What my first trail ultra taught me about kindness
I ran my first ultra a few weeks ago. For fifty miles, I listened to the birds and my steps and my breath - steady or crying or winded or strong - and the forest and the cheers from the runner just ahead just behind just passing by and mostly just my thoughts.
One thought I kept returning to was that races are magical places because they are more perfect, compassionate microcosms of life. In a race, we are all running the same course. The distance (stupid), the elevation (absurd), the geography (beautiful sometimes brutal) are the same. But even on the same course, ✨none of us assume we are all having the same race.✨
For some of us, it is our first ultra, for some our second that month alone. Some of us have been running for decades, some of us are recovering from injury, some of us love the uphills and hate the downs, some of us are great at positive self-talk, some of us beat ourselves up, some of us haven't been able to stomach food all day, some of us couldn't fit in the training we wanted, some of us knocked this training cycle out of the park, some of us are dealing with something else entirely, some of us are having the day of their life.
On the part of the course where I'm flying and feeling my strongest, someone else is considering dropping out. On the part of the course where I can't bring myself to do more than walk or cry, someone else is smiling at how fresh their legs feel. Every runner out there recognizes that we show up on race morning completely differently. Every runner out there knows that on the same course, we are all having a different race. And we treat each other accordingly.
We tell each other we've got this, we're looking strong, we're so close, keep it up, almost compulsively. And we mean it. We know we will always feel better and we will always feel worse. And you never know when hearing someone say those words will help you believe it.
Thank you to everyone who made the Georgia Jewel #covidsux edition miraculously happen this year, and for giving me a full day in the woods to wonder at how nice it is to give each other and ourselves the benefit of the doubt, trust in the process, and as many keep it ups as we can.
On Foresight and Bewilderment, Predictions and Incapications
A reflection on slowing down in urgent times written March 02020 in response to Bayo Okomolafe
On Our Always Uncertain Future
I work in a field called foresight. Sometimes it’s called futures studies, or even futurism, though there are a whole host of associations with that one (techno-futurists, Italian futurism, etc.) that can be misleading. In a moment like now when the future suddenly seems much more uncertain, I’ve been wondering what it means to be someone who “works in the future.” I make no claim to have a clearer or more accurate understanding of what a post-COVID future looks like, but I do think I have some expertise, and also some responsibility, to be thinking about it critically, differently, and explicitly.
In the past few months, COVID-19 has transformed the present into something that often feels like a foresight scenario, the “what-if’s” of a far-off, hypothetical, global pandemic now very real headlines with very real implications. And there have been so many articles, interviews, podcasts, discussions, and arguments over the past few months trying to understand what the future will look like, should look like, could look like.
The momentum of the status quo has (I would say, finally) been disrupted on a scale we haven’t seen in decades. We want to know what things will look like in a month from now, in a year from now. We want to plan, we want stability, and we want certainty. But if foresight, and this moment, have taught me anything, it’s that we didn’t have certainty or stability before any of this either. We can plan and think through all the possible futures before us, but we will never be able to predict or truly know what we are heading for.
Instead, we can learn from this moment and recognize that we need to get better at listening. At tuning in, at slowing down, at trying to stay open to possibility and learning. Listening to ecologies, to the systems we are now seeing we are a part of, to our communities, to our planet, to this virus, to our emotions. If we can listen, truly listen to what is happening right now, we might learn how to move into our new future.
On Slowing Down in Urgent Times
This week I listened to a conversation with Dr. Bayo Okomolafe, Executive Director of the Emergence Network, with host Ayana Young on the For the Wild podcast called “Slowing Down in Urgent Times.” I was struck by how a conversation recorded months before the coronavirus situation was at the forefront of everyone’s consciousness could be translated so easily into the current context. But, as many of us have known, these have been urgent times since long before 02020.
In his interview, Bayo speaks of how modernity has trained us in the myth of stability. We crave linearity, cause-and-effect, neatness. And it’s true, it can be easier and more comfortable that way. But paying attention to stability means that when crisis hits, like it has right now, we are not as well trained in finding a messy, stumbling way forward. At building resilience, at understanding systems and entanglements and interconnectedness and long-term implications. In these urgent times, I have sometimes found myself feeling like I should be using my foresight experience to help people understand what the near future might hold, offer them a glimpse of possible stability and certainty. But I know better; stability only feels easier and more comfortable until something disrupts it. What people (me!) want right now is to know what the future will look like, what they need right now is to know how to live and move forward in an uncertain present.
On Invisible Systems Suddenly Visible
Bayo speaks of the need to think less about capacity building and more about incapacitation. Or as I understand him, our need to focus less on what more we need to get us out of this crisis (more information, more certainty, more speed) and instead to focus on what we learn from the ways it has incapacitated us. What is here, in this moment of uncertainty and slowness, that we did not notice before? What are we learning now that we might bring with us into our futures?
