maryannpetersen.com
maryannpetersen.com Podcast
Vibes
7
0:00
-4:30

Vibes

Joyful warriors
7

Hah! I use this word too much, vibing and vibes, but it’s so perfect to sum things up. I went into the grocery store yesterday and walked by a woman eyeing the tofu while subtly dancing and mouthing the words to the song playing overhead. I smiled at her and she smiled back. Then, after I passed her, I sang the song with a bounce in my step.

The other night we paddled the canal, did a couple yogas on the board and my small dog held the center. After minutes of silence, my friend said that paddling was contemplative. This is the part I love the most.

The spaces between things are as active as the doing of things.

Conversations can get really rapid fire. I’ve started wondering- what if we left 10 counts between exchanges? Or even 7. Like one person says this and that, then silently everyone goes …7-6-5-4-3-2-1, and then the other can speak if they’d like to. They can look at each other during the space or if that is too much they could look out the window or toward the couch. In other words, words get to land and sit for a moment and I think in this way, they are more clearly received.

To take a pause is not nothing, it is a pause. 

My brother’s sketch club takes 10-minute breaks to allow mingling, conversation, movement, a break in concentration. This increases creativity, productivity, fun.

I’m trying to bake bread. It takes waiting and rising and falling and more waiting until it’s finally baked. The first bread turned out like a doorstop, heavy and thick, weighted and stocky, dense as a rock. Stone solid. Teeth shattering crust.

I cooked a new recipe: quinoa and vegetable stew. I ate it for dinner then I left for a walk and when I returned and came back into the house it smelled like somebody loved me and it was me. 

When I sit down and write I have a blue color in my head and I also have that same tint moving through when I sing.

Now I’m seeing blue because I watched the democratic convention. I texted with pals about it. “It was better than the Olympics!” “It was the Super Bowl for smart people!” they said.

After the watch party I biked in a light rain and got home just as it was getting dark and the deck flowers glowed from the day going into the night. The flowers take the light to bed with them. 

I’m directing traffic with the flow of volunteers. I’ve got a whistle and I’m wearing white gloves, lining up the ways anyone can join the movement by a sheet of helpful options. They are in paper form and electronic form. In folders and loose, called and not called. Two of us spent an hour or so organizing and we got the giggles and then I proclaimed we were in fact: joyful warriors

Leave a comment

Help Harris Walz campaign

Help Val Hoyle campaign

Lane County local dems

Discussion about this podcast

maryannpetersen.com
maryannpetersen.com Podcast
Water, trees, questions, poetic essays.
Listen on
Substack App
RSS Feed
Appears in episode
Mary Ann
Recent Episodes
  Mary Ann
  Mary Ann
  Mary Ann
  Mary Ann