Unspoken easy

Unspoken easy

Have you heard the secret password for belonging?

When getting my doc degree
I worked my metaphorical ass off
(as my actual ass grew)
day & night, library after library
years
diving into field after field
school after school—
philosophy to chemistry
theology, biology
eavesdropping then & now
listening for threads of connection &
feeling for patterns
(just not saying that feeling part out loud back then)

Qualitative research study
interview after interview
listening listening listening listening.
It was glorious for a being like me
a being here to wonder, notice & unlearn.
And so much fun for free-range Gemini me
who loves to wander, wonder, wander, wonder
& to think, think, think
until you, or I, or both of us
need a drink.

*

I hit a wall.
Flooded. Floundering there.
Overwhelmed with input
data, data, data
stuck, stalled
I couldn't think at all.

**

My people showed up then.
Sadly, my culture did too:
first that U.S. culture—pushing & pushing
& paying for ideas & extracting, extracting
judging
demanding
that we produce &
think, think, think, think, think, think—
stealing marketable ideas for
it turns out
nothing more than billionaire grifters & AI slop.
Ick.

Ah, but wait—
breathe, my people.
Breathe. That's not the end.

My people breathe & we laugh
& we cuss like fed-up menopausal sailors.
Then we start again...

*

My people are far older than my culture.
My people are a soil.
We are a place, we are land
we are old trees holding sky up
roots in dense relationship
that doesn't end when we wander
or lose our way. We are entangled.
My people are footpaths
through groves, across fields
beside old stone walls. We built
those walls.
We're mushrooms & toadstools.
MY cilleum. We are ours. We are
trees that weave tales
birds telling jokes
rabbits & all who hear clouds & whispers
we are the magic-eared folk
& our feet prefer dancing.

My people are rolling-in-clover-together clever
living in-breaths
loving out-breaths
storytelling, grieving, shelling peas for super
in between things.
We're emotional, intuitive,
passionate, feisty, funny, humble, odd, & stubborn.
We weep to demonstrate leadership
we get lost to better demonstrate wonder & kindness
we're alive & we're more than bi-curious:
we're all-in-on-life curious.
We're also entirely disinclined
to let unethically wealthy folk
see or take
anything
at all
from this land
this place
this time
this hand—
from this green & breathing
space that is us. From this body,
this earth.

We are mischief. And we're
wily AF.
Alone
& together
both.

Because we're always together.

**

In that moment
trapped between a wall of cultural garbage
& waterfall of academic demands
yet somehow also entirely
surrounded by my untamed, wild-haired people
I decided to ignore my dissertation committee
(Frost would say I took the road less travelled by—
I say poets are the only yt folk you should fully trust up front, but I digress) ;-)
We decided. My people & I decided to trust our guts.
I decided to do my own interview transcriptions:
bringing audio recordings of interviews
into visible words on screen & on page.
This involved a foot pedal. A million stops
10 million waits, backups, listen more carefullies,
15 million starts, again.
It felt like ancient technology. Felt a bit
like a sewing machine for people
who weave stories around
their own shaking shoulders.
I attached my human foot to my cellium
brain and my people's donkey ears
& stubbornness & humor—then, together, we
listened for patterns.

That's where magic lives, I learned. And often, genius.
In relationship. In the unspoken.
In this body + this land + our people.
Or god(s), if you prefer, though I don't.
The dank fluid place where beings & ideas marinate
sprout, breathe, & are born. And where
the unethically wealthy—try as they might
—can't see them or steal them. They can't see us at all.
We're fairy folk & leprechauns. They're
entirely bogged, trapped within cultural garbage: within
individual struggle, feeling always alone & always defensive
trying to think & bully their way out
their brains connected to tech
but not to bodies, hearts, hands, land
as this so-young modern culture
now constantly
so cruelly
demands.

"Who could have seen this coming?" they ask.
Poor, self-forgotten souls.

*

In the process of transcription
we found the patterns that mattered most—
I felt goosebumps onto the page, heard the pauses
of deep relationship, breathing
their laughter & tears & me there, too, recalling tender looks
their profoundly kind & reverent & laughing & real words, we even
gave visibility to strange word-like patterns of sound—
sounds like Huh. Wa? Yah.
Whoa. Yep. Yeah. Ah.
Wow.

Always wow.

Connected human beings
vibrate with laughter, generosity, tears, humility
with stories & with sounds & looks some have forgotten
& that AI could never fully know because our magic
is not in what we create but within what's created
between us.
For example, sounds & looks that could never imagine
questioning a speaker's humanity or belonging.
Never think to manipulate, because
there is never a need.
And our sounds.
Sounds.
Like Huh & Ah
Wa? & Whoa & Wow.
Teary eyes. Faces flush with shared laughter & experience.

With this small foot—connected to all feet
that wend & dance & fight & cry & wonder their way
across beloved land
we found pattern within pattern within pattern
we found connection, within, across, everything.
Daniel came home from work
& asked "How's the dissertation going?"
My people, my feet, & I replied:
"I think we proved the existence of God today."
Humble beings together, we laughed at that.
But my feet knew.
My people knew. We knew then
what we couldn't quite say:
our feet know the way.

**

Living beings are miracles
born of love
& vast, glorious
sass & unpredictability.

** ** *

There are so many places
that we can't think our way out of.

You have arrived
at one such place.
We are that place together.
We choose this place.

Trust your feet
& you will learn again
what your people knew &
what many earth-born beings
still do...

There's a whole lot of human nonsense in the world
that IS NOT MINE to spreadsheet, chart, explain,
organize, defend, share, extend, sell, hold, pass on, or zoom—
no matter what I'm told
or by whom.

And. There are a few ways of being
that are so very mine & so very ours:
those
those
only those are mine to share
& yours to hold.
In cultures like mine
only our very human feet
get us there.

Get us back to our people.
Bring us back into the land of belonging.

** * ** * ** * ** *

Poems & stories & songs
aren't from a brain.
They're from rain.
From land.
From body: yours & ours.
From feet & ears
heart & hands
paws & claws
rock & shore
glen & dale
from needle & thorn
cone & bract
from butterflies, ancient loins
dusty books & artifacts.

*

Wait.

Hear the whispers of
come, beloved, join us—
join the body, breeze & poem & story.

The invitation can be hard to hear these days:
think, speakeasy.
Where the door is often:
"I can't do this alone anymore."
And the invitation to come in
comes from within you—
it's a feeling that floats
a sense, a knowing
from your own
unspoken easy.