We might see this incapacitation as a moment to focus on the systems that have now become more transparent than ever. On its face, COVID-19 is a healthcare crisis, but its effects are not evenly distributed and straightforward. They are influenced by different models of healthcare systems, political responses, individual versus collective cultural values, how circumstances and economic status and historical oppression affect whether people can work from home or close their business or access technology or care.
We see how food that seemed to appear magically year-round in our stores now has workers associated with it, and labour policies and minimum wage policies associated with them. When we no are no longer driving our cars across our cities, we are suddenly confronted with the urban planning practices and infrastructure choices our cities have been making, whether our neighbourhoods are walkable, whether we have ways to get in touch with our communities for things we need. When we are asked to stay home, to stay close, we see the trees and birds and ecologies in our own backyards or are faced with their absences. When we are asked to work from home, we can start to ask whether productivity and value should be measured by time spent in an office, whether what we spend our time contributing to is considered essential, and who defines what is essential and to whom?
When we have to rely on only virtual and remote communication, we can decide whether our culture’s acceleration toward the virtual, the nomadic, the place-less, and the detached is, in fact, what we want for our future, whether we could be advocating just as strongly for the place-based, in-person, and communal. When we are faced with streams of numbers and metrics from all our media, we can unpack why certain populations seem more vulnerable than others, and we can ask whether they were vulnerable to begin with, what histories made that true, and what our role we can take in protecting and advocating for them.
On Sitting with Uncertainty
A skilled weaver of story and myth, Bayo ends his interview talking about the Biblical story of Job. Job’s story was never part of my own cultural upbringing, but Bayo’s take resonated with me. Job is a good, prosperous, devoted man who nevertheless has his property, his children, and his health all taken away from him by God (or Satan, with God’s permission). Bayo talks about how he never really understood the message of Job; why does God not offer Job an explanation of what has happened and why?
Bayo reframed Job’s story and understood: “Sometimes the best answer to a pressing question is not the answer itself.” Maybe amidst all of these tragedies, there were no good and satisfying answers God could have given him. Maybe what God could offer Job at that point was, in Bayo’s words, “the gift of bewilderment,” “the straying away from the arrogance of easy arrival.”
And maybe that is what we are being offered right now, too. Maybe instead of seeking a way forward in a pressing situation, we can try to learn from the gift of bewilderment we are being given. At the cracks that are now showing and the humbling that come with having the myth of stability and linearity disrupted. I am not going to use my foresight experience to offer ideas about what our future might look like. It won’t be “right,” and focusing one linear vision will obscure other possibilities. Instead, I am going to take a good look at the invisible threads that constructed my pre-COVID reality and think about whether this is the opportunity to mend or re-thread any of them. I am going to sit in this uncertain moment and do a lot of good listening. Then maybe, just maybe, I’ll hear what our future is telling us.
The give and take of quarantine also may be considered in terms of time. We sacrifice today for tomorrow and tomorrow’s joy. Quarantine, as sorrowful as it is, was optimism. To believe in quarantine meant to have faith in afterward, whether in 40 or 400 days. Yet the price of this hope was a panicked, suspended animation. The price was “this moment,” an overzealous now going nowhere. By warping the present, quarantine was limbo between the past and the future, where time stagnates even as it moves in all directions at once.
To quarantine was to survive, but with an asterisk. It was not just to make it through but to imagine how to overcome. The most radical gesture, then, may not be to emerge from quarantine but to figure out how to persist within it, always. To appreciate complexity, to acknowledge hardship, to wonder why things are what they are and whether they must always be so. (They mustn’t.) To wake and sleep, gain and lose weight, grow gray and cover it up, bake bread this week and buy it the next. To be inside/outside, here/there, past/future: that was the lesson of quarantine and will be its memory. Life is just like that, the shifting and the growing, the imagining and the dreading, the promise of tomorrow that one day, someday, won’t arrive.
Quarantine wasn’t, and isn’t, over.
Negative Capability: [John Keats, the poet] had this theory that the inferior poets and writers were too in love with certainty and their own perspective and seeing things one way. And to be a really great artist you needed the ability to simultaneously believe things that were contradictory without feeling the need to reconcile them.
Reply All Podcast Episode #161
Reminded me of Vent Diagrams, a wonderful project by Rachel Schragis and e.m. The vent diagrams they source, inspire, and share are beautiful visual representations of how cultivating our capacity for negative capability, instead of trying to make things fit neatly into a binary, allows us to sit with and work from actual complexities.
I’ve been a long-time fan of McKinley Valentine’s newsletter the Whippet, both because of the always insightful unsolicited advice section and because of the constantly surprising combination of facts, articles, and perspectives. I loved this take on how to broaden your general knowledge from this edition.
