Inspire/Expire

It is snowing!

I see it through a hole

On the paper door

All I can think of

Is that I am lying

In a house in the snow.

- Masaoka Shiki, d. 1902

John Green has written a beautiful book about a horrific reality, namely that we have let 150 million people die of tuberculosis since a cure for the infectious disease was discovered in the 1950s.

"Your pleasure signals our death."

- Sukanta Bhattacharya, d. 1947

Adulting

 

It's been a minute since I was in my twenties, but becoming an adult is hard. That truth is forever.

The Middle Passage

 

Over 12,000 ships crossed the Atlantic Ocean carrying approximately 12.5 million enslaved Africans to the Americas. 

Of those kidnapped people, an estimated 1.8 million died on the journey west, their bodies consigned to ocean waters. 

The Slave Wrecks Project unites institutions and people from around the world-- scholars, archeologists, photographers, divers.

Their efforts help bring this history up from the depths and into the light.

Spring, But Feels Like Summer

 

 

It's rare to find a children's chapter book that slays. This is one (by an author who wrote a brutal, magnificent memoir prior to this tonic). Pairs well with a rhubarb shrub on a warm day with a light breeze and the smell of lilacs in the air.

The Sirens' Song

The poet, Mary Oliver, tells us that voluntary attention is the beginning of devotion and we know that involuntary attention --our startle reflexes-- evolved to enable survival. Attention is thus the birthplace of connection and critical to our wellbeing as humans. 

The advent of attention-shredding technology is recent and rampant, a commodification which exploits our biology (fearful vigilance and loving focus) for profit. In this climate of innovation, we are assailed by agnostic, risk-indifferent baiting which seeks to capture our attention.

We become habituated to diversions which interrupt our ability to have a rich sensory experience of the world. As with any addiction, heeding the pull of social media or our phones soothes the discomfort of being alive. The rub is that regularly ceding our attention to the compulsion of the moment ultimately leaves us fundamentally bereft.

How do we evade the sirens' song when it is no longer confined to a rock in the sea? When lashing ourselves to the mast and stuffing cotton in our ears is no way to live a life? How do we evade shipwreck as we seek passage through this hunger with its legacy of alienation? 

Chris Hayes, Oliver Burkeman, and Jonathan Haidt have written books on the subject. Ironically, I haven't paid them much mind. Predatory competition for our attention exacerbates an age-old paradox-- we are not always interested in what we have a vested interest in.

The consequence of our aggregate hijacked attention is one of the most pressing issues we face, one that will require a personal and societal reckoning. It's just that there are so many romance novels to read in the meantime.

Foregiveness

Forgiveness centers release and acceptance.

Open palms, facing up.

Abuna Yemata Guh

According to local lore, Ethiopia's monolithic church, Abuna Yemata Guh, was hewn roughly 1,500 years ago. Its murals date back to the 1400s.

Located at approximately 8,500 feet above sea level and known as the "church in the sky", it still functions as a place of worship today and welcomes all visitors who scale its cliffs.