One Tiny Knot Lets Go
Exactly eight years ago, I found myself in line at the co-op with no wallet. I’d been out on other errands, so, not a good feeling.
I quietly panicked, fishing through my bag even though I could clearly see it was devoid of my wallet. My twenty-seven dollars worth of sundries were already rung up (so, yes, I was that person), and I thought to just leave, but then realized I should at least check the customer service counter to see if maybe I’d dropped the wallet in the store and some good Samaritan had turned it in. Neither of these things were true.
I hurried back to the line in defeat. Except, my groceries were bagged up and ready to go and the woman behind me had paid for my tomato soup and veggie sushi, my rice crackers and pecans. “I’m so worried for you!” she said. “Identity theft, so many things can go wrong. I’ll pray for you.” She hugged me then, and pressed her cheek against mine. The warmth of her skin, her breath, her soft hair, an elongated moment.
Then she told me God would be with me. As Mary Oliver says, I don’t know what a prayer is. I’m even less clear on exactly what God is, or if God is. But I felt very surely loved as I left the co-op.
My wallet was on the seat of my car.
This leads me to my point, if I have one. For years, I have been fascinated by fascia. Fascia is, loosely speaking, part of the muscoloskeletal system. But it’s really much more than that. It’s like a web that surrounds our entire bodies. It weaves under and supports our skin, our muscles, and even our organs. It’s kind of a miracle, fascia, how it’s so light and yet so strong, how it affects the functioning of our whole body, every movement, every breath. Even the brain is encased in fascia.
But sometimes, often, actually, fascia gets injured, twisted up, adhered. Stress, bad posture, certain traumatic events, all strain the fascia. And if the fascia is ensnared in one part of the body, you may feel the effect elsewhere. It’s a network. Injured fascia becomes a beautiful woven envelope that constrains us rather than supporting us, making our body feel too small for itself.
It hurts.
I have the idea that the world has its own fascia, too. A macrocosmic web that holds all of us together as one organism, stretching and flexing and connecting the entire human race and beyond that, the planet itself, as we move, grow, live, love, fight, heal, die.
I have to admit, I think of this planetary fascia as a light source, too, like an aura, and it’s strong, but also delicate, and prone to tangling, in that way that all nets are. I sense it’s quite adhered right now, caught up in itself. The glow is dimmed. That’s hard on all of us. Maybe we feel at times like fish trapped together in a net, struggling and straining and thinking we’re swimming somewhere when in fact we’re just flopping around, hurting ourselves.
If we do have this collective fascia that I imagine, then I think this election season and the several preceding it have, especially for Americans but also for others around the world due to the power of this nation, burned serious new lesions into it and inflamed existing ones, blocking the light source almost completely.
But then, sometimes, someone pays for your groceries and presses her cheek to yours and tells you, in her own words, which may sound different than yours, that she loves you—all because you misplaced your wallet.
And one tiny knot lets go.
This reminds me that, with everything hard and scary and hurtful that has happened and is happening still, we face new opportunities to untangle more net, untie more knots, with as much love as we can muster.
This is always true. But sometimes it’s underlined twice.
Love,
Jeannine
PS If you would like to keep creating through uncertainty, please join us now for Writing in the Dark’s The Art of the Scene intensive. We would love to write with you in our safe, light-filled community,
Oh, Jeannine, this is exactly what I've been thinking lately! I shared a Note in August about my daughter Sarah, who asked if my husband Ben and I would take her to a craniofacial picnic, so she could meet other people who looked like her. A simple story, and many people latched onto it.
Then, shortly after that, I thought, "I want to tell people about Sally." Sally is a cashier at a local Fresh Thyme that I've patronized for over seven years, and we've developed quite a bond. She's so sweet, so cheerful, so kind. She always tells me as soon as I walk into the store, "I'm so glad to see you today! You always make me smile." So I shared about Sally on Notes. And, again, hundreds of people commented and many shared.
I kept doing this--finding simple, ordinary, everyday stories of common heroes among us--and shared them. I noticed that people seem hungry for these stories, because they point to the goodness in small acts and encounters and conversations.
I believe this is how we untangle the collective fascia, as you call it. One by one, bit by bit. This is essentially what I wrote to a friend via email the day after the election. He said, "Now what?" I said, "We keep showing up. We respond to the moment we find ourselves in, choosing to be kind, to listen, to receive someone's story with care. We help others without expecting reciprocity." I told him the only way to combat the powerlessness we feel as we confront massive and heavy problems that are impossible for one person to resolve, is to choose to be the light and the goodness and the kindness every day: in our neighborhoods, families, grocery stores, online.
That's the only way the world will unravel this mess we've made. And for some reason, I have faith in humanity, that we can do this one person at a time, every day, in ordinary settings.
Creating through uncertainty: yes defintiely - sign me up!
I felt the fog and sadness lift to move forward yesterday. I went to bed with the germ of an idea and a line. I woke up before dawn, tugged that thread and extracted this villanelle:
The mask informs the face; versions of the self revealed –
as the poem shapes the mind behind the word’s façade.
What taste is the water once the vial is unsealed?
Give me one clear instant where the true soul is revealed.
The details of this life feel like elaborate charade;
the mask performs a face, versions of the self concealed.
There’s a knot inside my heart where the grieving has congealed.
A star glows from the sapphire because the stone is flawed.
What is the taste, this water, when the vial is unsealed?
Name me one porous moment where identity is not a shield,
where personae portrayed not some deeper truth betrayed –
the force behind the mask inversion, the self repealed.
What salvaged seeds can I culture from this ravaged field?
roiling in the pit of night I tend the light’s aubade:
imagining the taste of water once this vial s unsealed.
The poison yields a remedy by which the wound is healed:
the virus nullified, by its own essence unmade.
What is the taste of water once the vial is unsealed –
The face behind the mask unversioned: the self revealed.