1. Every time you look up a fact, read the whole Wikipedia page.
So for example I saw that cute flamingo photo and thought, “hang on I don’t actually know why flamingos stand on one leg” and I googled it and the answer was “because it doesn’t use any muscles”. But I read the whole page and found about the toxic lakes thing, which I had no idea about 5 minutes ago and would never have thought to google. I didn’t know it was a thing to know. “Why do flamingos stand on one leg?” is a question that naturally occurs to you if you see a flamingo. “What sort of lakes do flamingos live in?” is not. You would never find out about the toxic lakes just by finding the answer to the questions that naturally occur to you.
“If there’s one thing I’ve learned from doing The Whippet, it’s that cool facts never walk alone. There’s always, always some other rad thing I would never have found out about on the same Wikipedia page as the first cool fact. For example, flamingos also have special glands in their beaks that filter out salt water. That’s a third cool flamingo fact I didn’t know, and none of these are flamingos’ main schtick, being pink.
2. Actually checking every time you notice a knowledge gap.
(Like me seeing the photo of the flamingo and realising I don’t actually know why they do that.) And getting better at paying attention and following up on the little sparks of curiosity.
Do that for a year and you’ll end up with a vast shoreline of knowledge where you know a little bit about heaaaaaaps of stuff and have little outwardly growing promontories and peninsulas of areas where you know a pretty decent amount.
I like these as rules to live by and also as ways to attempt to circumvent the always-narrowing funnel that internet holes, targeted ads, curated feeds, etc. etc. can often lead us down.
Skill #2 for Making a Home: Life-Serving Economy (Pt. 2)
Read Part 1 here.
From Radical Homemakers’ Seven Essential Abilities for Homemaking. Introduction post found here. Skill #1: Nurturing Relationships here.
Shifting to a Life-Serving Economy
As I see it, a life-serving economy emphasizes activities that sustain life over activities that purely generate profit or wealth. It has sometimes been summed up in the phrase: you can’t eat money.
I’ve taken the below principles of a life-serving and applied them to our current moment:
Practice thrift, frugality, and debt-avoidance
Transition from net consumers to net producers
Minimize waste
Barter and trade
Use what you have
Spend money where it matters most
Introduce children to the concepts of a life-serving economy early
Understand “enough”
This post will cover #5-8.
In the time of COVID-19:
5. Use what you have
Bartering is about using what our community already has. This is about looking at we already have. Part of practicing living with less is living with better. That means choosing quality and durability over convenience and cost. If we have fewer things, but those things are things we choose carefully, to love and to last, then we are more likely to invest time in caring for them.
Using what we have can look like, “if it’s broke, fix it.” I’m learning to mend (join me at a Superorganism Mending Circle) right now so I can take better care of the things I already have. I’m also loving the book Mending Life from the Far Woods as a mending resource.
Another great example of people using what they have right now is all of the mask makers! So many companies and people with sewing skills are repurposing the things they have to make things they need. It’s this type of resourcefulness that we’re going to need to carry with us into this climate collapse future.
6. Spend money where it matters most
In all times, everything is political, but you might have to look for it. But in times of crisis, politics show themselves in the breakdown of the normal.
Spending money where it matters most is at the heart of life-serving economy principles. “Vote with your wallet” means recognizing that spending money on something is showing support for that business, for the way that thing was produced, for the materials used to make it. It means selecting the things we spend carefully and knowing that everyone did the same, we could collectively “vote” to support the things we believe in and vote things we don’t out.
If we don’t like Jeff Bezos’ workplace policies, the insignificant amount of good he’s doing with his disproportionate amount of wealth, or if we are listening to the Amazon workers striking for better conditions in this pandemic, we can vote by not shopping at Amazon. Buying or sourcing something locally isn’t going to put Amazon out of business if I do it. But it could if we all do.
COVID-19 has forced our focus to shift from global to local. Whether we support our small businesses and local producers now matters (especially if the government is voting with its wallet and showing them they don’t).
7. Introduce children to the concepts of a life-serving economy early
At a time when so many children are now being home-schooled, now seems like the perfect time to start talking with whatever kids are around us about all of the different ways we can participate in an economy. They can make something to gift or trade with their neighbours, they can help grow the food they eat, they can learn to repair their things and mend their clothes, they can learn to save or to thrift well. If we want a life-serving future, we better start talking with those who will be creating and living it.
8. Understand “enough”
From Radical Homemakers: “The magical trick about ‘enough’ is that it is not discovered by deciding what you must do without--that can feel like a form of deprivation. Rather, it is perpetuated more by feeling satisfied and filfilled with what you have and jetitisoning the burden of the excesses.”
The idea of economy is independent from the idea of a profit and growth driven economy. Radical Homemakers remind us that we can participate in the economy in really fulfilling meaningful ways when we shift from a “growth economy” to an “enough economy.” An “enough” life-serving economy allows us to define true wealth as family, friends, community, nourishing food, interests, security. At the end of the day, everything else is unnecessary.
