Books on my nightstand for February 2020
Themes are: feminism, eco/nature, and words/energy/feelings that touch my SOUL…
My February pile evolves from January’s, which was heavy on feminisms and queering reads to get ready for teaching a grad seminar on said topic.
Critical Ecofeminism by Greta Gaard
This book has had me GEEKING out over where ecofeminism theory and practice has gone since I first learned of it during grad school. Let me try to sum it up – critical ecofeminism means attentively listening by being open to experiences in and with nature that you might not comprehend. What hits me is the idea of Listening as a Way of Knowing the world. Listening to plants, animals, the grasses, Trees, etc. That defies Euro-Western, ‘civilized’, Cartesian rationalizing about the world and what can be known - it defies patriarchy and higher ed and all of that shit. I love it! Gaard connects the plight of climate and environmental justice to racism, white supremacy, toxic masculinity, and the oppression womxn, non-binary and trans folx around the world. It’s an academic-y read for sure, but if eco and gender are your jam then it’s a great rabbit hole to go down and roll around in and I usually don’t want to climb back out!
Masters of Living Energy: The Mystical World of the Q’ero of Peru by Joan Parisi Wilcox
Something I don’t talk about publicly are ideas about energy and shamanism or any healing modalities, but I figure not many actually READ my blogs or make it this far. So, it’s safe, right, to be honest and keep this is my book pile? Given the earlier read, this one fits along with the paradigm flip of what is ‘knowledge’ and how do we as humxns, who are animals, come to know the world around us in these modern times. The shift feels to me one of experience rather than intellectual, brainy work, yet that is really unnerving when, speaking for myself, I’m trained well in theory and research-based evidence. At the core of this though is the idea of…
choosing to “live life consciously…to be on a spiritual path…cultivating qualities that enhance well-being, such as nonjudgment, unconditional love, forgiveness, patience, and the like. It is also about being conscious of your every action, thought, feeling, emotion, intention, intuition, dream, and vision. It is about bridging worlds, not being immersed in either the mundane or the magical; and it is about having the courage to leap from the bridge into multidimensionality with your eyes open and no bungee cord attached to your ankles. It is about conscious fluidity.” (p. 16)
That speaks to me. I choose to try each day for as many moments as I can to live my life consciously and in my integrity. I’ll keep showing up to try and try again…
New and Selected Poems by Mary Oliver
Oh, I love me some good poetry, especially of the transcendentalist, naturist type. I just got this one collection specifically for her poem, The Journey, that ends with this….:
But little by little,
As you left their voices behind,
The stars began to burn
Through the sheets of clouds,
And there was a new voice
Which you slowly
Recognized as your own,
That kept you company
As you strode deeper and deeper
In the world,
Determined to do
The only thing you could do –
Determined to save
The only life you could save.
A deep sigh and exhale on that one….thank you Mary Oliver….the world is a little better to have had you in it. I like to imagine you fly around with the Geese when I hear them honking.
The Witches are Coming by Lindy West
Well I like it for its title alone. I have just started to read this so I can’t add much yet other than West offers a cultural critique of all the crap going on in the world in an unapologetic feminist #smashthepatriarchy and also funny way that she’s known for.
Split Tooth by Tanya Tagaq
An old friend introduced me to Tanya Tagaq’s music and she took my breath away the first time I heard her style — inspired by Canadian Intuit throat singing. Split Tooth is her first book that’s raw and painful and beautiful – it’s a coming of age story that is a blend of memoir, fiction, Inuit storytelling, and poetry that fits in no one genre or style. It is powerful like her performances. Check out one of her throat signing performances during a TedX or her website for music and more!
Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche by Bill Plotkin
Soulcraft has been a slow and amazing read and I digest it bit by bit. Some sections, I have underlined tons and other parts has me throwing the book down for how deep it strikes – which is when I text the friend who recommended — those texts are often just lines of cuss words - Love you, Jaimie! I’m not even sure how to summarize this one. Essentially, Plotkin offers thoughts and pathways to reconnecting to nature in order to know our true selves and how we use that to serve others. He proposes that it is only through belonging fully to the world and offering it our individual gifts that we can ‘save’ it.
The 13 Original Clan Mothers continues to stay in my pile as it is a chapter each new moon cycle….
Then meet my Next UP book pile – it’s like party when all so many of my waitlisted books arrive at the library at the same time and these are no fluffy reads!
· The Way of the Rose: The Radical Path of the Divine Feminine Hidden in the Rosary
· Expecting Adam: A True Story of Birth, Rebirth, and Everyday Magic
· Why We Can’t Sleep: Women’s New Midlife Crisis
· How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence
The weather is still cold, lots of gray skies this winter in northern Colorado so I’ll keep my nose in the books loving up some new ideas and ways of knowing the world until the sun peaks through and I run outside to lap that up.
What else are you all reading that you’d add or recommend?