A note for you, if you’re having a bad day.
Dear Friend,
According to my calendar, which was composed as an echo of Druidic calendars that divide the year into eighths, it’s time for a break. I’m still figuring out exactly how to use my calendar, because this is its first year, but I’m already finding that it suits the way my animal body wants to have regular work, and regular rest. The way the academic calendar taught me live was by the following (absurd) cycle:
September, October, November: Work hard, at high speed, squeezing every hour out of every day, checking things off lists, and adding things to the lists without ever completing the lists.
December: CRASH. Feel like giving up. Eat SO MUCH SUGAR because of this mental crash. Take two weeks off, and find that it feels like it’s not enough, since hey, it’s right in the midst of the darkest part of the year.
January, February, March: Work HARDER, pushing against all natural instincts, without stopping. Seriously. NO STOPPING ALLOWED.
April: Take one week of break, and it should be a week where you mostly party, so that at the end of the week, you’re tireder than before the week.
May: Pull yourself along, scraping the bottom, promising that next year will be different and better.
June, July, August: Rest. Really rest! Have plans about what “to do” with your summer, but don’t follow through, because it will take you three full months to un-burnout. Feel guilty about this.
Do it again.
My new calendar is six-ish weeks ON (working steadily), one week OFF (resting steadily). During the resting week, I also engage in light celebrating of a New Thing, which continues throughout the next six-ish weeks, until the wheel turns again. This doesn’t work super-well with my teaching jobs (I’m not gonna just not go to work because I’ve invented eight holidays, but it’s great for my writing job, where I make my own schedule.) We’ve arrived at a much-needed week OFF. This week, I’ll begin the celebration of roots.
In Chicago, where I live, we are facing the coldest days of the winter so far. But LAST week, as happens every late-January (because, more sun), GREEN THINGS STARTED TO COME UP.
You might not have noticed them. They weren’t necessarily noticeable. They were the littlest thumbs, and you had to know where to look. Even though it’s so, so cold, the roots are starting to make considerations. They’re in the planning phase. They’re underground, getting coaxed by sunlight to think about what it would mean to unfurl. (OK, fine, roots maybe don’t exactly “think.” They don’t “think” with neural systems that look like ours. But I don’t know. I think that’s a limited perception of thinking.)
Have you heard of Simone Weil? She was a philosopher in the 1940s, and she died when she was 34, of cardiac arrest. A lot of her philosophy had to do with work — physical labor, specifically — and how it brought people closer to God. (She wasn’t a capitalist, or a Christian; she was kind of the opposite of both.) This philosophy caused her to do a lot more physical labor than her body could handle; so we don’t get to read everything she probably had to write. But anyway, one of her final texts, written in the midst of WWII, was called “L'Enracinement” — in English, it was translated to “The Need for Roots.”
The middle of “L’Enracinement” is about Weil’s concept of uprootedness: the condition of lacking connection. Connection with the environment, connection with community, connection with others. She blames (I’m REALLY paraphrasing here) colonialism and the influence of money. (Full disclosure: I picked up Weil’s essential writings from the library, and am moving through them incredibly slowly, so most of my understanding of them comes from what other people have written about them.) Weil’s interest in roots that don’t necessarily have much to do with family-of-origin or ancestry made me wonder (and I often do) about root systems.
I learned from adrienne maree brown (who learned it from Shana Sassoon in New Orleans) that the roots of oak trees don’t grow down, but out, so that they intertwine. By coiling together, they become truly resilient; they withstand hurricanes like it’s no big deal, holding on to each other holding on to each other.
Generally, botanically speaking, there are two types of root systems. Taproots are the ones that grow from a single origin downwards, producing little hairs going out. Think of a carrot, a beet, a parsnip, or any other vegetable you would depend on for a “hearty stew.” Adventitious root systems grow wildly (I LOVE the word “adventitious,” by the way; adventurous mixed with ambitious, is what my non-science brain reads, and it makes sense). That’s the oak tree, but it’s also grass and ivy. These are the roots that spread. If you are a child in a fourth grade classroom studying your genealogy, it might make more sense to figure out your family carrot than your family tree.
On a spiritual level, humans develop in systems that are part taproot (individual) and part adventitious root (communal). Weil was interested in our adventitious roots — all our connections to our connections; the ways we are a part of a larger whole, melting into each other and other species and the earth itself. Really, both are important. Although in the winter, I’m often perhaps overly invested in my taproot-self: my own body and mental health, because there’s a base level of survival I’m seeking, so as to not die at the age of 34 (sorry, Simone).
The capital-H Holidays force us into groups and to think, at least on a surface level, about the other people in our lives (although not much about the earth; we’re still so uprooted) — but by February, by root season, that’s worn off. This is why I throw a Groundhog Day party every year. It’s my most important gathering. (If you want to throw one, here’s my how-to.) This year, people came over last Saturday to decorate cookies and talk. Our house is big, but it’s not really conducive to parties, because it’s all little nooks and tiny rooms. It didn’t matter. The 20+ people came over, the 40+ boots accumulated in the front room, the 20+ coats formed a mountain on the kitchen couch (yes, that’s a thing), and the party was exactly two hours long (this is a boundary I excel at). There were babies and there were teenagers, and there were parents of teenagers. It was loud and crowded and messy, and I usually don’t like any of those things, but on Saturday, I loved all of them. My adventitious root system was thriving.
When I hear the word “root,” here’s the poem I think of. (Well, this is a PART of the poem; it’s the end of the poem. It’s an e.e. cummings poem, so it’s kind of a weird poem. But the end part resonates.)
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
I’m going to take next week off with every intention of reaching out. I’m not sure what this means for you. How do your roots feel these days? And if that question (and this whole letter) is a little too woo-woo for you, let me just conclude with this: I hope you see the green things coming up soon; the evidence that the roots are starting to stir.
Love,
Sophie
Parenting Paragraph
T is 15 months old. She has learned how to say variations on the word “three,” as in, “one, two —“ and then she shouts “th-wheeeee!” It feels like she’s a math genius. I don’t feel guilty at all about the amount of “Sesame Street” I let her watch — which is a LOT. I love “Sesame Street” and I want it on all the time. She still prefers crawling to walking, and I get it. It’s hard to do the new thing when the old thing is functional, and the new thing is scary. Life is long.
I DID record audio for this, but it didn’t embed in the email because I forgot to upload it in time! It should be live on the website and through Substack, though.
Today is dedicated to Imbolc /ˈɪmbɒlk /▸ noun “an ancient Celtic festival associated with the goddess Brigid, celebrating the beginning of spring and held on or around 1 February:
the days are longer, the first snowdrops are out, and Imbolc is nearly upon us.” According to the Oxford Dictionary