Next post on “Cultivating an Ability to Self-Teach.”
Skill #2 for Making a Home: Life-Serving Economy (Pt. 1)
From Radical Homemakers’ Seven Essential Abilities for Homemaking. Introduction post found here. Skill #1: Nurturing Relationships here.
Shifting to a Life-Serving Economy
As I see it, a life-serving economy emphasizes activities that sustain life over activities that purely generate profit or wealth. It has sometimes been summed up in the phrase: you can’t eat money.
This is a hefty one, so I’ve divided it into two posts. In the words of Radical Homemakers:
The essential job of a radical homemaker is to “build a bridge that crosses us from the dominion of an extractive economy” to a life-serving economy where we fulfill material human need rather than pursuing the generation of “wealth for its own sake.”
The message here is not to return to a subsistence economy (that’s not entirely possible or desirable for everyone to do anyway). Instead, it’s about reframing our economy to a human scale, focused not solely on profit but instead on fulfilling the needs of those around us.
I’ve taken the below principles of a life-serving and applied them to our current moment:
Practice thrift, frugality, and debt-avoidance
Transition from net consumers to net producers
Minimize waste
Barter and trade
Use what you have
Spend money where it matters most
Introduce children to the concepts of a life-serving economy early
Understand “enough”
This post will cover #1-4.
In the time of COVID-19:
1. Practice thrift, frugality, and debt-avoidance
In a post-coronavirus economy where I know more people unemployed than ever before, these principles seem like no-brainers. The key here is that when things return to whatever new normal emerges, we remember that we were okay with less. That capitalism and the societal pressure and systems that encourage us to want more, buy more, make more, work more, usually aren’t actually essential for us to live well.
2. Transition from Net Consumers to Net Producers
Radical Homemakers writes: “These people do not see the performance of their own bread-labor (labor for basic needs) as a hardship… The work of Radical Homemakers is, almost inadvertently, rich with meaning and purpose.”
In some ways, I have never seen the people in my circles produce as much as I have during quarantine. Or at least, producing in a way that is for themselves and their own needs or purpose. In normal times, they might be producing work or value for an organization, for the systems of capitalism all around us. But in recent weeks there’s been a shortage on yeast and flour?! People are doing the hard, patient work of sourdough baking, not because they are being asked to, but because there is meaning and purpose in producing for themselves.
The Radical Homemaking mindset asks us to continue to remember, when things become the new normal, that there is joy and value in producing to sustain ourselves and our community.
3. Minimize waste
Waste is a matter of perspective. My coffee grounds can be my garden’s food, my hand-me-downs can be my sister’s new favourite outfit. Radical Homemakers are skilled at working thoughtfully and making use carefully. And they also think critically about whether something others might waste could be a resource. There was a section in the Minimum Viable Planet newsletter the other day about thinking in circles rather than straight lines.
“Danae went on to elaborate on the idea of getting things done while getting things done. She writes:
‘if I'm weeding, I'm simultaneously gathering mulch for my fruit trees -
if I'm shredding paper, I'm creating mulch for my raspberries -
if I'm sweeping, I'm adding to the kitchen compost bin -
if I'm mowing orchard pathways, I'm gathering nitrogen for the compost tumbler -
if I'm changing water in bird baths, I'm watering mints planted at the base of bird baths.’
I love the idea of a circle of actions, a thing that helps another thing. It’s circular economy without all the bureaucracy. It’s circular thinking without going in circles.”
The concept of Cradle to Cradle (the design text by the same name is one of my stand-bys) is useful here. A cradle to cradle perspective believes that things should be designed so that the end of the lifecycle feeds positively into something else. Waste = food, trash = resource, etc. Rather than just thinking through the lifecycle of things we purchase or create to their disposal in the least bad way we can, cradle to cradle asks us to consider how we can design their demise to be a net positive. In a time where we’re making due with what we have, stretching out our resources, and drawing on our community, we can begin to see how unnecessary so much of our waste really is.
4. Barter and trade
I spent the last two years living in Toronto, where an app (previously a facebook group) called Bunz was a huge part of my life. Bunz is basically a marketplace based on bartering, where users would post items they had and what items or services they were searching for in return. I had someone come by and fix my speakers, I got a laundry hamper for a roll of film, a bucket of paint for a bottle of wine, etc. etc. There were all sorts of spin-off facebook groups too, a Bunz group for people in need of someone handy or offering their handiness, a Bunz group of people wanting to practice cutting hair and people hoping to have theirs cut for free. It was the most amazing example (and snapshot) of how resourceful, plentiful, and rich the Toronto community was without actual currency entering into the equation.
