Raise the Damn Shade

Hi, all.

Wellllll… I’ve been quiet here for a spell. I’ve been in the garden and the forest and the jungle and learning, perhaps for the very first time ever (?), what it is to experience, firsthand, a pretty prolonged quiet mind. The results are in, and it is great. For so many years, my love affair with my mind was my main love affair. But, love affairs change. Love affairs have seasons. Love affairs mature.

The main thing I’ve thus far associated with writing/being a writer is, ahem, not having a quiet mind. I recall sending 100 pages of my travel journals to my parents, and they responded: “Wow, you’re even crazier than we thought.” At the time, I liked this. I interfaced with the profusion of mental content as an entry badge to circles of esconsed academics and wacky wanderers alike. It gained me intimate friendships with gorgeously neurodiverse weirdos. Furthermore, I derived much pleasure identifying with an outwardly poised and patient persona, which seldom showed cracks (or so I thought) in the facade of being seemingly pretty chill. But friends, I was never chill. And I don’t know if I’m chill now or not. Chillness no longer seems like the point or much of an interesting pursuit.

What experiencing new dimensions of consistent quiet is teaching me is that, even when the mind is quiet, the gift of words remains. Far out! Took me long enough to learn that art and suffering perhaps don’t need a love affair to sustain a life. I’ll stew on that one for the next few years and report back. Highly recommend this superb poem, Calling Things What They Are, by Ada Limón.

So. No matter how long the gaps get between my thoughts, or yours, we are both probably still crazy in some way or another.I wouldn’t have it any other way. We are both probably still learning, in every moment, to resonate in deeper magnitude with all of creation. Adyashanti quotes Anthony DeMello, who famously said, “I’m an ass, you’re an ass, let’s get on with it.”

All to say, from the quiet and the self-acceptance and the celebration of whatever mixture of restful and crazy and ass and complete goodness exists in this human organism, I’ve had some space to revisit one of the many small essays I’ve long incubated. I call it Raise the Damn Shade, which feels like the ethos I’m oriented around these days. The journey to see clearly keeps on rolling.

As always, thanks for reading, and for being you.

Not too long ago, I found myself in the middle seat in a row situated smack in the middle of an airplane, cruising northwest during the sunset hour. Oddly, our row was the only one without a window. This matters to me because I like to look out windows. As much as I can, I hold myself accountable to window gazing on a flight. I do this not only because observing hundreds of miles of terrain from above is a mind-bending opportunity incredibly new to humanity, allowing for a remarkable mapping and learning of the relationship between landmasses and biospheres, but because it is also an important way of bearing witness to what lies below.

In my window watching, I have been disheartened and grief stricken to observe hours and hours worth of razed, pastured, developed, and desecrated land. With each maturing year, the factual and emotional aperture of what I see widens, gains context. Lands stolen, turned to farms, defiled, abandoned, mechanized. Waterways dammed for development. One does not need a cross country trip to behold the domestication and desertification of the land and the cultural soul, but seeing it from on high sure flies home the point.

I mentioned it was sunset. Sunset along the California ridges and coastline at a height of 30,000+ feet is a holy thing. You watch the light grow and glow for a longer time than when you’re on the ground. The widened horizon splays out pink, yellow, orange. And the sun! Bright red, often. It’s a magnet for the soul. It’s a vortex to dive into, reminiscent of the molten core from which all the phenomena I love to observe ooze and form into something solid enough to get eyes on.

Eager for a view, I extracted myself into the aisle, hoping to maneuver near enough to an open window to get a glimpse of the sweet sunset shebang. I glanced to the right, then to the left. Closed windows. Every single one of them. The obtuseness with which my fellow passengers were willfully choosing to keep the shade shut on the greatest and most accessible light show on earth felt personal. It also felt immediately and intricately tied to all of the bulldozed and developed land I just wrote about. In an instant, the polluted waterways, the abused creatures and peoples, the disappeared old growth, and the mined mountains revealed themselves in the plane with us. All those closed windows made it a little hard to breathe.

Sure, people get hot with the windows open. People get self conscious about not wanting to disturb their aisle mates, letting in brightness that might disturb their sleep or cast a glare (gasp) over their iPad screen. People get headaches from light. People have eye sensitivities and injuries. People have been burned and punished for their real or perceived disruption of a homeostasis. People fall asleep. I can leave space for the handful of folks who, for whatever reason, didn’t feel safe or comfy to open up that window. But the entire plane? My first thought was, “Okay, the situation is more dire than I thought.”

Listen, as with anything I write, I write this because I am saying this to myself. Because I need to say it to myself, and because writing is the language in which I can receive it. These past few years have constituted a deep dive into a whole hell of a lot I haven’t wanted to see, both externally and internally. I am far from complete with that process. I’m aware of where I am just beginning to take baby steps in some relational and righteous-oriented realms that remain threatening to the parts of me still under the illusion there is something to protect and preserve here. The more kindness and spaciousness I can bring to that seeing, the more wisely and clearly the observation will occur. The greater the chance for freedom, for me and others. We are all only ever where we are.

And this is especially true when we are on a plane. Literally trapped with others also on the plane. So if we’re trapped, why not lean towards a little freedom, eh? Why not let in a little light? It is time to raise the damn shade, friends. Yes, that one, 7 inches from your shoulder. Take your hand, push up the little plastic ledge, sit quiet. Not in a window seat? No prob, just warmly turn to your neighbor, and invite them to raise the damn shade to the benefit of everyone in the damn plane. Together, gaze out upon sheer possibility.

