Bearing My Mild Yoke

This is mostly an update on some of the things I've been doing and thinking, and announcing a new thing, which I'll do first.

I'm going to be a farmer!

Well, not entirely. Not exactly. I've joined a small farm apprenticeship program at the Ecological Agriculture Training & Cultural Center (EAT!) in Norco, California. And I'm writing a new pop-up newsletter – Field & Story – about the experience! Here's the gist.

This return to the land is years in the making. I grew up in the garden, but building a modern life — going away to college, becoming a professional, “advancing” — distanced me from the land and my upbringing, which was all about growing and preparing nourishing food, gathering, and sharing.

When I almost died in a hospital in 2021, I promised that I would eventually make my way back to tending to the earth, to flourishing like I did as a young girl with her hands in the soil. It’s taken me this long to find the right opportunity and learning community, to respond to an inner sense of urgency and yearning growing louder by the day, and to redesign my working life to make serious space for food and farming again.

I'll be writing this newsletter once a week for the duration of the 10-month program. In terms of format, expect narrative and audio because I've grown interested in stories textured with sound since doing the Transom audio storytelling workshop.

If any of this interests you, sign up for Field & Story here. (Note: this is a separate thing, and Somethingburger subscribers won't automatically be opted in, so you have to fill that out.)

I probably won't write much here while working on Field & Story. Or maybe I will, who knows. But I'll more likely do a pop-up within a pop-up, like a limited food/recipe series inspired by the farm work, or maybe some interviews and photos from Norco, a place I'd like to get to know better. You'll hear about all of that if and when it happens.

I haven't written at all since writing A Week at the Beach, the pop-up newsletter about my experience in the radio storytelling workshop. And I've wondered why. I know there is always something to write about, that I can hop on here daily and bang on the keyboard about what I did at work that day. But I just haven't wanted to.

Work has been little more than a grind and I've needed novelty, an outstanding experience of some kind, to feel excited to write. Something subtle I learned from the radio pop-up: I write more when I'm consistently doing something tactile. That's why I'm confident the only book I can ever produce is a cookbook. The writing has to be about some kind of making and doing. Not just thinking. I'm not good at that.

Maybe this pop-up newsletter thing is also working because it's finite, bookended by a start and end date. Whereas a blog goes on forever. The thought of forever fatigues me. I think books felt like forever projects to me before, but lately I've thought of them as containers one can eventually put a lid on. I have three cookbooks living in my head, and part of this farm endeavor is to re-center food in my life after a long hiatus working in other spaces.

I'm not abandoning my work with youth, but things are certainly going to change because I'm burned out. I'm frustrated with the model of school, its overall inflexibility and its lack of responsiveness to the times. I've had wild ideas lately about starting a micro-school some day, perhaps on a plot of land. It's not so far fetched, but it's a huge extension for someone who believes in the power of public education. My faith in the system isn't gone completely, but it's suffering as I witness catastrophic decisions being quietly implemented. Like proactive compliance to AI. I'm so sick about it and sick of it, I need something else huge to think about.

A lot of this is about wellness. Although I haven't been unwell, I can't say I've been thriving. That my heart, mind, body, and soul have been in alignment, and that there is resonance between these aspects of myself and my work. I've felt very disconnected from the spiritual world for at least a couple of years. I briefly felt extremely connected during a recent trip to the desert, but then I re-entered the simulation over here and poof, connection severed.

This isn't to say I don't see divinity at work in my life. I do on the daily, in my relationships, in sunlight that filters through into my home, in the miracle that is my female body. But lately, in terms of rituals like prayer and whatnot, I'm just going through the motions. I've spoken angrily to God because I feel frustrated at the state of the world and what we have become. This is normal for me, quarrelling with the gods. Other times, there has been fear, and I loathe that.

Anytime my relationship with God involves fear, I know I've lost the plot and that I need to step away and listen to the small and still voices, one of which is the voice of vocation.

I've been unplugged, and I see handling earth as the only way to plug back in. I know this from experience, from crystal clear memories of a time in my life when planting and growing things was how I best bore my mild yoke, to quote John Milton, and I felt God lifting me. No additional concentration, no other meditation, was necessary to feel the presence of God about me. Hence the whole farm thing. That's not the only reason, but it's a big one.

Sorry in advance if you get multiple emails from me in the coming days sharing links and whatnot. And finally, thanks for being here. I don't have a ton of readers, but I was looking through my email list the other day organizing all of these newslettering activities and it brought tears to my eyes because most of you have supported me for years. Many of you are old friends I grew up with, or worked in schools with. I've emailed back and forth with some of you recently and have made new friends. It just means a great deal to me that you're here.

Link Pickles 🥒

My friend Jeremy Bassetti made an amazing documentary about Bolivia's Festival of Urkupiña. This is part of his larger project, On Mountains, that explores the intellectual and cultural history of mountains, from myth to modernity. I've always been interested in local dieties and syncreticism – how old and new traditions are braided together by people over time into everyday practices and faith. Beautifully shot and thoughtfully narrated, this documentary transported me to childhood trips to India, and buying incense and flowers at busy stalls outside of ancient temple gates waiting to behold the divine.

In her newsletter What the Wolf Wore, my friend Dor Neagle is exploring seven stories at the core of her poetry leading up to her book launch in June. I'm stuck on what she had to say about stories about humans transforming into animals. It made me wonder, Which me do I yearn for and what does this new adventure have to do with her?

In psychology, the truth of this hidden animal aspect of our human selves might be referred to as the ‘shadow self.’ In storytelling, it might be exemplified by ‘the wild twin’: a second self, born with us but rejected (or unwilling to be tamed) who is thrown out the window of the birthing room (or leaps away), and toward whom we feel, for the rest of our days on earth, a distinctive longing.

I enjoyed this episode of The Interview with Lena Dunham. I've consistently admired her for her naked admissions about womanhood. When I first watched Girls on HBO, it scared me how true to experience it was for young millennial women. I saw an avatar of myself in each of the girls in their deepest moments of insecurity. Watching the show felt like confronting what we worked so hard to conceal. Among them the reasons we dated certain men – to be signed off by them. I think us women are able to see ourselves in each other more than men and that this helps us grow better. Lena Dunham always reminds me of this, and I can't wait to read her upcoming memoir, Famesick.