In quarantine times, I’ve seen informal Bunz-style networks springing up all over the place. Mutual aid groups, care-mongering pages, and, of course, the drop-offs of sourdough and baked goods and the products of new hobbies being dropped off on friends and neighbours doorsteps. There are so many things I am good at and can give, and so many things I am bad at or uninterested in that someone right around the corner could love doing. Seeking local, alternative, already-made options rather than the most convenient, cheap, or newest option is a practice. The more we do it, the better we get at it, the easier (and often more lasting and cost-effective in the long-term) it becomes.
Times like right now when people have less to spend are good times to remember that there is so much out there already, it’s just not equally distributed. If we do a better job of making the things we don’t need or use anymore available to those we might appreciate them, we can find networks where others will do the same for things we might need too.
Skill #1 for Making a Home: Nurturing Relationships
From Radical Homemakers’ Seven Essential Abilities for Homemaking. Introduction post found here.
Nurturing Relationships
One of the cornerstones of radical homemaking is recognition that making a home is never an individual act.
From Radical Homemakers:
“Though the romantic idea of homemaking brings to mind concepts like self-reliance or self-sufficiency, radical homemakers recognize that, in fact, their homemaking is only possible through a recognition of their relationships with others.”
“Radical Homemaking is about building self-reliance, but it is not about becoming self-sufficient and living apart from society. ‘There is really no such thing as self-sufficiency,’ argues Sylvia Tanner. She makes the point that Radical Homemaking is not about independence; it is about interdependence, or, perhaps, ‘inter-reliance.’”
Homemakers know the importance of nurturing relationships with family, friends (chosen family), and community. I see the concept of nurturing relationships broken down into knowing, valuing, and maintaining the relationships around you.
In the time of COVID-19:
For me, right now, that knowing, valuing, and maintaining relationships looks like:
1. Who is my community?
Literally, knowing my neighbours. Who are they? Do I know their names? What they’re like, what they need, what they can give? And if I don’t know them or have a relationship with them, how can I start one? Do they need anything right now that I can help them with?
This applies to the people who are my physical neighbours but also to the local businesses and systems that create my larger community. Do I have a neighbourhood grocer? Who runs it? Is there a market nearby, if not? How can I meet some of the farmers and learn more about them and what this has been like for them?
2. What value do I bring to my community? What value do they bring to me?
Radical homemaking is seeing our home as beyond the physical walls of our house. It is learning to value what skills, resources, and contributions (tangible and intangible) are around us and making clear what we have to give in return.
Valuing relationships is about understanding how much relationships can enrich our lives. It’s knowing that the couple across the street had lawn equipment we could borrow and then sharing the cake and ice cream we made with them in thanks. It’s going through our old art supplies and dropping off the great stuff we’ve outgrown for the little girls next door. It’s knowing that the boy two houses down loves taking care of our cats when we’re out of town. It’s our neighbours knowing we like spicy food but not green thumbs and having them drop off an accidental spicy pepper harvest. Valuing our neighbours is not expecting things to always be reciprocal or transactional, it is knowing that when we’re generous and open about what we can offer our community, they will do the same in return.
3. Don’t wait to maintain relationships until you need them.
A time of crisis is a good time to remind ourselves that we should be appreciating and maintaining our community not only when in crisis or when we need them, but all the time.
Staying at home right now feels a lot less limiting if we can see our home not just in the walls around us, but in the network of relationships that make up our lives.
Next post on Skill #2: Working with a Life-Serving Economy coming soon.
Radical Homemakers: Rethinking the Home While We Stay at Home
My partner and I have been reading (and in my case, re-reading) Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity from a Consumer Culture by Shannon Hayes. From the back of the book:
Faced with climate change, dwindling resources, and species extinctions, most Americans understand the fundamental steps necessary to solve our global crises: reduce driving, consume less; increase our self-reliance; buy locally, eat locally, rebuild our local communities. In essence, the great work we face requires re-kindling the home fires.
In this current moment of social distancing, staying at home, and depending on our communities for support, we’re being asked to do all these things, to rekindle our home fires! And for us, it’s becoming more evident than ever what skills, practices, and mentalities we want to be working on if we want to feel confident, supported, and fulfilled by a life at home. And that goes for both the practical (my recent attempt at planting seedlings failed so miserably that after weeks of nothing but dirt, my dad planted a bunch of snipped grocery store herbs in my planters to pretend they’d grown) and the more abstract (I knew zero of my neighbours before this quarantine started… how’s that for community support?).
In this spirit, I’m sharing seven skills from Radical Homemakers. What can we learn from those who have been practising radically making a home since long before this crisis?
Radical Homemakers shares seven skills of those who regularly “focus on home and hearth as a political and ecological act; who center their lives around family and community for personal fulfillment and cultural change.” These skills aren’t how-to homemaking skills like fixing a lawnmower or knowing how to plant food; they’re the deeper, softer skills that so many Radical Homemakers share (“those nontechnical skills that are easy to overlook, but impossible to live without”).
