I am going through something I imagine many people experience after reading Braiding Sweetgrass: I am listening.
“Paying attention is a form of reciprocity with the living world, receiving the gifts with open eyes and open heart.”
-Robin Wall Kimmerer
I listen to the birds, and there are so many here. I am starting to recognize them by time of day, but I cannot yet name them or match sight to sound.
I listen to the wind rustling through the trees and long grasses and weeds. This is the only property for miles around that still has trees and natural fields, which creates many sounds: the whooshing, but the animals too.
I listen for the chickens at my studio door when they come to visit on their daily rounds.
I knock on the bathroom door and listen, not for my housemates, but for frogs.
In the evenings I listen to Mario, another resident, drumming in his studio. We have barely spoken, but the nightly drumming sweeps across the farm and brings with it a sense of community.
I listen to the pulsing of the cicadas, a many-as-one-ness that I don't remember noticing in the hum of the east coast. I say to Phoebe that they sound like aliens. This is what they sound like in Ohio, she tells me.
We listen to our instincts and vague memories (and briefly, the internet) to build a fire for roasting marshmallows. I listen to Phoebe's memories of her sister and her parents as we each lay on a picnic table bench, looking up at a foreign sky in search of meteors. These stories are new to me.
I listen to my body. I am learning to eat when I am hungry and sleep when I am tired. When my heart is not in the studio, I go elsewhere.
Like today.
I listen to the crackling voices of friends on the other end of struggling phone calls. We are separated in space and time but united in grief. Years of silence become "I love you" as we remember our friend. These are stories we lived.
We say to the ones who are still here: Just call me. I am listening.
I consider the contributions of my 26 years on the planet so far.
In Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer writes about the significance of knowing your gifts in many Indigenous traditions, and that having a gift engenders a responsibility to use it for good.
“The most important thing each of us can know is our unique gift and how to use it in the world. Individuality is cherished and nurtured, because, in order for the whole to flourish, each of us has to be strong in who we are and carry our gifts with conviction, so they can be shared with others.”
And, later...
"Here you will give your gifts and meet your responsibilities. To become naturalized is to live as if your children’s future matters, to take care of the land as if our lives and the lives of all our relatives depend on it. Because they do."
I think about my friend's gifts.
I wonder if a month of listening will be long enough to find mine.
Comments