On Turning Forty

Let me be frank with you

Hi friend,

This past month I turned 40 in Ireland. It was a vision I had last winter: I can beat any big birthday anxiety if I turn 40 in Ireland. So Angel planned it for me as a gift. Summer came & we made good on the promise. We rented a car & braved driving on the left side of the road. We stayed with our friends Karen & Eamon, young parents who generously cleared space & time for us in their busy lives & taught us what it was like to parent an almost-four-year-old (exhausting) (incredible).

Of our driving concerns Karen told us not to worry, there’s a culture on the road here – a social contract – of passing slow cars with a wave, of letting people pass you without tension, of patience & friendliness. To my surprise, this was true.

Cars shared the road with tractors going snail-slow. From their high perch, farmers waved go on ahead with a gentle hand. This may sound strange but the humans we encountered seemed particularly human. It was as if, by slowing down enough, humanness had time to escalate into full brightness.

On nearly all of the STOP signs GENOCIDE was graffitied below. Palestinian flags were everywhere. Solidarity was palpable & explicit. During our entire two weeks in Ireland, we spotted only one cop car. There was simply no police presence. None of the police have guns, Karen told us. It’s true. Without naivety or oversimplification I can say I felt a sense of safety, of freedom, that was as unfamiliar as it was expansive. As an American I’m used to terrorism: the terror of mass shootings, of police by the dozens patrolling our subway stations, of aggression as protocol.

For two weeks this sense of ease, coupled with the sprawling peace of the Irish landscape, infiltrated me to the core. I slept better. Silence found me & was pleasurable. An almost boring simplicity softened the hours.

My limited phone plan made accessing internet patchy to non-existent. Because we were on the different side of the road we had to really focus, so these two very verbal lesbians chose not to speak while driving. Hours of not talking, just togetherness. Hours of sky & grass & lazing cows on the hillside. Hours of no one around us but a tractor, a few seagulls, a bush’s branches scraping the car windows on a tight turn down a brambly road. Hours of not exactly silence – but of our breathing, of take this left, of good job honey.

40 is a milestone. I didn’t want it to have Too Much Scary Significance TM. But I also didn’t want it to go by unmarked, or to be watered down as “just another day.” So, thanks to my vision, I decided to be in Ireland on the actual day of my birthday, to plant my feet on fertile earth, to ground myself amidst grounded friends. But the truth is that I decided to celebrate my birthday for the entire month of August to take the pressure off of the day itself. Earlier in the month I threw a small party welcoming myself & my friends to “The Frank Forties,” a decade where frankness shall be heralded & prioritized! My friend Katia designed stickers of different “frank” mascots: Frank Ocean, Frank O’Hara, Frankenstein, Frankie from Grace & Frankie. We all drank sake & played ridiculous games. I wanted simple fun, to feel like a kid, to have sleepover vibes & for us to laughingly lose ourselves in stupid competition. I awarded (incredibly high quality) prizes from the 99 cent store to game winners, as well as to anyone I wanted according to my whims. It was perfect.

A birthday, according to Zen master & teacher Thich Nhat Hanh, is really a “continuation day.” Because you weren’t nowhere, you never really began. You were in your mother & father. You were inside their parents. You were in everything they all ate, saw, & thought. Our birthday is actually another step in a long line of events. We continue. Happy continuation day! It has a nice ring to it.

Speaking of rebranding, Ajahn Sona, a meditation teacher I have been listening to lately, prefers to call meditation “cultivation.” The idea is that when we sit, we are not passive, we are actively cultivating – “gardening” as he puts it. We aren’t just observing the mental scenery, we are planting emotional seeds. As much as my birthday was a continuation day, it has also been a chance to reflect on what I’ve been cultivating & what I’d like to cultivate further.

It’s a harrowing world, a disturbing global moment. The culture-at-large is predicated on normalizing violence, on teaching us that cutthroat selfish behavior is human nature. It is awash in gaslighting & hellbent on ecological destruction. Since we are nothing without the land & the sea & the air, ecological destruction is the very destruction of us. Our numbness & acceptance of these injustices is participation in the deterioriation of our souls.

