Thunder Can Be Heard In The Distance
Reflections on Mud Season
It is now late June, and a great deal has untethered, bloomed, and retangled again since the following reflection was written in March. I’m working on not letting my drafts wither away, so voilà, let’s talk about “Spring things” in the summertime.
Here is what I found in Mud Season:
Dear Reader,
I planned to share a different newsletter, one containing the pulse of February and turning 26. Those words feel small now, given *gestures at everything*… so this instead:
One step forward, five steps back. I’m trying to meet my daily disciplines with hedonistic sensibility, like listening to an audiobook while stationary biking or pairing fresh vegetables with the box mac and cheese for dinner. I’m newly obsessed with “web poetics” and internet architecture. I’ve been taking a basic coding class. Lately, I am less animal, more digital fairy. Definitely still human soup.
Existential despair is somewhere in that soup. Recently it became clear that my phone addiction was thriving under the guise of staying informed, so I turned my iPhone 13 into a dumb phone and disabled Instagram. The switch has certainly helped, although I’m still determined to wrangle my way out of a Verizon contract and trade for a flip phone.
Community. Art. Music. Nature. Action. Rest. These are the antidotes to swollen despair. Amulets against authoritarianism. I know, I know, I know, I wave my hands to the activist saints and revolutionary bards, reluctantly slithering out of bed for morning walks. I make meals with my chosen family. I volunteer media work for my local pro-democracy group. I read Octavia Butler and Jason Stanley. I protest on behalf of Gaza and government workers and our National Parks. I sit my ass down to write into my sore ache of thoughts, trying to slake them into cogent, slender lines.
Now, it’s mud season.
No one particularly enjoys this time of year in Montana. It is the Great Browning—weeks of harried snow, flashes of rain, misleading licks of sun. I am always exhausted this time of year, oh so ready for deep-thaw and dependable sunshine.
Last week at the park I felt a sudden swell of appreciation for all that was beneath the soles of my shoes: pleats of moldy leaves, splintered acorns, deer scat and dog shit, ornaments of lacey mycelium. Spring is not all buds and birdsong. It is also fermenting incantation—a moldy, bleary heap that grieves the certainty of glittering white. It does not smell sweet. And from THIS place, the seemingly dead and unsightly place, comes the Spring of blossoms, sky melodies, and frothing color.
Certainly, I am in the thick of my own mud season ~ outwardly stagnant, creatively constipated, grieving the world of healing and possibility I thought was surely on the horizon, and bracing for everything that is said to be coming. But if you look close, the soil is alive and bubbling. I’m working on a new website and new freelance identity, and concocting mental plans for nomad car life. Even this space—Human Soup/Moss Mail—is gestating into something else. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about myself over the years, it’s that my interests and curiosities are constantly shifting. Indeed, the maxim is true ~ the only constant is change.
This brings me to all of my new readers. Thank you so much for following me to my little corner of the internet. There are now nearly one hundred of you, and even though that scares me a little bit, I promise to keep writing to you here with my own rhyme and rhythm.
So, I suppose we are landing on mud season as a another chance at gestation. The mud, leaves, and mycellium in me are stirring, braiding a new structure to support the next season of life and work. I choose to believe this is the way of things. There is wisdom in the discomfort and filth of Mud Season.
Japan’s ancient lunisolar calendar recognizes 72 microseasons (kō), each lasting five days and correlating to subtle shifts throughout the seasons. According to the calendar of 1874, the kō of March 31st-April 4th is “Thunder can be heard in the distance.”
I love the way the Kō calendar beholds the Earth, as if to say, even though you appear different today, I remember you. I celebrate the ritual of your seasonal unfolding. Perhaps we can behold ourselves with the same awe and permission.
Love,
Marin
moved to tears. thank you <3
Love you