Midwesternism is pervasive.

I started noticing while attending regular group morning meditation that even when you gather with Minnesotans for a deeply spiritual practice they do not want to say hi to you. Like, I can’t overemphasize how difficult it is to catch anyone’s eye on a regular basis. Most of the time, THIS is what I’m left looking like, a “hello” caught in my throat, and introduction imploded in my stomach.

I think the most profoundly intimate thing we can do for each other these days is provide an excuse to not scroll through social media. I mean, what information are we actually getting on there, amirite? Oh, just that whole generations of people diametrically oppose each other and also NASA is suddenly playing it fast and loose with the whole interstellar lifeform thing?

If you’re reading this, it’ll come as no surprise to you that I have a fledgling, wildly flawed zen practice. In that I read cyclical texts and dedicate to sitting silently on a pillow a few days a week. It will also come as no surprise that I am writing this newsletter with my notepad precariously balanced on my cat, Percy, who has graced my lap with his loafing.

Actually, now that I’m typing, I don’t think I have much to say. There is a lot of violence in the world, as you know, a lot of soul illness. And it’s got me, a soul-worker, feeling like this shit don’t matter much. But indeed it do matter. In fact, as one of the pieces I’m singing on 6/18 puts it: “Space is noise. Matter is music.”

As a grant writer- and a neurodivergent one at that- I am dysregularly confused/agitated that people widely use community to mean population. “What community do you serve?” is 100% followed by definitions of race, sexual preference, gender identity, disability, economic status, geography, blah blah blah

But, these are populations. Groups within groups that represent numbers, segmentations, demographics. Data. Very useful for tracking humans. Or, upholding the Matrix conspiracy theory that we are all binary code pre-programmed to serve some ultra-fatherboard mega-computer.