Dearest Beloveds,

I almost guarantee this poem is not one you might encounter in your academic career. If not, I salute your teacher. If so, well, you chose to come down and join this family with me as your Momma, so you’re welcome - you get to read it twice. (I can feel the future adolescent eye rolls.)

Courtesy of The Emerald’s June 23 2020 podcast entitled Space Hex: The Curse of Restlessness in Worldviews of Perpetual Escape, I have been exposed to Gil Scott-Heron's "Whitey on the Moon" released in 1970. Here is the full text (and you can hear Scott-Heron performing it below*:

A rat done bit my sister Nell.
With whitey on the moon
Her face and arms began to swell
And whitey's on the moon
I can't pay no doctor bills
But whitey's on the moon
Ten years from now I'll be paying still
While whitey's on the moon

I walked into the bathroom for a reason. And that reason was a good reason. I was organizing my pills in the kitchen, did I come in here for a new bottle of something? Which bottle would that be?

I walk back to the kitchen and delve back into pill sorting, allocating, counting... Oh yes! I need more AlgaeCal Plus* - back I go.

As I walk I say the name of the supplement in my head. AlgaeCal Plus. AlgaeCal Plus. AlgaeCal Plus.

Over the years I have noticed (in hindsight) several self-talk vortexes telling me I am in a depressive chasm. These refrains echo from the Cranky Monster part of me.

Corinna, you have read all of the books. There is no more to read. Creativity is dead. Everything is a variation on Twilight.

OR

Corinna, you have no friends, no one cares about you.

OR

Corinna, how much money has the medical industrial complex poured into keeping you on this planet - in this body at this time? You better be doing something earth shattering to justify that allotment of resources and energy - saved the world yet?

Eventually, I get my head out of my ass.

Last year at this time I wrote an email to close friends sharing with them that I was going to have new breasts for my birthday.

That happened.

3 months later drains were pulled, bruising settled, incision puffiness calmed, right side hematoma had been sorted, and I could grasp what living with these bags of saline would entail.

Not for me.

“And so now each fall I begin my class in a garden, where they have the best teachers I know, three beautiful sisters. For a whole September afternoon they sit with the Three Sisters… One of my students in an artist, and the more she looks the more excited she becomes. “Look at the composition,” she says. “It’s just like our art teacher described…”

Strewn on the concrete floor of the mudroom are summertime hats. A variety of baseball hats, wide brimmed floppy sun hats, Polly Hill Arboretum monogrammed bucket hats, disintegrating straw sun hats, my husband’s sturdy sun hat purchased at a cricket match, the visor from my childhood with my name emblazoned on it, the yellow rainproof fishing hat from my parents, and several neck gaitors from our visit to the tropics. 

I wiped the drawer with a damp rag. Then I turned to the closet and dumped out all of the wintertime hats onto the floor.

Dearest Beloveds,

We are right around the 40 day mark for your new school. The beautiful 40 day mark where new habits form, transformation occurs, and possibilities beckon. I am pleased to note that the 40 day mark on your ends has been demarcated by two key things in life: apple pie and a really good fart joke.

Dearest Beloveds,

Courtesy of my obsessive listening to The Emerald Podcast while you two were at camp I have been exposed to this 2013 quote from James Gustav Speth (Gus), co-founder of the National Resources Defense Council, twice in the past few weeks.

I used to think that top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and climate change. I thought that thirty years of good science could address these problems. I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed and apathy, and to deal with these we need a cultural and spiritual transformation. And we scientists don’t know how to do that.

Speth leads me directly into why I can’t sleep the nights after our new car arrives.

Three summers ago I made a living hugelkultur art installation. Tiles of thick bark and effluence from splitting logs stimied weed incursions. Then leaves fell. And decayed.

More leaves fell and more leaves decayed. Japanese Stiltgrass slid into the tiny cracks of soil and invading their way in. Thankfully, that invasive is very easy to weed with it’s shallow roots.

It was time to recharge the hugelkultur with new wood.

I felt like an art historian retouching a Caravaggio. Instead of fine badger hair dipped into cadmium and ochre my tools required gloves to prevent splinters.

Dearest Beloveds,

In the spirit of non-martyrdom I want to introduce this missive by sharing a quote from Swami Kripalu that I heard recently. “Every time you judge yourself you break your own heart.” Cheers to avoiding self-inflicted heartbreak!

Your Momma vividly remembers walking with my friend E when I was about 9/10 years old. We were both complaining about how unreasonable and difficult our mothers were. E turned to me and said, “I have found it helps if you apologize first.”

I remember trying it and being shocked by how effective it was - reducing both the intensity and the duration of whatever kerfuffle the two of us were tussling over.