Weekly Zephyr #13: August 24th, 2017

Kumi Yamashita, Chair, 2015

A shadow doesn't weigh anything but if it's your own shadow you can expect to get very tired when you reckon with it

That's me today. Tired newsletter-maker. Somber last week, weary this week, so we're going gentle in here. A few notes on a clarinet, as it were. A trembly pencil-drawing vibe.  I just had a staring contest with my own personal shadow, is the deal. No details, but we had occasion to hang out and we cer-tainly did that. Bracing, awful, therapeutic. Timely, too, what with the eclipse and also the USA getting its face smashed into its own shadow so furiously these days, if you can smash your face into a shadow, which it looks like we can. So what do I want to offer you?

It's not going to be any kind of collection of treats this week. I promise I'll get back to fun things soon. I just can't get it up for pleasant ephemera at the mo'. 

I think it's just a wish.   I wish for you to know yourself. The darkest part, I mean. I kind of hope you get to go to your knees with it.

THIS SOUNDS LIKE A SHITTY WISH, TINA.

Sure, but at least I'm not delivering it to you on Christmas or your birthday or something. If your birthday is August 24th, whoa. Sorry. I promise that it's a good wish at heart.

I just wish this for you because I have an inkling that you can't actually probably love yourself unless you've seen and faced and claimed and then forgiven the gory worst of yourself. Mine's certainly a piece of work. (I like to operate in a neglect theme, in my darkest parts, in case you're curious. I can take it very far for both myself and others. Terrifying.) (Do you know about the Enneagram? Personality type system? I'm wicked into it. I'm a 9 —> and thus recognize my own depravity in the style of the unhealthy 9.)  Because you know it's in there. It's our human inheritance. And you surely hate yourself about your specific shadow and find all kinds of weird ways to punish yourself about it, large and small. But then when you have gone all in with that shadow and faced it and moved through it—or at least for every chunk you get in there and handle, because nobody's doing this all at once with the whole goddamn thing—you have a real, increasing shot at inhabiting your entire self with love and friendliness, and not just the half you've decided you like.       Also:   You can't inhabit your country in any kind of sustained way better than you inhabit yourself, I think,  so that certainly raises the stakes on the thing.             O_O