In this episode, we talk about magic and masculinity, depression and climate anxiety, graveyards and kids, and writing what needs to be said. We get to meet with a poet whose writing about nature echoes around the world, and on this quiet evening, our kids in their beds, we read poems and find small places to anchor our hopes.
“I think a lot of modern masculinity gets to the point where they are worshipping the idea of strength… If you worship the idea of strength I think you will always feel weak, because we’re fragile biological beings. If you worship strength there’s always a secret voice inside of you that says you’re broken, you’re not strong enough. That’s just not a good foundation to build an identity on… The idea of worship has connotations of un-examined love… where worship feels like a one-way street I think the gratitude that I like to feel when I come to nature is much more of a dialogue.”
“My partner pointed out that I do things that I consider magic sometimes, ritual and spells, but they’re always things that I come up with in order to take an abstract thought… If I want that thought to take on more weight than something that might fleet through my mind then I think ritual is often the way to do that. I’ve written things on leaves, burned things, written the same phrases over and over again for days, and carried it with me. Things like that where you build up inertia. There’s so much tremendous mystery in the universe that I’ve always felt called to participate in it… I think a lot of healing comes when you give yourself permission to take the meaning you make seriously.”
https://www.cryptonaturalist.com/
We read poems from Jarod’s book Field Guide to the Haunted Forest – https://www.cryptonaturalist.com/books – it’s wonderful, you should own it and give it as a gift. <3