All around me I see greed, hatred, & delusion in an unceasing & grotesque carnival. In 2024, human cruelty seems to know no bounds, to have even become more inventive & stealthy. Knowing all this, how do I choice-fully & bravely go on? Amidst so much hostility & apathy, how do I “continue”? What am I cultivating by default, without intention? Most importantly, what would I like to plant, to watch grow, to one day see fully bloom?

Buddhism teaches us that the antidotes to the world’s three major poisons (greed, hate, & delusion) are generosity, lovingkindness, & wisdom. These are not just pretty ideas. If you take them seriously, these become responsibilities. It is my responsibility to be generous, to offer lovingkindness, to reflect & act wisely. It shapes the needy world.

Turning 40 has meant taking stock of the mind I currently carry around everywhere. Is this the mind I’d like to have 10 years from now? How can I take greater responsibility for cultivating joy, good will, & inner peace? Instead of passively waiting for the world or other people to change, can I change first? Am I humble & brave enough to do so? In any given moment, what is the most daring gift I can offer the world?

Can I commit to not exacerbating suffering? What does this practically look like? I’m interested. I’m listening. I’m efforting forward with as much patience & faith as I can. I know I’m sometimes going to be clumsy or daft or rigid. I’m only human. But that’s the good news: I’m only human & so is everyone else. By understanding my icky-sticky limitations I can hopefully conjure some empathy for others’ mucky guck. I remind myself of this often: I’m striving for wholeness, not perfection.

• Speaking of travels, my new poem We Can’t Hold Hands in Montana is in Adroit Journal. The issue is beautiful. I’m particularly in love with Happy Hour With My Mother by my friend Ajanaé Dawkins.

• In honor of 40 years on this planet I’m giving away 400 downloads of my compilation album A Riverbed of Buttons. Just email me & I’ll give you your code & the download link.

• I loved Sebene Selassie’s offering Let It Be. Here’s an excerpt I’ve been holding close: “I am not the boss of reality and I must be careful not to make practice simply another way to (attempt) control. If I make space simply to be with my experience, I can meet moments of liberation.”

• Henrik Karlsson’s offering Looking For Alice was so nuanced & compelling that I read it twice, once to myself & secondly in its entirety to Angel over the phone at 1 AM. “When you enter this strange and unstable realm of conversation, you get a lot of information rapidly. I tend to find that almost everyone is captivating and loveable when I manage to talk like this. But when I do it with Johanna—especially in the first few years—it was like my entire mental landscape broke apart and all was possibility and flux.”

• This carving of a dog has been made resplendently gold because of all of our hands. Think about how many people had the same sweet instinct: love for a good boy! Whether he was “real” or not didn’t matter. Loving hands reached lovingly. Every love-gesture is worthwhile.

• Apparently, St. Francis of Assisi preached to the birds. It’s said he was inspired to preach to them about their duty to always praise God. I love both the earnestness &, forgive me, the arrogance of this. The birds don’t need instruction from us. If anything, we need instruction from them.

• ISL October session is officially open for registration. Visiting Artists are powerhouse Nicole Sealey, inimitable ISL Alumni Alex Cuff, stunning debut author Jeremy Michael Clark, & myself. This is going to be a powerful one.

• As readers of my Substack you get first dibs on a special offering. I’m running a very intimate online weekend intensive. Anatomy of a Poem: a revision-centric workshop. Saturday October 14 & Sunday October 15 from 1-4 PM EST. Limited to 6 students. Email insurreallife@gmail.com to apply.

• Lastly, one of my favorite things I’ve encountered lately: the side of the earth that we aren’t used to seeing or what I have been referring to as “the butt of the earth.” It’s a gentle, tangible reminder that on the other side of all of our assumptions, habits, predilections, & judgements is unassuming blue water.

Happy continuation day to me!

With ample maple syrup,