Radical Homemakers’ Seven Essential Abilities for Homemaking:
Nurturing Relationship
Working with a Life-Serving Economy
Cultivating an Ability to Self-Teach
Setting Realistic Expectations
Redefining Pleasure in Our Lives
Rediscovering the Taste of Real Food
Adopting a Fearless Attitude in Withstanding Contrary Cultural Expectations
Posts on each of these skills and how we can learn from them right now coming soon. Nurturing Relationships here.
The Story of Momentum and the Story of Change, a Moral Imagining Exercise
On Friday, I participated a session of Moral Imaginations, a group of storytellers, facilitators, and practitioners that Phoebe Tickell has been virtually hosting for the past five weeks to collectively imagine a new narrative and world out of crisis. I didn’t participate in the first four session, but I wasn’t the only newcomer to the fifth. We were all welcomed and immediately included in the collective work, contributing something we were (metaphorically) bringing with us to the video call chat and reading them aloud, strung together, one by one, into one long collective poem. Then Phoebe led us in a collective visioning session, walking us through an imagined scene, the sounds, the scents, the sights, the feelings.
We were asked to imagine ourselves as a grandmother in a future world, asked by our young granddaughter to tell the story of this time, the time a pandemic stopped the world and everything changed. Below, my response to the quick journaling exercise that came of that prompt. Thank you to my friend and source of eternal future optimism Tantek for including me! Enjoy, and follow Moral Imaginations on Twitter if you’re curious to see how all of the collective work evolves :-)
For years, powerful people had been comforted by the story of Momentum. They were scared to pause, scared for things to slow down. Slowing down, after all, is not a function of speed but of attention. But also for years, there had been a story of Change. Of the seedlings and more-than-human relations and care and life-serving practices that had been powerful in their own ways. The story of Momentum did not want to listen to these voices, because these voices would mean the end of Momentum. Because Momentum, after all, is a story. If someone stops telling it, people will realize that there were other stories being whispered all along. If Momentum pauses, a new story can take over. Things that seemed like the ways things were, the bones of the story, reveal themselves as options. As just one set of bones that can be reconfigured with many others into something different, a new story. During the Great Turning, the powerful people who had been shouting the story of Momentum so loudly for so many years became more afraid of a pandemic than of a slowing down. And so, they paused. They stopped telling their story for a moment. They asked others to stop telling the story, to stay home, to pause. And in that breath, before they knew it, their story had ended. In those first moments, when those telling the story of Change realized that the story of Momentum had put itself on hold, they knew it was time. People who hadn’t been considered powerful for decades now took up the mantle of the story, looked at the bones that could be assembled, and started speaking. So if you only remember one thing, it should be that even our new story, the one we are telling now, is not the only story. And you cannot stop listening. There are always stories of Change, stories that see the holes and the pitfalls of the story we are telling. Don’t forget that what you are listening to is always one of many. There are always choices, alternatives, whispers. Hear them.
A mostly exhaustive list of what I packed to live in Cape Town and Italy, to be in summer and winter, to feel stylish and able to take on any adventure, and to not buy new things!
My partner, James Martin’s, post on what he packed is here too! https://jameslmart.in/packing/
(Some example outfits! Featuring dresses and layers, boots and go-to sneakers, and some of my warmer layers)
My partner and I spent the last four months living abroad. We spent three months in South Africa, mostly in Cape Town with side adventures to Kruger National Park and a camping road trip in the Karoo (South Africa’s mountainous, semi-desert region), and then a month traveling Italy from Florence in the North to Sicily in the South. Along the way, we were both working remotely, trail running and hiking as much as we could, helping out at local farms, and exploring and soaking up as much of everything as we could. We lived cheaply, simply, and wonderfully, and we tried to pack that way too :-)
Packing Philosophy:
Versatile, functional, classic, able to mix and match
Mostly things that could be sweat in and would be easy to hand wash and air dry
I wanted to feel stylish and professional if I needed to
I wanted to feel like I “fit in” in every place I’d be
I wanted active clothes that would allow me to do any activity (ended up running on trail and road, hiking, farming, swimming, camping, joining a gym, on safari, and taking a dance class)
I wanted to feel like I could run a workshop or work at a co-working space and fit in
I needed pieces that could be layered or used in multiple climates (Cape Town summer and Italian winter)
* I wanted to pack light but I also wanted to feel good in everything I owned and have enough things to make life feel comfortable/me/not limited (the #balance!)
And I didn’t want to purchase anything new for this trip (or on this trip, at least out of necessity)! Everything below I already owned or acquired second hand
A few notes on this list:
I’ve noted the things I acquired after I left.
Most of the items I’ve had for a very long time (I chose a few of them because I’ve had them so long and worn them so much I wouldn’t be sad if I had to get rid of them on this trip).
I posted some links just for reference, a lot of these available second hand or new from sites like Poshmark/eBay, not encouraging anyone else to buy them just a useful idea of what I found to be basic, versatile, and functional
James and I ended up shipping a box home with some gifts and more summer-y clothes before leaving for Italy. This made the second stage of our trip way easier!
