On Seeds and Seeing (vol. 7, no. 1)

Here are a few things I’m sharing this month:

1. Question:

• “What seeds are within me, longing to leaf gigantically?” – Ashleigh Bell Pederson (in The Book of Alchemy by Suleika Jaouad)

2. Quote:

• “Only to a magician is the world forever fluid, infinitely mutable and eternally new. Only he knows the secret of change, only he knows truly that all things are crouched in eagerness to become something else, and it is from this universal tension that he draws his power.” – Peter Beagle (via Collected Essays of Loren Eiseley)

3. Poem:

Excerpt from Just Lying in the Grass at Blackwater by Mary Oliver:

I lie down in the fields of goldenrod, and everlasting.
Who could find me?
My thoughts simplify. I have not done a thousand things
or a hundred things but, perhaps, a few.
As for wondering about answers that are not available except
in books, though all my childhood I was sent there
to find them, I have learned
to leave all that behind

as in summer I take off my shoes and my socks,
my jacket, my hat, and go on
happier, through the fields. The little sparrow
with the pink beak
calls out, over and over, so simply – not to me
but to the whole world. All afternoon
I grow wiser, listening to him,
soft, small, nameless fellow at the top of some weed,
enjoying his life. If you can sing, do it. If not,

even silence can feel, to the world, like happiness,
like praise,
from the pool of shade you have found beneath the everlasting.

4. Something Inspiring:

“I am the size of what I see.” – Caeiro (via The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa)

5. Project updates:

I launched the independent imprint Shovel and Axe Press to publish my books. It honors the tension at the heart of being human. Namely, a shovel plants a tree. An axe cuts one down. We embody both simultaneously. (ht Grace Boone for the design work)

Thanks so much. And, have a great day! – shawn

P.S. If this month’s newsletter resonates, would you consider forwarding it to one person who might value it too?