◯ eClips: Pause
Early this morning, a total lunar eclipse (when the Earth is positioned between the sun and moon) cast a rosy glow on the full supermoon. I missed it, even though I was probably up at the time, stumbling around in the kitchen trying to feed my needy cats at their ungodly breakfast hour. (I wake up with a paw gingerly but persistently scratching my nose and just can’t say no.) If, like me, you didn’t see it, a big, beautiful moon is still visible out there, wearing its usual colors. And this weekend, both Jupiter and Saturn will line up nearby. You might be able to see Jupiter’s moons if you have a pair of binoculars.
In Seattle, the irises and roses have opened, and bright rhododendrons are blooming all over the city. I’ll be trying a rose-infused honey this cycle. Usually, I like to travel to a body of water on or near a full moon, and watch its reflection ripple across the waves. I spent this past weekend sitting beside a river rushing and jumping over smooth stones, wondering whether the water’s rhythm could ever be captured in words. So it feels fitting that this week’s Story Circle will gather around a water theme.
I sprained my ankle this past Sunday. I’m stuck in another involuntary pause, bedridden and bruised, berating myself for all the tasks I’m not currently able to handle while trying to accept that so few of those tasks are actually urgent in the first place.
While everything else is slowed down, I’m taking the time to revisit this newsletter after years of choppy correspondence, dwindling from every moon phase to every 48th. I initially started eClips because I wanted to share whatever I came across that brought me wonder. I wanted to communicate the increased rootedness I felt when looking at the moon and following seasonal cycles. I wanted to share stories that made me look at the world in a new way. But eventually, it all felt stale. I struggled to share anything I’d sourced online, funneled to me through feeds designed to homogenize and commodify every facet of our lives. If I wanted to drive connection to natural cycles, then why was I spending time curating an online experience? I desire a life that’s more rooted, small, local, slow. Spending time online is anything but.
Maybe there’s still some wonder to be found in the residue of this unruly tool. I’ll keep delivering links. But the kind of wonder I want to cultivate and share these days is more ancient and intimate. I know I don’t need to comb the internet or travel the world to find it, and I definitely can’t buy it. I can encounter big wonder in the stars that arc across the sky and the weeds that grow right outside my front door. My richest sources of wisdom are the creative expressions and reflections of my friends, and what we co-create through conversation and relationship.
So, my new idea for this newsletter is to interview every person who receives it and is willing to share their thoughts with this small “community” of subscribers. We’re all situated in seasonal cycles, gazing up at the same moon, interacting with nature in our own ways. We can learn a lot just by looking at what’s around us and listening to each other. And maybe, as difficult as it is, we can also learn a lot by occasionally pausing and reevaluating, even as the world is urging us to open up and go, go, go.
◯ FutureMe: Write a letter to the future.
◯ WindowSwap: Open a new window somewhere in the world.
◯ The Size of Space: From an astronaut to the observable universe.
◯ Arkadia Zoomquilt: Infinitely zoom through trippy landscapes.
◯ Same.Energy: A visual search engine.
◯ Museo: A visual search engine via institutes and museums.
◯ How to Be Exuberant: Stop trying to fix everything and savor the imperfections of the day.
◯ Can you draw a PERFECT CIRCLE?
Spotlight: Shelley Stonebrook
Shelley Stonebrook is a program coordinator for Oregon State University’s Spring Creek Project. She’s a gardener and writer. She lives in Oregon with her husband, Doug, and their daughter, Neloise. [Shelley and I have been close friends for nearly 9 years despite never having lived in the same location. We’ve sat around plenty of campfires together, though, and once got to watch a solar eclipse from her front lawn.]
It was recently your birthday, and I know this is your favorite season. Tell me how you feel about spring, and how you mark the season.
What I love about spring is that everything is coming back to life. I struggle a lot with fall, when everything is dying, and I struggle a lot with winter, when everything is dormant and dead. I’ve tried so hard to see the winter or even the fall as part of a cycle, as the necessary downtime that leads to regrowth, as a time to be more still, more quiet. I try so hard with all of that, but ultimately, I hate it!
I love anticipating things. With spring, there’s such a sense of anticipation about everything that’s about to come. The entire garden of the year is about to come to fruition, all these things are about to bloom, live, be harvested, be eaten. The things that mark spring for me are seeing the buds on the trees and the first greenery, those spring colors, those early flowers blooming. The crocuses are first around here, a tiny first sign. When the lilacs come in early May, then you’re fucking in it! That’s when I’m planting the garden too. Lilacs are my favorite flower, so the whole time I’m smelling the lilacs and planting stuff in the garden, everything smells so good, like life, but it also smells like compost, so it smells like death — so that’s kind of funny.