(The Osprey 46, empty and packed. Shoes loaded in first in bags, then packing cubes, then rolled clothes. Notes below.)
Bags:
1 carryon, 1 backpack, 1 purse, 1 fanny, 2 totes
Osprey, Porter 46 black. Did so much research on this but these are what swayed me:
Lockable padded laptop compartment
A backpack with hip straps so you can walk with it without carrying weight all on your back
Compressible and able to fit in all carryon sizes
Really easy to keep organized, which is super important if you’re repacking nightly
A front loading compartment
Company with a lifetime guarantee
Had previous version of this bag that I used for longer travels for years, but the newer versions included the padded laptop compartment. I sold mine for $46 and found a second hand bag in the new version locally for $40!
I was definitely nervous that the bag would be too small to fit what I’d need for this trip, but I’ve learned that no matter how big the bag, you will always find a way to fill it, but if you force yourself to constrain what you pack, you’ll be happier. Was definitely true for me on this trip. It was a squeeze and the bag was always packed full, but I didn’t need any more than I had with me.
James got one of these used in red also! Both of us would highly recommend them.
Daily backpack (Timbuktu), my perfect tiny backpack, still fits a laptop, reflective/waterproof
Messenger bag purse (Roots)
A classic, James and I both had one since good unisex design. Great organization and secure for travel. Can wear it more fanny pack style too. Packed this in my backpack on travel days.
Fanny pack (L.L.Bean), great for hikes or day trips, liked being able to see my stuff in the city
Packing cubes!!!!!
These were organizational keys! Made having to pack up and find things quickly in the later part of the trip every night doable.
I like having different colours to make searching for things easier and ideally double zippers so you can access things from either side.
Marshall’s carries good brands of these too!
Canvas tote bags
We used these all the time, for groceries, day trips, etc., and they pack away to nothing
White sneaker, go-to everyday shoe I can walk forever in without aggravating my plantar fasciitis (Nike)
I add silicone heel cups for added cushion
Waterproof boots for farm work, hiking, water, or winter (Blundstones)
Road running shoes, black for running or style (Brooks)
Trail running shoes (Salomon) (acquired: first week in SA when it became clear we were going to become trail runners)
(Top: all of my packing cubes and clothes not in cubes I rolled to pack, Middle: All clothes packed plus what I was wearing on the plane and bags that also got packed / All of the bags and miscellaneous things, Bottom: cosmetics on left / packed Osprey and daypack on right)
Running Accessories:
Hand-held watter bottle (Nathan)
Phone carrier (Koala Clip)
Hydration trail vest (Nathan 5L with bladder)
Anti-chafing stick (BodyGlide)
Gua Sha tool for massaging tight calves etc. (Like this one)
Resistance band
Spiky ball to roll feet out
Electronics:
Laptop
Camera, found a great second hand point-and-shoot that didn’t take up much space but took great photos
Kindle (inherited from my brother, AMAZING to sync with a library and have infinite free books instantly)
Converters for Europe and SA
Misc:
2 hats! (running and casual)
Goggles for swimming laps
Notebook and journal
Sketchbook and minimal art supplies in a pencil case
Reusable water bottle
Reusable coffee cup (Keepcup)
Sporks!
Cosmetics (minimal) obviously, but not going through those fully here :-)
Minimal makeup
Soap tin
Daily cosmetics
Homemade face wash and washcloths
(James wearing the Osprey Porter 46 and his day pack. How we looked on travel days!)
Hope this can be helpful for someone (or to my future self remembering how to travel light and enjoy it) :-)
What does it mean to celebrate Passover in the time of a plague? Of ritualized hand washing? Of changing definitions of freedom? Some discussion questions from our family’s (virtual and in-person) Seder this year.
The Passover Seder is, at its heart, a storytelling performance. It is a meal eaten in a certain order, with certain foods to symbolize certain things, while certain songs are sung and certain histories are told. Rather than just retelling an ancient story, the Seder meal allows us to experience it, to taste and to smell and to remember it. In many families and traditions, it is supposed to be silly and fun and relaxed. You lean on pillows at the table, you sing songs you learned as children, you invite anyone to join you (Jewish or not), you drink a whole lotta wine. And hopefully, by doing this, you make the retelling of a holiday history that could feel stale and distanced from us feel engaging to everyone, year after year. Because the reason to retell any holiday story, any history, is so that we can remember and feel like we are invested in, the morals and lessons of that story.
The Passover story is about freedom; we are asked each year to celebrate our own freedom but also to remember that we will never be truly free until everyone is free. But this year, we celebrated in quarantine! During a plague! My grandparents joined us via video call! The questions we ask ourselves during the Passover seder, the lessons we are asked to participate in once again, all felt more relevant than ever. What does the Passover story mean in the time of COVID-19?
