Bovine Excreta, & etc.
Last week I decided to go all in on civic engagement, trying to protect and preserve a local canyon that is truly dear to me.
I gathered data, made some Facebook posts, signed some petitions, talked to friends. I got enraged, disappointed, sad, exhausted. I tried so hard to talk only using facts, to take each person’s opinion with equanimity, to truly understand the people who are on the other side of the issue from me.
Then someone on the internet called me “bovine excretia.” I think he meant “excreta,” but I didn’t confirm.
Someone on the internet called me “bovine excretia,” and I am writing this from my living room watching ash fall from a yellow, burning sky.
I’ve been listening to Writing Creativity and Soul by Sue Monk Kidd. I don’t normally pick up craft books unless they’re being assigned in a class, but I’ve loved the way she presents her writing process — and the way she makes it feel like the source of the universe is available to anyone.
The thing that stuck in my mind after finishing the book was the chapter on dreams. I’m just delighted beyond words that Sue Monk Kidd finds answers in dreams.
Because I’m sitting over here with dreams that are usually an endless panic where I can’t open my eyes and I’m trying to convince everyone in my family to buy cactuses.
But Sue Monk Kidd truly finds answers in her dreams!
“We all possess an inner reservoir of unique and evocative images, dreams, intuitions, feelings … C. G. Jung poetically referred to this interior realm as the inscrutable old country, the hinterland of the mind. It’s where the soul lives and plays and has its being.”
— Sue Monk Kidd
I decided to keep a notebook by my bed to write down whatever brilliant thoughts would come to me in the night.
And come they did!
For three nights in a row, I woke up singing:
“Vocalize … harmonize … jazzercise.”
Complete with jazz hands at the end.
And so I offer — to the universe and to the guy that thinks calling strangers names on the internet is cool — this answer:
Vocalize. Harmonize. Jazzercise.
Because one laugh, one smile, one clear note, one community in song, one group of people in leotards, is enough to inject a little kindness and joy back into the world.
From the land of my dreams, to yours — let’s make every place a place where anyone can find a little harmony and a little hope.
I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the Heart’s affections and the truth of the Imagination.
— John Keats