Shuffle Synchronicities: Volume 1 - #104

Guest Post by Caroline Rothstein + “Place To Be” by Nick Drake - 4/16/21

Today, we have a beautiful and powerful guest post by writer and artist and reader Caroline Rothstein. If you don’t know her and her work I recommend starting with this Narratively piece about her father who had an unlimited airline ticket. She’s also offering a workshop for a weekend in May that I will be attending called Camp Caroline. Check out this link for more info.

Without further adieu, here’s Caroline!

“The Promise of a New Day,” by Paula Abdul

Today is my dead brother’s 34th birthday. He was hit by a car and killed in 2002. He has been dead three and a half years longer than he was alive.

And.

Some days, he feels so much more alive than dead.

Eagle’s calling and he’s calling your name.

Tides are turning bringing winds of change.

Why do I feel this way?

The promise of a new day.

The promise, the promise of a new day.

Every morning, I sit at my altar, a small wooden step stool I purchased on Etsy and collaged with words and images from my stack of The New Yorker issues, alum magazines from college and graduate school, and Hemispheres, the United airlines magazine I somehow get some months.

Every morning, I follow this routine: circle my arms in the air; stretch my neck; unroll my yoga mat; fold my body into child’s pose; then stretch; do physical therapy exercises for my jaw and ribs and hips, which I all too often skip; roll up my yoga mat; pull over my meditation bean bag seat in front of my altar; sit down; journal; call in my spirit guides; call in my dead loved ones; call in my ancestors; call in my shadow; pray for my loved ones; say the Shema, a foundational Hebrew prayer; do some pranayama breathing; do some meditation; and then begin my day.

This means I talk to or call upon Josh at least once a day. He is ever present in my life. 

As thru time the earth moves under my feet.

Sometimes, I’m afraid to actually tell the world how I feel about my grief. Like I will betray the other billions of mourners on earth if I say something so sacrosanct as I enjoy spending time with my brother when he’s dead. Like, let me make this clear: I want desperately for him to be alive.

And. 

He is fucking dead. So what the fuck else can I do but work to somehow accept his death?

I find it more and more impossible to live inside the binaried perils of an either / or world. I find it far more palpable and easier to live inside a world anchored in the yes / both / and. 

Yes, I feel enraptured by my brother’s spirit every day. Yes, I feel a particular sense of joy and celebration as I deepen myself further and further into the abyss that is living here on earth. 

And. 

I long to hug his body. I long to have him living in a body other loved ones and me here on earth. 

So the only promise is a day to live, 

to give and share with one another.

I love Paula Abdul. I always have.

And. 

A day to live is not—in fact—a promise.

And. 

When shit is so painful. When shit is so overwhelming. When shit is so impossible to hold. 

Going to sleep. Waking up the next day—G-d willing. That’s a promise I’m willing to keep. 

This morning, when I sat my altar, after my usual prayers and routines, I started talking out loud to Josh. “I miss you in human form,” I said. “And I appreciate how hard you roll in the dead.”

I eventually closed my eyes and sat in silence for a little bit. I didn’t meditate, per se. But I felt the essence of the spirits and the energy all around me and within coursing through my arms. 

That is my antennae for the occult. My arms and shoulders are my wand. 

I open my eyes. I feel the pulsing energy of the universe. The living dead.

I say living because I do not believe that anyone really dies. Their body may decompose. Be cremated. Burn. The host of other ways we righteously and scornfully make ashes of our skin.

I look out my window and realize that the trees are starting to bud. The last time I remember noticing the trees, they were bare. And I look at them sitting at my altar at this window every day. But today they are budding. They are days into budding. But I didn’t notice until now.

The promise, of a new day

But for whom is this promise guaranteed? 

Last night there was another mass shooting. I say another, because it simply doesn’t end. 

Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man, was murdered by a White police officer on Sunday in Minneapolis, while the trial for Derek Chauvin, the White police officer who murdered George Floyd—also a Black man—last summer, took place and takes place mere miles down the street.

What promise is there when police officers murder Black and Brown people in the streets? What promise is there when mass shootings happen so often that we’ve become immune? Numb? What promise is there when we live in a country and world oriented around White supremacy, cishetpatriarchy, capitalism, and all of their sibling and cousin cognates of oppressive hell? 

The promise, of a new day, is exactly for whom? 

I feel that world peace can happen in our lifetimes. I have felt that my entire life. I wouldn’t be able to wake up every day and promise myself to being alive if I didn’t feel we could change. 

See the wisdom from mistakes in our past.

Hear the younger generation ask,

"Why do I feel this way?"

The promise, of a new day

I say “feel we could change” intentionally. I do not merely “think” it is possible to dismantle systemic oppression and co-create an equitable and just world by rebuilding our communities and usage of the earth with a transformative and restorative justice lens. I know that we can. 

Because the earth moves under my feet. Because the wisdom from mistakes in our past. Because I feel that it is possible to yes / both / and the trauma of grief, and the promise of a new day.

---

I love Caroline’s message today! Celebrating the both/and. The both/and of grief and of a new day. The both/and of injustice but also of change. The both/and of death but also never truly dead.

What an amazing synchronicity to get that song the same day as she celebrates/mourns her lost brother’s birthday.

It made me think of the song I got today.

Nick Drake is an artist who also died very young.

He suffered from depression and career failure and overdosed on his medicine.

This song, like many on this Pink Moon album is about remembering the happiness of earlier days, but struggling with depression in the present.

Instead of a both/and like Caroline offers, there’s more of a was/now to the structure of the song.

In each verse of four lines, there are two lines of positive was followed by two lines of negative now.

When I was young, younger than before
I never saw the truth hanging from the door
And now I'm older, see it face to face
And now I'm older, gotta get up, clean the place

And I was green, greener than the hill
Where flowers grow and the sun shone still
Now I'm darker than the deepest sea
Just hand me down, give me a place to be

And I was strong, strong in the sun
I thought I'd see when day was done
Now I'm weaker than the palest blue
Oh, so weak in this need for you

What this makes me think of is how strong Caroline is for embracing the both/and.

Today could be just a “dark deepest sea” or a “weaker than the palest blue”, but she is able to find her “place to be” and reach out for “you.”

I wish you all the ability to see the world in as much of a both/and as you can like Caroline so gracefully illuminated for us.

Thanks so much, C!

Much love.

Okay, that’s the hundred and fourth Shuffle Synchronicities.