Do you have any rituals to mark this time of year?
As the days get longer, I get really excited about being outside later in the evening, and I get really excited about campfires! Already this spring, Doug and I have had three or four campfires. And you know how I am about goals: I decided I’d have two campfires a week, from now until fall, because it makes me so happy! And Doug was like, Shelley, you set specific numbers and goals around things that bring you joy, and if you don’t hit them, then you’ll feel bad about this thing that made you happy in the first place. So I’m not going to make myself have two campfires per week — I just decided that I’m going to have more campfires. So that’s one ritual, being out later in the evenings with the later light and warmer temperatures.
I have a ritual of spending time with my vegetables. Every one is a new baby being born. I’m always out there obsessively looking at them, and I really like to do that by myself so I can take my time. As much as I love sharing in the gardening with Neloise, it’s changing my relationship with the plants. I’m seeing them through her eyes and making sure she’s not ripping anything out of the ground. I’m protective of the plants, even though I want to share so much of it with her!
What plants in particular are you connecting with right now?
It’s an interesting moment for you to ask me that, because we’re having this drainage work done on our house right now. They had to dig trenches around our house with these enormous machines, so all the plants around the perimeter had to be taken out. I’m feeling more loss at that than I thought I might. I was like, I’m too busy to deal with this, there’s nowhere to replant them, I’m going to let it go and start over when they’re done with this work.
The lilac in particular was probably 20 to 30 years old, planted by the woman who lived in this house before us, and it was really beautiful. I was really sad to watch it get taken out. The rosebushes [pictured at top] were also 20 years old. All the bulbs I’d planted and that she’d planted were removed, all these tulips and daffodils and other things.
So normally, my answer would be something in the garden, but right now, the connection I’m feeling is to these plants that just got ripped out. I’ve been thinking about it a lot. I’m trying to imagine what I’m going to put in their place. I’ve wanted to plant blueberry bushes for years, but I haven’t made the bed space, so now I’ve got these huge empty beds, I can design something new and plant edible fruits.
That story reminds me of the seasonal cycle of the year you mentioned earlier, with death that makes way for new birth. But it’s difficult. Seeing the same plants season after season can be anchoring, and can really help situate you in a place, so having them taken away sounds so disorienting.
I love that language of anchoring. That’s very true for me too. So much else is drawing my attention right now, so that’s why I was trying to pass it off like it wasn’t going to bother me. But it has, more than I thought. That anchoring, and knowing that’s going to be missing. You really get to know plants, especially perennial plants! You know them, you know their character and nature and the way they change over the seasons and over years. They’re something you feel like you can count on. Watching them is so hopeful. And you see yourself in those plants — we all morph and change in ways that are sometimes overgrown and messy and sometimes really stunning.
What’s your connection to the moon?
Given my excitement about campfires lately, I’ve definitely been watching the moon and the stars while I’m out there, and that gives me a lot of peace. It’s another thing that feels anchoring. Ever since Neloise was little, pointing to the moon in her books and saying “moon” in her way, it’s been huge for her — she’s relatively obsessed with seeing the moon in any book! So that’s a whole new piece of it that brings me joy. There have been times, in the early morning when she’s up and the moon is in the sky, where I can go outside and show it to her, and she’s in fucking awe. Like, “This thing from the book is out hanging in the sky, what?” How the hell is she even conceiving of something like this? I can barely conceive of it. How is she even experiencing this huge glowing orb in the sky?
Do you feel that you’re often making new connections, through her eyes?
Yes! She notices stuff I don’t. I’m not saying that to give her some special credit — she just sees the world differently than me. Whether it’s in a book or outside, she’ll point something out to me that I wouldn’t have noticed, and that blows my mind. I’m always seeing things a whole different way because of her.
Anything else you’ve been thinking about lately that you’d like to share?
I’ve been thinking about life feeling maxed out, versus feeling like it has a natural flow to it. Everyone I talk to is feeling this way; everyone is on some kind of edge or in some kind of limbo. It’s COVID, but it’s so many other things too. Last night, I was feeling so strung out about work and motherhood and life, and I was just like, I’m going to start my sleepytime tea at 8, and wind down with no screen time for at least a few hours before bed. I’m going to sit in the garage sauna for 20 minutes, and take a shower, and just go to bed really early, and leave the huge pile of dirty dishes, and leave the work emails that I know I need to respond to. I hardly ever do that for myself. I hardly ever give myself more of a natural rhythm to my life, because there’s so much else intruding all the time. That’s been something on my mind a ton lately. And back to the plants — what if you were looking at a rosebush, and all of a sudden it starts looking all stressed, and half of its petals wither immediately and fall off, and it feels like it’s not doing things right — what?! It’s just there, growing slowly, and living its life.