Our Creative Nature

Producing less, listening more

Today’s fast pace of overwhelming information is calling for me to slow down. To pause. There is too much to digest all at once.

I have been feeling allergic to screens lately. I still turn to screens for teaching and for meaningful connections but my body is pulling me outdoors. Toward a flesh and blood community. I want to hold a pen in my hand instead of typing on a keyboard. To write a plea for rain into parched earth. Dirt under my nails, I want to write to and for the soil that gives so much. To and for the night sky. To express my love of life.

My standing desk in La Ceiba last year

I write because I am compelled to. Releasing words from my body helps me process, listen and understand better. My creative work is relational. It helps me be a better partner, a better collaborator, a better friend. It asks me to listen, to attune myself to seasonal rhythms that are incongruent with the pressure to produce. This is why I’m unplugging more and reevaluating my work. I realized I had gotten out of sync with my natural rhythms.

I think of earth in places of monoculture, pressured to give and give and grow and grow to the point of absolute exhaustion. Until, as generous as she is, she can give no more. This is what many of us are doing to ourselves. And now we have the option of turning to AI when we are at a loss for words. But how much can readers truly really take in? We humans can only consume so much. The pressure to produce is simply feeding an ever-ravenous algorithm while eroding the slow, embodied processes that creative work demands.

Beyond productivity, I understand why some would turn to AI. We are busy and overwhelmed. And beyond that, it is difficult to express all that our body wants to say. To find the right words. My favorite lines from “I Have Gone Marking” by Pablo Neruda express exactly this :

Between the lips and the voice something goes dying.

Something with the wings of a bird, something of anguish and oblivion.

The way nets cannot hold water.

Still, I am committed to crafting what my animal body is capable of at a given moment. Turning our flesh and blood ideas over to AI is not without cost to Earth¹ and our earthly bodies.

For me, the goal of writing is not to produce endless content but to develop myself and communicate, if imperfectly, on behalf of wild relatives like coyotes, rivers, fireflies and trees who cannot advocate for themselves. Writing on behalf of Earth, I become more intimate with my ecosystem and process ecological grief. I want to shape my creative life around deeper conversations and slower observation. But here is my ever-present challenge: What about the constant sense of urgency?

There is so much suffering that I want to tend to, and address with words and sometimes it paralyzes me. Other times, it causes me to overwrite, or to write without digesting or processing what is upsetting me. When I react without processing, I don’t neccessarily write or act from a place that helps others. And I wonder, in today’s endless stream of content, do words on a screen become empathy, action and change? I do believe our voices are important. We can’t let those who exploit humans, Earth and our wild relatives write the narrative of this time. But I also question the impact. Maybe my (and your) quiet unseen work with community and land is more impactful.

To truly love and nurture Earth, I know I need to unplug, go outside, and listen.

Today, I am expressing from a place of exhaustion and grief and also a place of love and reverence. I feel exhaustion and grief from endless news cycles of cruelty. It is too much for my body to process. I cannot keep up with all of the suffering. It is impossible to alleviate and act upon it all.

I feel love and reverence for the wild beauty of Earth that surrounds me. For my local community of creatures: the catbird eating raspberries outside my window right now, the neighborhood fox family, my extended human family, my chosen family of friends, my beloved partner, and on and on.

As I write, I am listening to layers of sound: the chirp of crickets, the buzz of bees, the wind, the occasional bird song and call. It is not silence but a fullness of life. Sounds that nourish and restore me. I listen and feel I am in a place that is thriving not dying. A place, at least in this moment, that is not being extracted from, not being rolled over with industry and machines and a pressure to produce. But allowed to just be. To live and grow at a natural pace. This is where my body wants to be. This is where my animal body and my creative nature thrive, too.

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INVITATIONS TO READ, ATTEND & LISTEN:

RECENT INTERVIEW:
Lifting The Green Veil a very special interview with friend and former student Natalia Schwien Scott for Harvard Divinity School’s Center For The Study of World Religions

CONVERSATIONS
August 12th:: Nourishing Earth, Nourishing Ourselves with Project Coyote, 3-4pm EST
An online conversation with Dr. Michael Fox. Learn more & register here.

August 13th: Words For The Wild: Nature Writing Now
Join me in person with Donovan Arthen of Orion Magazine and author Jennifer Kabat. 5pm at The Mount, Edith Wharton’s House in Lenox, MA. More here.

A NEW IN-PERSON WRITING COURSE:
Writing For The Wild
Join me in person Sundays, September at The Mount in Lenox, MA
Sept. 7 & 14, 12:00 – 4:00 pm

UPCOMING WILD VOICES COLLECTIVE ISSUE:
We’ll release the new issue that speaks to natural migrations, borderlessness and edges in early September. I look forward to sharing it with you.

1. Caroline Ross wrote a great piece relating AI to a tick on the body of Earth. I agree.