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Jody Frank's avatar

This post was a pleasure to read. So many of the same works have resonated in my mind for decades--from Walden to "Musee des Beaux Arts" to Forster's prophetic story. I also thought of Etty Hillesum's diaries, collected as An Interrupted Life: "In the past, I liked to start the day on an empty stomach with Dostoevsy or Hegel and during odd, jumpy moments I might also darn a stocking if I absolutely had to. Now I start the day, in the most literal sense, with the stocking and gradually work my way up through the other essential chores to higher planes, where I can meet poets and philosophers again." That she wrote this as the Nazi noose tightened around Holland makes it all the more stunning. Anyway, it's good to meet a kindred writer trying to balance the world of ideas and meaning with the world of fresh strawberries and holey socks. Linnesby sounds lovely.

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Abra McAndrew's avatar

Maria, there are so many interesting ideas in here. I love how your reset manifested differently than you had planned but only because you had planned it, and how you connect it to your early childhood experiences. I too had a phase of childhood very tied to nature and then took my adult life in a completely different direction and am raising my child in a scheduled suburban way— and I fantasize about a phase where I’ll live alone in an Earthship, someday. And the E.M. Forester— how presciently he imagined our Zoom world. Your essay is a good reminder that even as we communicate with each other by pushing these buttons, and I do find it fascinating to connect this way, we also can come back to our bodies and the world. I hear the birds and crickets and cicadas greeting dawn on my side of the world now and it is time to go experience it for a moment.

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