Elemental, Part 4
Open to Surprise While Cultivating an Embodied Practice
Dear Good Reader,
I hope this newsletter finds you well.
As you know (Elementals, Part 2), my theme for this year is mending and as you can probably tell, photography is my go-to path for healing.
And if you’ve been reading 13 Tons of Love for a while, you know that Compost is my primary muse and metaphor.1
On one level, this week’s compost buckets are all about self-care because I know that when I nourish myself fully, I am better able to nourish others.2
With each delicious meal, walk with Lilly, or trip to the compost bin, the energy within shifts. I can almost feel the stresses of the past four and a half years slowly slip away.3
Like the increasingly ice-covered river, though, I’m flowing, even if things seem quiet.
Embodied: For me, embodied means an experience that I feel and am able to contain literally within my body.4
Is it possible, even with the snow and cold and strange happenings ‘out there,’ that rest and nutrient rich meals do in fact inspire flow?
A few years ago, I’d never considered the idea of ‘embodiment’ or examined deeply the connection between the energy we give out and the energy we absorb.
But the other day, when I stood by the Ottauquechee River, water flowed, ice cracked, a piece of plastic blew in the wind and the sun cast light on the delicate branches of some small tree or shrub. It was cold, but I was warm and warmed, reminded of walking barefoot in our old garden…
and being covered with dirt after a hard day’s work tending the compost and the plants.
When I look at these images now, I hear the birds, smell the soil and can feel the texture of the daffodil stems in my hand.
These are embodied moments, if there ever were any. But here’s the question: Do these images give you that feeling too, or are they only relevant to me?
I love how memories offer deeper understanding of the present…like earlier today on a longer-than usual walk with Lilly.5
Dressed for the weather (such a contrast to that warm early spring day my face got all covered with soil), only my face was exposed. It started out warm, calm and sunny.
There weren’t many places like this close to our old house.6 It’s been years, in fact, since I’ve felt the calm invitation of a snow-covered dirt road, but it was familiar in a cellular kind of way.7
Trees enveloped. Shadows beckoned. Energy flowed from deep within.
But a mile or so up the road, things changed rapidly.
While the wind and snow pellets blinded me, I felt curiosity, not fear, and an aliveness I have not felt for a while.
Unsure about duration or intensity, though, Lilly and I turned around. As we headed home, this gloriously Vermonty moment presented itself.
The storm interrupted both my walk and this post. I had intended to dive deeper into memories of past embodied experiences, but this surprise moment presented itself and called to be here, a reminder that when letting energy flow completely, I can be open to this kind of thing…
…and the sun’s delightful re-appearance about a mile from home.
To stay somewhat on topic and to keep me grounded, though, let’s return to compost. Earlier in this piece, I talked about how at this moment, compost feels like it’s all about self-care. But there’s more to it than that…there always is.
Yes, returning to the colors, shapes and textures in those buckets gives me joy - - I mean, how glorious are onion skins and the insides of banana peels?
But at this moment, I am grateful for the diversity I witness in my kitchen every day - - First, there’s gratitude for access to healthy food; Second, there’s gratitude to all those who labored growing, picking and bringing that food to me; Third, there’s gratitude for the vision of this country, a country grounded in the ideas of mixing and mingling people to create something greater than ourselves.
For me, these buckets embody what it means to be American. And when I witness them, they call for me to share their spirit.
While I long to shake my head and dance the next four years away, here I am, in this moment, striving o embody the energy I seek for myself and others.
Perhaps what this narrative is really all about is my searching for a deeper definition of mending.
Could it be that the mending I seek is a kind of embodiment that cultivates internal strength and resilience, where I am the person I want to be, no matter what happens?
Photography will be my guide, as will place and light, compost and color, motion and emotion.
I hope you’ll continue to travel with me as I dive deeper into what it means to cultivate an embodied photography practice - I’ve only just begun.8
As always, thank you for sharing your time and this space with me.
With gratitude for you being you,
Lyn
Please consider supporting Lilly’s and my explorations - - It sometime seems as if my ‘work’ is not really work because it is an ongoing creative act that exists as part of my very being. But creating these narratives, exploring these questions, and inviting others to reflect is what I love to do. Thank you for being here.
And if you know anyone who has a particular fondness for compost, whether in its physical or metaphorical form, please share 13 Tons of Love with them!
Even though we’ve moved and I now bring my food scraps to a shared bin by our neighborhood’s dumpster, I’m still enthralled by the colors, shapes and textures of all that shows up throughout the week.
To read more of the origin story, check out The Origin Story, Part 1: Compost & Mothers or The Origin Story, Part 2: Kaleidoscopes.
As part of my “I’m turning 60 in 10 months” plan, I’ve been eating more vegetables than carbohydrates, drinking more water and fresh ginger tea than wine or beer (actually, it’s been a dry month for me), and making sure I’m moving.
My favorite breakfast of late has been scrambled eggs with mushrooms, spinach and a diced red onion served on top of a diced sweet potato (made in a few minutes in the microwave wrapped in paper towels); During the day I’ve had a lot of green smoothies and winter salads (with kale and thinly chopped raw brussels sprouts); And for dinner, oodles of hearty soups and stews.
It was in June 2020 that my mother broke her neck…a year later she had emergency surgery. A year after that, she died. A year after that, we decided to move and a year after that, we were actually moving. And four and half years later, here we are.
Embodied, as defined by Miriam Webster:
to give a body to (a spirit) (incarnate);
to make concrete and perceptible;
to cause to become a body or part of a body (incorporate);
to represent in human or animal form (personify).
We haven’t walked on the dirt roads up behind our neighborhood for a long time and I was excited to have a little adventure…Who knew that the predicted winds would kick in a bit early…
That’s not actually true. There was a very short dirt road that went along a stream and was surrounded by tall pine trees. It offered cover, but it was a darker ever-green cover, not this marvelously woven texture of bare branches covered in snow, reaching out as if in an embrace.
I grew up two miles down a dirt road surrounded by trees. My grandparents lived about 1/4 mile away from us and if I chose to walk to their house along the road, branches like this protected me. We moved to that house from Brooklyn, NY when I was five and I looked at a view just like this image like this image below when I waited for the school bus at the bottom of our driveway.
Throughout this part year, I’ve been participating in an extended conversation with friends at the Kinship Photography Collective exploring the idea of “Between Bodies” in which we have asked the following questions:
Through embodied practices and rekindling long-forgotten sensorial ways of knowing, can photography help us unearth and flesh out the relationships that exist in our most embodied moments?
If so, how can we use our practice to invite more sensual, intuitive ways of making and knowing?
During the year, I facilitated a group exploring how we might Re-imagine Loss & Grief…That experience transformed my relationship to place and my photography. but that transformation has only just begun, really.
It is so wonderful to find your words again. I am just finding Substack and changing my practice from Facebook first thing in the morning to Substack and what a delight to rediscover you
Before I go on, I must say Lyn, that each of your compost bins looks good enough to eat! I am wondering since you are on this veggie binge, if you ever store veg trimmings in the freezer to make vegetable stock. Looks like you could do it easily to have ready for your soups and stews. This said, I do like the pics very much just as they are!
By some strange coincidence one of my go-to breakfasts lately is an egg and egg whites omelet filled with sautéed sliced mushrooms, thyme and spinach with a bit of seasoned cashew yogurt and a slice of GF toast on the side. I've been a non-dairy, gluten-free girl for over 10 years and loving it.
Your Lily looks to be a wonderful side kick! Beautiful knowing eyes. Thanks for sharing your pics of her and your wonderful winter walk!