Here’s what I see for us, now that we’re gathered together again

(First, quick, I have to say I was overwhelmingly touched by the warm reception for the return of the Zephyr! What a confirmation that this was the right call. Saturated with gratitude over here. I missed you all, too, and I’m so glad a door opened inside me to bring it back.)

Say you’re at a retreat or conference about something you truly love, and the conference is really good, and it’s taking place in a well-designed building with swish landscaping, and you have a break in the middle of the day to eat lunch and enjoy the grounds, and right before lunch the facilitator says, “We’ll reconvene at 2:00” or whatever.

What I’m seeing for us today is that a picnic lunch with a capacious amount of time for wandering the grounds at this fine conference is the reconvening. Bear with me, I’m trying to think into this.

I keep staring at the illustration up top and projecting myself into it, is what’s happening, and I’m finding it pleasing in there, and I don’t see why we can’t all wander around those grounds together for as long as we want.

My thinking on this further, though, is that this imaginative wandering around is not quite right if it’s aimless, or outside of a container, somehow. That’s why I put us at a conference. But we’re not going to be at some mandatory conference about boringness. What a dumb thought experiment that would be. Enough of life is already a mandatory conference about boringness.

There’s no way we can really know what this conference is about because there are too many of us and we all have to love it. We’re just trying to import the feeling of being in the presence of accomplished presenters we admire and other people who care about this thing we care about to the same approximate degree that we care about it.

We want the vibe that we’ve been paying attention all morning and taking some notes and getting some great ideas, and there have been stimulating discussions in which—because this is the power of the imagination here—no dreadful people held forth dreadfully with no regard for time or other people, and nobody’s played devil’s advocate in that one kind of way that makes everyone very tired.

Lunchtime, we’re going to say, has arrived at a miraculously correct point. And now we’ve all been released out into these formal, elegant gardens to enjoy the fresh air and each other’s company.

Why is this good?

What are we doing?

I’m figuring this out at the same time you are. Okay, slightly earlier because I’m writing this. But I’ve traveled the same amount down the page as you’ve traveled at this point.

Making some guesses:

• Formal gardens are good because they require humans to take a lot of care with creating and maintaining beauty and harmony, and they inspire the thought/feeling “Look what we can do when we put our minds to it!” There’s a way we’re quietly invited to carry ourselves in a formal garden that’s not the worst thing for humans of our time. Respect, appreciation, a sense of slowing down.

• This mysterious conference we’re all voluntarily attending is good because it puts us in a heightened state of care and interest.

• Being at lunch is good because we’re in a state of freedom and unwinding but still in that larger container of care. Jokes can come out, shows of affection, deep personal conversations. Leg-stretching. Some attention to what we might need to do to make ourselves comfortable for the rest of the day. Nourishment, doi.

• Pretending to do all of this is good because when you imagine yourselves doing something you begin to experience the effects of that thing a little. UNDERRATED PHENOMENON. 

• Being together is good.

Hmm.

I think I figured out what we’re doing*.

*in this pretend conference, in this weird little newsletter as a whole

We’re trying to stop leaving so many assets on the table, unused.

Say we all exist in personal spheres. Our individual lives and concerns and daily business and thought patterns and emotional history and our bodies themselves, they’re a packet, and say for the purpose of this thought exercise that the packet is spherical.

And say when we pay attention to our agency within these spheres, and when we exert that agency, we spin our spheres, set them going one way or another. The amount of force and the precise directionality we can get going with our sphere affects the spheres we interact with, and vice versa. Outside forces affect our spin—sometimes with our consent, sometimes without—but not always with our attention.

We unconsciously let ourselves be spun this way and that, and we let our own spinning patterns roll on uninterrupted, however weak, however much in a wrong direction.

Doesn’t this seem true?

I feel this in my own being and maybe you do, too.

Some assets lying around underused:

Our attention is an asset. Our imagination is an asset. Our agency is an asset. The way we interact with each other is an asset, depending on how thoughtfully we do it. Who we choose to interact with—who we even think it’s possible to interact with—that’s a whole box of assets.

Life here on Earth is not stuck in the “bad” position, and I say that with full acknowledgement that your own particular life might be underwater in a way that you can’t handle alone.

(I heard a creator on TikTok point out that cynicism is a function of supremacy culture. More on TikTok another time, with links, and I’ll track down this creator so you can hear the take directly.)

I’m pointing out that there’s a collective style of complaint about existence that’s a sick luxury, particularly for some of us, and we could come to regret spending time indulging in it. So let’s not. These are our days on Earth.

I’m seeing each of us in strong spheres,

well-cultivated,

rolling with force and joy this way and that,

sometimes alone, sometimes in groups,

in such a way that when we leave our bodies and this big, wild planet,

we leave with the fewest regrets.

Story Club with George Saunders

Do you know about this? Are you a fan of the great literary mensch, George Saunders? Do you love fiction? Do you love stretching your mind?

I would leave this planet with regrets if I didn’t recommend Story Club to you with maximum force.

Here’s what it is, go look.

No paywall has gone up just yet so you can read all the posts so far.

I will say that $50 for a year’s subscription is a HOT BARGAIN considering that Story Club is as close to an MFA class with one of the world’s most special writers/teachers of writing that you can get without getting an actual MFA.

But if you don’t have $50 and you’re passionate about participating anyway, there are scholarships available. George (we call him George in there now, like he’s our friend or our uncle or something) doesn’t want anyone to miss out who’s serious about getting all up in stories.

The free subscription is sure to deliver tons of goodness your way, too, so you could start there.

Story Club is doing wonderful things for me, both in terms of how I approach my writing as a craft and how I mentally/emotionally self-game.

(I’m learning how to titrate the experience because between the comments and the exercises, a person could be doing a LOT.)

P.S. You’ll also want to read A Swim in a Pond in the Rain if you haven’t, if this is up your alley. Joy joy joy.

More Saunders gems living on my cork board:

And one non-Saunders cork board resident: