Wild Thing: monthly bonus doodle + thoughts on shedding & staying open!
NASA asks the world to listen to nature during April's solar eclipse (on my birthday!), and so I consider what it means to make wishes and deeply listen in public.
A week ago, I woke in Philadelphia for the first time in five years. It was a trip I’d dreamed of—months before I woke imagining that the F train went from my Grand Street stop all the way to my old neighborhood. I stayed on the extra way, then got vegan donuts and walked around Washington Square Park and South Street. Which, last week, I did.
I set the intention to just be led during my time there, following my intuitive pulls as I moved through the miles that made up years of my life. They were important years, ones where I discovered my most urgent questions, watched them shift into new questions, fell in and out of love several times, made and lost friendships, bought my first appliances, which were used to make hummus and vegan mac & cheese for friends. Wrote and read thousands of pages. Taught my first university classes, and eventually quit my first university job.
I also adopted Ziggy, who bounced along the blocks as though they were any others. His nose was at work, the stories he was following likely much longer and deeper than my own as his 300 million olfactory receptors in his thumb-sized nose identified scent information that would be gibberish to me. Eventually, he asked to be lifted and I tucked him into my backpack where he slept as I continued on my ten mile journey around my former home.
I’d been getting frustrated as the trip wore on, the shops that had once welcomed dogs now shuttering them out. This includes some local parks, large areas of grass now strictly “pet-free.”
Dirt. In a city. Restricted from animals.
I get it, some people have allergies. Some people are rightly afraid of dogs. Maybe parents want a guarantee that their kids will be away from unpredictable canines. Sure. But…the whole park?
Service dog-only policies have taken over the city, making Philadelphia now (according to The Philadelphia Inquirer) one of the worst cities in the country for pet owners. The familiar sanitation argument is used as I browse the pro-policy threads online, arguments which obviously fall apart when considering the 1) ability to accommodate for service dogs 2) the alarmist reasoning that dog owners will let their pet run loose through the kitchen and other diner’s areas 3) washing your hands, a habit I hope most diners have in 2024, will eliminate whatever bacteria might be transferred to a diner from a dog on the other side of the room that they have not pet 4) that the very meat, eggs, and dairy many places are serving have a far more likely risk of poisoning customers than fully vaccinated pets, but I didn’t make these arguments. I left, and went to Good Karma, the cafe next to my old building that kept bowls of water on their steps and bins full of treats at the register. No faux-delineation of species was required to enter here—and so after our warm-up, I took Ziggy next door to see if he would remember our old building.
That night, I sat at the bar alone, unwilling to find out if one of my favorite vegan spots would kick out Ziggy, and got a rose hibiscus agua fresca while I waited for my nachos. I kept feeling as I do now, like the narrator of an essay, looking back on my former selves—the 20-something who trusted that some miraculous moment would find her whenever she set foot outside of her home. And how often they did come to greet her, these stunning revelations, signs, conversations, people, synchronicities. How everyday rarities were often enough for her. How they would inspire another week of crafting and teaching.
On Thursday, I went to a cacao ceremony with two friends and my departing message from the facilitator was to embody the energy of an empty vessel, to be like a rose, to soften. I saw one of my yoga teachers for a healing the day after and she gave me a bouquet of roses, pointing to the petals as she said, “it looks as though they are giving, but they are actually receiving.”
Outside on my walk home, the sky vibrated with the color of the flowers I carried, like the whole earth was echoing this message: be given to.
I slept the past two nights with the roses at my side, and this morning let them light up my writing area as I worked. I was thinking again about the public science project NASA is launching on April 8th (my birthday!) during a total solar eclipse to see how ecosystems respond to the sudden darkness. When explaining why they’d like to use the public, NASA reps said that “the general public is best suited for this type of project because the general public is everywhere.”
The general public is everywhere. The music of this line has been with me for over a week.
As I stopped a coffee shop on my block in my new neighborhood during Ziggy’s morning walk, my heart filled as one of the baristas squirmed their way to their floor with delight at seeing him entered. From their knees, they looked up at me and asked, “Can I give him a treat?” They carefully prepared him a special drink, holding up the line to play with him, laughing as he scooped up the treat.
Sometimes it’s a small moment like this that frees you. That reminds you that you are exactly where you’re meant to be. That teaches you the enchantment that accompanies a moment you choose to receive.
One of the places I was led during my time in my former city was to the waterfront and down to the Hope Fence at Penn’s Landing. I happen to have a lock on my keychain that I use when I go swimming after I lecture or to lock up my coat at the running store before I head out to circle the park with my running group. The dark blue metal is beat up from these years of use, of falling to the hard cement as I fumble with my thick gloves to turn the worn numbers.
For the final time, I put in my code, then joined this small protector to the wall, my wishes knocking against hundreds of others. Hundreds more to come, I’m sure.
For this week’s bonus doodle, I think back on my interview with two biologists on the collective movements of ants, and weave these lessons in with the ritual of a publicly cast wish. What it means, to me, to live in a city, to not just mourn in public (like we discuss in this month’s podcast) but to dream. To witness that…
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