for each day. Some are from Tolstoy, but most are passages he collected from other sources. Reading my daily passages and reflecting on them helped me to get back into my morning routine, and I am looking forward to spending this year with this collection of ideas. A couple of recurring themes so far are about kindness and connection. For example, our kindness towards one another unifies the world. Of course, given my theoretical foundation, the idea resonates with me.
While it is always a present concern in my life, I think connection is going to be an important theme for me this year. Creating, cultivating, and curating the connections in my life feels significant now. It’s already when chatting with a friend last week, I said, “There is so little connection right now that every one feels precious.” And, the truth of the statement rang in my ears. As usual with all my words, intentions, and conditions for the year, I don’t know what it will mean in practice; I just know that connections will be important this year, and I don’t think it will just be for me. I think the truth of my statement is not necessarily in my personal life, it is in our cultural moment. As if it confirm my intuition, this month’s issue of The Atlantic contains a great article called “The Anti-social Century.” If you don’t have a subscription, it is worth looking up in your local library.
With this focus on connection in mind I signed up for the text-only version of Tara Brach’s, “A Year of Courageous Loving.” It gets started on Monday. My curiosity about this year is pretty high. Connection is just one theme that seems to be running through my ether, so it will be interesting to see where we end up next year at this time. No big resolutions or promises from me about how many posts or what their format or content will be, but I think it might be a little more active, and hopefully interesting, around here this year.
2025
Well, the new year is here and I hope all your holidays went well! It was a quiet holiday season for me this year, and that felt perfect. I spent many nights hanging out by the light of my tree, which is what I most look forward to each year.
Today, I took the tree down, and I’m preparing/waiting for our big snow to start. I’m a little nervous about losing power again, but I’m not exactly mad about a snow storm slowing us down a bit right now.
Whatever is happening for you at the start of this year, I hope that you are able to find connection and peace throughout this year.
New Ink
Mostly writing to keep up the accountability again. It’s been an interesting week, and an entirely boring one.
The most interesting thing about the week is that I got a tattoo! It’s been several years since my last tattoo, and this one is a bit different than the others. I didn’t go into the process with a clear idea of what I wanted. I had my “inspirations”, a poem, a tattoo style, and my pack. I shared all those with the tattoo artist and she designed something for me. That meant I have known since September-ish that I was getting a tattoo, but I didn’t actually see this design until the day of my tattoo. All of you probably realize how far out of my comfort zone that took me.
It’s perfect, though. As I thought about the poem, Instructions on Not Giving Up, all I could see were the literal images in it. What I love about my tattoo, is that I feel all the energy and the ideas of the poem, without literal images from it. The bird with wings spread wide is neither a fist nor a leaf, but it is “unfurled” and “like an open palm.” And my pack is all represented in it in ways that are obvious to me.
The other interesting ideas floating around my world this week has to do with older ideas. Knowing what is enough. When is it okay to stop, to say “this is enough for me”? What is good enough? And the question behind all of that, “What do I want?” These questions in and of themselves aren’t really interesting. What’s interesting is that I am facing these questions from a much different place. They haven’t activated me. I don’t feel anxious or insecure about my answers to those questions.
Unexpected
No big thoughts this week, just posting for practice and accountability.
Going into this week, I didn’t have much of a plan for Thanksgiving. Knowing it would be just me, I planned a left-over Thanksgiving feast that substituted chicken thighs for turkey meat. Not thinking too far ahead, Wednesday night I headed out to the store to pick up a few last minute things.
My days working at grocery stores must have truly faded from my memory, because I was prepared for busy, but not outrageously busy. As I stood outside the store, taking a phone call, my Thanksgiving plans changed slightly. Instead of lounging in my pajamas, eating and drinking whenever I was ready to start the day, I’d be sharing my left-over style dinner with a friend. I figured that required slightly more home cooking than I’d planned. (Homemade stuffing vs Stovetop)
To keep my life a little simple, I’d planned to just pick up a pumpkin pie and some Rediwhip to go with dinner. Unbelievably, the grocery store was out of pumpkin pies. They had plenty of pecan and one sweet potato, but neither of those were an option for me. So, I picked up all the ingredients, and found myself baking a pie Thanksgiving morning.
The dinner came together well, and I think I have finally established my own Thanksgiving routine. Since my divorce, I’ve hosted a vegetarian – just the sides and desserts style Friends-giving, spent Thanksgiving with friends and their families, and had Thanksgiving catered by Wegman’s, so I could have the leftovers without having to cook. Each of those Thanksgiving’s was a joy in its own way.
This year, though, this year, I found my base. When left to my own devices, without other plans, I know exactly what I’ll cook and how I will plan for Thanksgiving – simply and loosely. I make chicken thighs and gravy all the time and mashed potatoes more often than I should. The stuffing I do only make once a year. What really made this meal special, though, was throwing it all in a deep-dish pie dish like a Shepherd’s pie. It’s special, because it all just tastes so good together, but also because it helped me be super flexible with my plans.
