24. Wondergasm

“What do you do?” they love to ask.

The question that defines America.

Well, I refuse to answer it in the way it’s meant. I just refuse.

So what do I do?

I write. I sing. I dance. I cook beautiful, nutritious food.

I grow and forage food that delights me and makes me healthy.

I move my body in ways that feel amazing.

I sing in the shower and dance in airports.

And I make art. Wild and wacky art for no one but myself.

What do I do?

I love and nurture people, plants, animals, trees, and land.

I love and nurture a marriage of almost thirty years through all the inevitable agonies and ecstasies.

I love and nurture relationships with my grown-up boys through all the hard things and all the wondrous things.

I love and nurture friendships, new and old, and random moments of connection with total strangers.

What do I do?

I read and feel, again and again, moments of wild wonder at the endless expansion of human understanding and human ideas, wild wonder at every new glimpse of how this world works, at the intelligence of plants and the madness of the quantum world.

I gasp and giggle and take sudden deep breaths when new seeings take root and new wonderings bloom.

What do I do?

I take the time to know myself, to seek out help, to do the hard work of growing up and showing up. I rejoice in my healing and in all the ways it unfolds into new, healthier ways of being in the world.

And I forgive myself over and over for all the ways I still stumble and fall and show up in the same shitty ways I’ve always shown up.

What do I do?

I marinate in silence and stillness with horses, with forests, with flowing water.

I worship the stillness, breathe in the blessed silence, and let the world around me speak and sing and tell me of its wonders.

What do YOU do?

It’s early morning, and I’m out for a slow walk in the lush tangle I now call home. I take my time to wish good morning to the trees, plants, and flowers that have become familiar beloveds in these last two years of re-potting into this new place.

It rained last night, and the world is drizzled with little water drops, mirrors reflecting other little mirrors, reflecting yet more mirrors. A playground of refracting light.

The world smells moist, earthy. It smells like the earth smiling at the gift of rain. I breathe it in with deep, full breaths. I wish I could take a bite of it to taste the joy.

I see a patch of wild lupines and I squat down to take a closer look. Every eight-fingered lupine leaf holds a little pool of water at its center, cradled as if in a cupped palm. The drop nestles into the lines and folds, magnifying the world beneath it but also creating its own dazzling world.

My hands fly to my mouth and I can’t help but let out a little squeal of delight.

I slow down, stretch out time, and let that delight seep all the way into me like honey, filling my nooks and crannies.

The joy of it builds and builds until I can no longer contain it, and it bursts out of me in an explosion of pleasure—pleasure at the unbearable wonder of being in this beautiful, mysterious world.

I call it a wondergasm.

I used to feel wonder. But this is wonder on steroids.

It’s wonder, delight, and pleasure in an electrifying physical experience.

It’s what happens when I’m fully present for the little miracles. Miracles like a little drop of water reflecting a whole universe in the soft, welcoming palm of a wild lupine.

It feels as if, for one brief moment, I’ve stepped into the flow of the underlying wonder and pleasure that seem to be woven into the very fabric of existence, there to be merged with if I slow down enough, get out of the way, and let the magic in.

It feels like my nervous system, all these years of re-wiring later, is an antenna more finely tuned to the world, more able to receive all the gifts there for the taking.

My very own wondergasm antenna.

Which is why I am so perplexed when I am asked “are you back to 100%?” or “How close to 100% are you?”

The question stuns me. Because I forget that the healing work was supposed to get me “back” to health, “back” to who and what I was “before”. I forget that getting “back” is so often used as the benchmark of healing “success”.

I forget because all that is far, far in the rearview mirror for me now. And I never, ever want to go “back”.

Why would I want to go back when the universe offered me the most extraordinary invitation to go forward? Why would I want to go back when my nervous system is now more finely tuned to the “wondergasm” channel, the joy channel, the love and pleasure channel?

Living in this nervous system feels magical. Not always, but often enough.

Inhabiting a human nervous system means living the inevitable rhythms of expansion and contraction that underpin all life in this universe. Like breathing. Like living and dying.

But with knowledge and care, the rhythms can gently, slowly spiral upwards, in the direction of something more luminous. Not perfect, just more luminous. More luminous during both the expansions and the contractions. And therefore more graceful.

So the question no longer makes sense to me. Quantifying any of it makes even less sense.

How do you quantify growth and unfurling? How do you quantify inhabiting more and more of who you were always supposed to be?

And how do you quantify the pleasure of riding the roller coaster of being human, feeling all the heartbreak of falling short again and again, and loving yourself anyway?

So rather than asking “Are you back?”, maybe we could ask:

How far forward have you gone?

Or even simply:

What’s new and wondrous for you now?

The brilliant ecologist Robin Wall Kimmerer tells a story about two questions she asks her ecology students on the first day of the semester.

First, she asks, “Do you love nature?”

All hands go up.

Then she asks, “Does nature love you?”

In an ongoing heartbreak for humanity, almost no hands go up in response to this second question.

Let’s stop and let that in for a minute, dear one.

These young people who love nature so much that they want to dedicate their studies to it, think of nature as a thing separate from themselves, an “other” to be studied and cared for, but not a living, breathing entity that can love them back.

It breaks my heart because I know now how untrue this is.

That’s what’s new and wondrous for me now.

That’s what I would share if anyone ever asked me the question I wish they would ask.

I have a favorite place I go to sit and feel the world. It’s a rock under a juniper tree next to a tiny creek, tucked deep in the forest, away from the human gaze.

I sit on the rock, I put my hand on the trunk of that dear old juniper, and listen to the burble of the creek.

I sit still and I’m quiet. For a long while.

Then the magic begins. A world that seemed beautiful but static, maybe even a little dull, slowly wakes up inside me. The green of the mosses comes alive and takes my breath away. I start noticing where the light is dancing here and there on the moving water. The birds and insects come out of hiding, trusting my stillness, and their conversations fill this little world with joy. Fill me with joy.

But then the biggest miracle. The forest, the whole forest, starts to pulsate with aliveness. It’s no longer just wood and leaves, atoms and molecules, but something brilliantly alive. Just like me.

That aliveness permeates everything and I sit right in the middle of it.

Dear one, I don’t know what to say about how the middle of it feels other than to say “It loves me.”

Or maybe “I am love and it is love”?

And how can love not love love?

If you’re new here, welcome!

However you made your way here, I’m grateful you found me and happy to have you pop into my little world, whether it’s for a brief visit or a longer hangout around my campfire.

Accidental Alchemy is a serial memoir, so if you’re curious and have the time, I recommend starting with the Prologue and reading chapters in order for the full experience. You can access all chapters on my Substack homepage.

For the best reading experience, I recommend reading in a browser and on a larger screen. It makes it easier to enjoy the art and navigate through the chapters with the buttons at the bottom of each post.

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PS.. All art and poetry included in this memoir are my own unless I specifically credit another author or artist.