Some of the questions from our Passover discussion:
FREEDOM
Passover is about freedom.
What does freedom mean this year?
In what ways do we feel less free? More free?
How is freedom affecting people differently right now?
Who gets to be free? Who needs to be freed?
What work can we be doing to free people?
HAND WASHING
There are two ritual hand washings in the Passover Seder.
How can we look at hand washing right now as a sacred act in our daily practices?
As a moment of pause and reflection?
As a ritual we do for our communities?
PLAGUES
In the Passover story, ten plagues warn pharaoh to change his behaviour.
Living through a plague right now, how can we listen to its symbolism?
What about our behaviour do we/will we need to change?
What should we be listening to?
What does this moment symbolize?
If you chat about any of these, I’d love to hear about it :-)
With so much moving around recently, we’ve become pros at the MVP(S), Minimum Viable Pantry Stock, the least amount of stuff we like on hand that will make us want to cook every meal (and snack between) at home. For me, the key is remembering I’m always happy when I spend a bit more on the first big stock because it means I spend way way less and am more creative and inspired afterward.
It’s our first day in our new apartment for the next six weeks, and it helps that we’ve already done the fun part of figuring out which grocery stores are good for staples, which have the most unpackaged produce, which farm and market (hello Oranjezicht City Farm!) has the best fruits and veg pictured here, and where to buy bulk goods (https://nudefoods.co.za/).
First breakfast: muesli (bulk store) with nectarines and cherries plus some cocoa veg protein powder (also bulk). A big ol’ moka pot of Terbodore coffee.
First lunch: leftover curry we carried from our last place in an old nut butter jar. We’ve been making curries at least once a week since they’re filling, cheap, filled with any veg you want, hard to mess up, and a great way to use the whole veg (eg tougher chard stems) since it’s all softens up as the curry cooks. I usually riff off something like this recipe. This one was all our market veggies, coconut milk, a concoction of curry spices our lovely neighbourhood nonna in the Malay quarter told us to combine (“you don’t have cinnamon sticks? If we were at my house, I’d give”), plus some extra peri peri spice because spicier is better. . Cous cous bc so easy, just add boiling water.
Also, a salad with the most gorgeous bunch of spinach from the market that won’t even fit in our fridge. Chop it small, add nuts (pecans this time—and always toasted in a pan because hey, Deb said it first!), yellow and red maters. Dressed with oil, acv Oranjezicht carries in bulk, lemon juice (if having a bottle of it makes you use more citrus, dooo ittt), sesame oil, salt and pep. Lick your bowls!
Bonus: this place is close enough to the farm that we can bring our compost (a bag of food and coffee scraps in the freezer = easy peasy, plus not smelly).
Yesterday I had breakfast at The Blue Cafe, a cafe since 1904 and one-time tram stop in Cape Town’s Tamboerskloof neighbourhood that still lets neighbourhood residents pay on account. On the front of the menu was the section circled below: “If you have any fruit-bearing trees with surplus, please sell to us for credit on your account.”
I was reminded of the Toronto organization Not Far From the Tree, a non-profit that connects residents whose properties grow some of the city’s over 1.5 million pounds of fruit with community volunteers who pick and share it. The fruit from each pick is split 3 ways: 1/3 to the tree registrant, 1/3 to the volunteer pickers, and “1/3 delivered via cargo bike to one of our 35 social service agency partners, including food banks, community kitchens, supportive housing programs, and community health centres.”
In July, I volunteered on a mulberry pick in my Toronto neighbourhood and ended up 1) learning what mulberries even are, 2) listening to an herbalist talk about about all of their amazing health properties (kidney stones! sports performance! skin radiance! cough syrup!), 3) taking home enough berries to make four jars of jam.
I’ve loved the idea and spirit of the organization since I first heard about it, and initiatives like the one at the Blue Cafe make me similarly happy. Here’s why:
- Duh: fruit is delicious!
- Food waste: a third of global agricultural output is already wasted, let’s value and make use of the beautiful things we already have.
- Value is Contextual: initiatives like this take highlight how something that might have been wasted, unused, or undervalued can provide meaning for someone else.
- Community: these projects make us take notice of the resources we might not have known our community can offer.
- Abundance: the principle I come back to at the heart of these projects is abundance: there’s enough mulberries on a tree that you could be canning jam all summer and still have berries left over. Your tree could sit in the yard looking beautiful and turning the pavement underneath purple.
Or something could make you take a critical look at what you have an abundance of that might be worth sharing.
And obviously, the metaphor extends beyond fruit. So I’m asking myself what abundance I can share with my neighbourhood these days. Please share your thoughts with me (and your fruit)!
* For more reading on urban fruit trees and Toronto specifically, check out the beautiful book The Fruitful City by Helena Moncrieff that my friend and fellow OCAD SFI graduate Breigh lent me (thank you!).
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