Thank you everyone so very much for joining our live session yesterday! More than 200 people were there with us, and really felt like such an energetic community gathering - a beautiful way to recognize Earth Day, World Book Day, Earth Month, and Poetry Month all together. <3 I also just learned that it’s National Card and Letting Writing Month, so I’m happy I was able to read the letter from Pope Francis to Antonio, and that Tarun and I shared a collaborative post. He and I have still not met in person, though are connected somehow by virtual and cosmic letter writing. :)
**Here is a nice introduction to Tarun and his work - and links below :)
**I said in the live session that I would share the names and works of all the poets who read at our Earth Day event at the Elizabeth Street Garden on Tuesday, along with video and photos, but I will share that tomorrow, as it can easily be its own post.**
In the meantime, I will share everything I touched on within the live session.
THANK YOU to my dear friend Karen Kozy for making the wonderful flier for me. I love it and am so grateful for your generosity and creative ideas. <3 <3
I opened with the following excerpts and pieces. Let me know if I forgot anything! :)
“April is the cruelest month, breeding
lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
memory and desire, stirring
dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers…..”
T.S. Eliot, from The Waste Land
(below text from this post of mine from April 2024)
As a young child, I know I loved the Spring, though I don’t remember being aware of or measuring time in such a way. The seasons were pronounced in Michigan, and while Winter was my favorite by far, I know I welcomed the potential of Spring, when the bugs and birds and fishes slowly came out of hiding, like seeing old friends again. When outside playtime became more simple. A bounty of newness - sensory magic. Summers were maybe the only time that matched Winter in its fun-ness, though Spring was the catalyst which started it all. In that way, April was the kindest month.
When I was a little bit older and we lived in New York City, my relationship with Spring shifted in a way I didn’t fully understand while it happened. Winter was still my favorite season, and I found that signs of Spring unlocked a slow anxiety, noticeably growing in its discomfort with each new year. I remember walking through the streets on the first sunny days, and the feeling of the air, seemingly pleasant and lovely, would captivate in a way that left me physically sick, strangely fearful. I remember that specific feeling so clearly, as though I could pinpoint the frantic movements of my cells, a strange and granular panic on the atomic level, deep and secret in its uneasiness. In those years of my life, I grew to dislike Spring and all that represented it, even the very existence of flowers. I turned away from them all and grieved the shelter and quietude of Winter. In that way, April was the cruelest month.
As an adult, my entire relationship to time and seasons has shifted and evolved as I continue to discover my own passionate missions and heal the wounds of my childhood heart. Among these changes, April: Earth Month and Poetry Month, became one of my favorite times of year. I love April because of its contrast, because of these polarizing ideas associated with its power, its harmonious blend of kindness and cruelty. These things are neither good or bad and don’t need to be measured and quantified. They are just here. Here for us if we want or need them, as any other day and time of year.
When T.S. Eliot wrote those words about April, he was talking about many things observed in post WWI London, the strange fruitlessness of modern life, the despairing ruins, fear and bleakness shaping the future of our world. April as something cruel and punishing because it starts over the cycle of things, the meaningless new beginnings of hurt and sadness, grief and failure. Maybe in subtle ways there are offers of hope at the end of The Waste Land, (I sat upon the shore/Fishing, with the arid plain behind me/Shall I at least set my lands in order?) hints of light extending a familiar hand, if not shouting then at least whispering not to give up, to keep stepping forward in our old boots, to remain faithful and purposeful, continuing to access that warm and beautiful glow inside us all which is love. To remember that love is always there, it’s the very thing that puts the light of life into our eyes. To remember that we are not separate from it all, to remember that we are protected and connected, that we actually are it all.
-JPS
When Spring Arrives (this is another translation)
When spring comes,
If I’ve already died,
The flowers will bloom in the same way
And the trees won’t be less green than they were last Spring.
Reality doesn’t need me.
I feel incredibly happy
When I think my death has absolutely no importance.