As I said until Wednesday night, I’d planned to enjoy my little meal by myself while I puttered about the house ignoring chores and watching whatever tickled my fancy. As I stood in the Publix parking lot listening to my friend, my plans changed. Realizing that my friend needed company and not to have to leave their place, I offered to share my Thanksgiving and suggested it would be easy to assemble then bring over to warm up.
Thursday afternoon, I packed up the dinner, the pie, and some wine and headed over to my friend’s house. Everything worked out wonderfully and this was a lovely and special Thanksgiving. The simplicity and flexibility of my cooking plans served my traditions and memories, but also allowed me to be present and share a lovely holiday with a friend. That is the element of this meal that I want to be the tradition. Perhaps next year, I will share it with more friends in my home, or maybe I’ll do something wildly different. Who knows?
What I learned this year is that I all really require from Thanksgiving is getting set up for my favorite holiday of the year, National Pie for Breakfast Day!
I hope that you all had wonderful Thanksgivings!
Change
In the middle way there is no reference point. ~Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart
This is the time to sit with the anxiety, the ambiguity and the unknowability of our lives. This is the time to go down deep in to the deepest recesses of who we are, to find resources and riches we didn’t know were there. ~ Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg
I am not sure how it was for all of you, but in my corner of the world everyone seemed to struggle this week. Major catastrophes didn’t seem to be the issue, but nearly everything that could be difficult was difficult. And, the wins of the week didn’t quite seem proportional to the challenges. Still there were wins.
Wednesday, I took the day off to attend to some appointments. After the last appointment of the day, I stopped by HomeGoods, where I found the coupe glasses I have been wanting for years. They aren’t exactly the same as the one in which the Cuban restaurant in Durham served me an amazing daiquiri in, but they are beautiful kin; and, now, four of them are mine.
A small win to be sure, but since I have been talking about/low-key looking for these for years, to finally find them for $20 is absolutely worth celebrating.
The middle place, the wilderness, the transition without certainty or reference points surrounds us all collectively right now. As our different wisdom traditions tell us, this is a difficult time. It’s hard to keep moving forward, to maintain hope, to maintain energy and engagement, when there’s no promise that things won’t get harder before they get better. Our own personal transitions and wilderness compound the difficulty of this moment. Whether it’s the changes of aging, the ending of a relationship, the work of a long-term relationship, a huge move, healing ourselves from past traumas and wounds, navigating career and work place changes, or some combination of all these things and more, we are all already unmoored in so many ways.
I wish I had some remedy to share, but – frankly – even saying something about focusing on our small wins feels anemic. Our personal struggles and our collective struggles are real. For me, the defining feature of this moment in time, is that there’s no more hiding; it’s impossible to look away, to numb the discomfort of being in this space. In the past, when things become uncertain collectively, I could focus personally to find firmer ground; or, when things were uncertain personally, I could shift my focus externally, collectively and find a reference point, a way to move forward. Right now, those old comforts are out of reach; yet, I (we) have to keep going.
Y’all know I have been through a few transitions, and that I think, and write, about this stuff more than the average bear. The transition period and the wilderness are productive and comforting metaphors for me, because they help me accept the difficulty of whatever I’m experiencing. Of course everything feels hard! Everything is hard in the wilderness. Everything is also possible in the wilderness. Accepting the difficulty and the discomfort it brings is always the first step for me, the first movement forward.
If everything is hard now, if you are without reference points collectively, personally, or both, please remember that this discomfort is normal. It’s okay to feel the sadness, the disappointment, the betrayal, the fear, the uncertainty, the ennui. It’s okay when the small inconvenience feels overwhelming and pushes you to tears or anger. It’s okay to feel lost and to question what brought you to this place. Be kind to yourself and let yourself feel and regulate those emotions, so that you don’t unintentionally unleash them on those around you.
The next step, the step towards healing, towards a new place will come when you are ready. Maybe it will be in community, in finding a collective. Maybe it will be in self-care and gratitude. Maybe it will be in stillness and meditation. Likely, it will be in come combination of all of these. It will come; don’t rush it.
For me this week, I’m still working through my big reactions and feelings to small inconveniences. And I’m drinking all my water and anything that looks pretty from my new coupe glasses. Sure, I have to get up often for refills, but I also smile a little whenever I pick up my glass. I am reading the women whose perspective and wisdom I’ve always found helpful, like Dr. Tressie McMillan-Cottom, Dr. Brene Brown, Dr. Roxanne Gay, etc. I’m turning to the traditions that have supported me in the past, re-reading Pema Chodron, reinstating my morning rituals, and delving into the On Being podcast and its rich library. As my dear friend Dr. Phoenix wisely says, “that’s not nothing.” Several small things this week also reminded me of wisdom from Octavia Butler:
All that you touch
You Change.
All that you Change
Changes you.
The only lasting truth
Is Change.
We all touch so much more than we imagine. Change will come.
D5 Creation