I stand firm in this assertion. Enjoying Solitaire, or a Marvel movie, or editing a paper or a song or your photos, or doing any other activity, is not reason enough to keep the airplane window closed during sunset. In fact, I maintain that, aside from closure to keep things from getting overheated while a plane sits on a runway, the shade should be raised all the damn time. Why are we shutting the blinds on the wonder and witnessing of the world? I do not care what developmental threshold you operate at, how filled in or out you are, nor do I care about how your attachment wounding operates, or what your nervous system is up to, in the context of feeling that the best choice is always to raise the damn shade. Look out the damn window at the damn sun. Your life will get better. In fact, talk to the person sitting next to you. Ask them how they are. Maybe where they’re going. Maybe some off-kilter question about their life that leads to some kind of system interruption in which both of you have to activate some coiled snake of creativity deep in the heart. Surprise each other.

All around us are advertisements and temptations that encourage us to abet distraction. Especially distraction from poetry, from the slant of light through the window, the rhythmic snoozing of a stranger, the whispered joke of a flight attendant (shoutout to the flight attendant who recently shared this banger with the cabin: “Having a personality comes with risks”). Let’s remember: poetry is not for the faint of heart, poetry is not the easy path. But without it, we’re stewing in a bunker of recycled air with cricks in our necks as we look down at our phones while the literal life force of our planet waves night-night before generously resurfacing tomorrow. Without poetry, we are signing away our most precious resources in favor of dullardry and destruction. It’s a shitty bargain. My own maturing means I am consistently reconciling myself to the reality that the only life I can have any immediate say over is my own, and given that, I am increasingly unwilling to close the curtain on beauty.

Because, in addition to seeing others and myself blatantly worship the material gods and how this choice proliferates widespread devastation, the most heart-breaking thing is perceiving how seductive it can be to give up connection to our hearts and our depths. Cause it also ain’t like most of us are working from a template that teaches us how to stay. Beauty is our balm, here. Recognizing and acclimating to beauty is a necessary component in keeping our eyes open to the harder stuff. In order to stay in the game with what’s real, we need the net of beauty to fall back into. We need to know that the sun sets and paints the mystery in our own inner world, which offers us the indispensable teaching that, really, there is nothing bad inside of us. When we start to entertain the notion that there’s no badness here, it becomes more possible and flowing to notice where there is confusion, or fear, or pain. Which does not mean we’re bad. It just means we’re operating from structures that haven’t yet learned it is safe to be as we are, and it is safe to let go of what we aren’t.

Raise the damn shade on your own magnificence. Beholding nature’s way is how we learn to behold our own nature, and the beauty and goodness inside it, which is a prerequisite to being honest with ourselves, and stepping into our own power. Every moment of celebrating beauty sows possibilities of reforestation. Shoutout to the late, great Joanna Macy: “To be alive in this beautiful, self-organizing universe -- to participate in the dance of life with senses to perceive it, lungs that breathe it, organs that draw nourishment from it -- is a wonder beyond words.”

My teacher, Diana Zaheer, often offers counsel about the importance of witnessing, noting, “What if it’s safe to see what the world is up to? What if it’s safe to see what other people are doing with themselves? And what if it’s safe to see what I’m doing with myself in here?” Could it be that there is nothing to hide from, or turn away from? Michael Meade says: “We’re supposed to develop two ears, and two eyes for seeing. One eye sees what everybody is looking at, and the other sees what’s there. One ear hears the conversation, and the other one hears what’s not being said. And that’s how you go, because otherwise you wind up wasting time, or being caught up in something that makes you feel bad in the end.” The more we keep seeing and hearing, the less we have to participate in the pattern of capitulating waste or feeling bad or draining our own artistry.

We are made to see. And when we do, we see the direness of the predicament, matched with the opportunity to keep loving. The imperative to bow in reverence to any form of beauty is growing by the day in direct proportion to the seduction to pave paradise. It is often hard to raise the shade. Sometimes the dark and the distance is scary, and sometimes the light is blinding, and often we are drawn to keep our eyes narrow and down.

Any art worth creating probably won’t be easy. Anything requiring effort requires effort. It is hard but worthwhile to do things of quality. The first step is to see, to listen, to be. I’ve learned and continue to learn that there is time and place for seasons of darkness and a visit to the underworld. One could say we’re in a prolonged planetary stretch of long dark right now. But, even so, there are moments when it is necessary to let in a little light. An airplane at sunset is one of them. Shades up, friends. Blinds up. Curtains flung wide. What if it’s safe to see?

There will be a moment for each of us, not too far away in the scheme of it all, when the shade on this life will close, and the shade into the next mystery will open. When that transition comes, I want to be aware and willing. I want to nod my recognition that, in fact, I’ve been training for this moment my whole life. And I want to pay homage to the sunrises and sunsets that demonstrated to me - so many times, from so many vantage points - that it is the nature of the sun to set. It seems essential to study, up front and personal, this truth now, insofar as every shade raised is a political act, a vote in favor of neural networks learning that there is safety in abiding with both the shadows and the light.

PS - As I’m finishing writing this, I feel like I owe a debt of gratitude to John Craigie’s excellent song Perseids which I’ve been playing on repeat this month. Hard to put a finger exactly on why, but if you listen to it maybe you’ll feel it too.