If I knew I was going to die tomorrow,
And Spring came the day after tomorrow,
I would die peacefully, because it came the day after tomorrow.
If that’s its time, when else should it come?
I like it that everything is real and everything is right;
And I like that it would be like this even if I didn’t like it.
And so, if I die now, I die peacefully
Because everything is real and everything is right.
They can pray in Latin over my coffin if they want to.
It’s alright with me if they dance and sing all around it.
I don’t have any preferences about when I won’t even be able to have preferences.
What comes, when it comes, will be what it is.
Fernando Pessoa, by way of Alberto Caeiro - 7 November 1915
Translation of words from Viva la Poesia by Pope Francis:
“Literary words are like a thorn in the heart that moves you to contemplation and sets you on a journey. Poetry is open; it throws you into another realm”
“The artist is someone who, with their eyes, both sees and dreams; they perceive more deeply, prophesy, and announce a different way of seeing and understanding the things before us”.
“Art is an antidote to a mindset of calculation and uniformity; it challenges our imagination, our way of seeing and understanding things.”
Letter from Pope Francis to Antonio Spadaro:
Dear brother,
long live poetry! I am glad that you have collected the texts I have written over the years about the importance of poetry. I would love to see poetry take the chair in our universities!
We need to recover the taste for literature in our lives, but also in education otherwise we are like a dried fruit. Poetry helps us all to be human, and we need it so much today.
Francis
I referenced also my mom’s Substack post and beautiful song for Post Francis.
And Bill McKibben’s post for him, too.
I showed a few other books including A Book of Rhymes, which I went into more detail about in this post from the book fair, which includes photos and links.
I also showed personal copies of Silent Spring by Rachel Carson and Walden by dear Henry David Thoreau.
I showed the beautiful Dogwood flower brought to me by Lacie of Framed Florals and encouraged you to visit her Instagram and see more images of her work.
I was then SO over the moon happy to be joined by Tarun Nayar of Modern Biology.
Tarun was so kind and generous to lead us in a magical impromptu plant meditation that stayed with me for the remainder of the day, taken into night dreams of underground networks of soil and natural electricity. I look so much forward to collaborating with him more in the future. We have so many ideas to explore and will be wonderful to choose and follow the first. <3
Thank you to Pennie Opal Plant, advisor to Movement Rights, ‘one of the fastest growing movements in the world with rights for natural systems being recognized for work on the ground.’ Please visit their website to learn more about their important work and to find ways to get involved and spread the word. <3
Movement Rights is a women- and Indigenous-led organization, focused on advancing frontline-led climate justice, Indigenous Rights, and the Rights of Nature. Movement Rights is founded on the idea that we must align human law (and culture) with the laws of the natural world—the future of humanity depends on it. Since our inception in December 2014, we have established our work as a vital and respected piece of the climate justice mosaic. We know no single part of our movements for justice can win on its own—we believe in the power of frontline leadership and true solidarity, sharing and integrating strategies, tactics, resources and learning from each other. We are strategically small, because it allows us to support the communities we work with in ways that ensure the leadership and our resources stay with and empower them.
Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Thank you so very much, everyone. <3 <3 I am so grateful for you all. Please share any thoughts, reactions, feelings, ideas, questions, reflections, etc. in the comments. As always, I will be so happy to read them all. And if you have questions or comments for Tarun, please share those, too - I know he will love to hear from you. <3
Sending lots of love for Earth Day, Book Day, every day.
Have a wonderful day. <3
‘Awake everyone, the dawn has come. Life is streaming from the sun. A garden blessed, the bird that sings. Nature gives us everything.’
🌱🌸🌱🌱🌸🌱🌱🌸🌱🌱🌸🌱🌱🌸🌱🌱🌸🌱🌱🌸🌱🌱🌸🌱🌱🌸🌱🌱🌸🌱🌱🌸🌱🌱🌸🌱
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