Every Class I Teach
Will begin with birds
Boozhoo, indinawemaaganidog! Aaniin! That is to say hello, all of my relatives! Welcome to another edition of An Irritable Métis. I’m behind on when I wanted to get this update out to you. I really want to write here weekly but sometimes, like when I am on the road a lot (as I have been, eternally), it’s a challenge. Consequently there is a lot of ground to cover! I’ll begin with a couple things IndigiPalooza-related. The festival is barely over a month away which means we are coming around the final turn and headed for home. In the coming week or so we will be announcing a couple BIG THINGS related to registering to get a ticket to PLANT BABY PLANT with Robin Wall Kimmerer1 as well as a preorder for screenprinted t-shirts and posters.2 I mention this all here because the announcement will go out first to people who subscribe to the IPFEST mailing list. So if you want to get in early, sign up for that from the IPFEST homepage at the bottom of the screen that follows hitting that link.
I’m grateful for your time and attention and support! I fear I’ve confused people a bit with all of my recent yammering about paid subscriptions and where the money goes and all that. As a reminder, you can still support me via Substack by initiating a paid subscription – financial support really keeps me going. You may do that here:
Meanwhile, would you like to support my work but don’t want to subsidize the “dirty money is still good money” villains who run Substack? You can always do so via Buy Me a Coffee HERE.3 As always, I am eternally grateful.
As I move, or attempt to anyway, farther and farther away from all the distractions that modern life tries to guide us into as key elements of the diabolical schemes of soulless oligarchs, I feel my perspective begin to clear like Mishomis burning through a bank of clouds on a steamy summer morning, with discomfort equal to staring directly into that fire. There is all manner of “reclaim your attention!” advice out there3 and I’m not immune to it. So much begins with exhortations that people not reach for their phones and begin their doomscrolling first thing out of bed, or even before they manage to free themselves of the tangle of sweat-damp and filthy percale they’ve failed to succeed in sleeping through the night in. This is an easy one for me: if I reach for my phone first thing, it’s to check the temperature to determine what manner of layering my morning porch saunter-and-sit will require4. There’s nothing to scroll; no social media, no alerts, nothing. I don’t check my email until later because the odds of there being anything in there I really want to see are slim. And since I spent so much time offline in Alaska I’ve not resumed even checking in with news sites to see what latest crude ridiculousness is emerging from D.C. There’s little I can do about any of it but fret anyway, so to hell with it.
I do love the opportunity to sit and reflect though, and that is what my porch time every morning provides me because I’m not staring into my phone while I do it. I make a point not to, in fact; I want to be present to anyone passing, head up, ready to wave or even just cast a nod their way. I’m so put off by public spaces where every direction the eyes turn is a viewshed of people, even people presumably gathered together, all with necks craned to direct eyes device-ward. I’m not judging those people5, I just don’t want to be one of them. I like to joke anymore that I am often referred to as an elder, particularly in my Native community. It still feels weird, though I am happy to invoke the privilege of a designated parking space if an invitation to visit somewhere comes with one. Point being, I recognize that much of my distaste with the modern world is just my generation’s version of the exasperation my parents’ generation had for how mine lives. I still think manual channel-flipping on the television, or even clicking through a cable box, was far superior to the nightmare experience of trying to remember what program is streaming on which app. I call this to attention because I decided this year I would fain watch the NBA playoffs and finals. What a nightmare! What a huge mistake! I think it required three – or four? – different streaming platforms. Worst of all was the commercials. Gambling sites and apps, prescription drugs, and so much fast food. It’s like if someone decided to write a manual on self-destruction, they’d just need to immerse themselves in mainstream media for a week. No wonder we are all miserable!
“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.”
– Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer), Bladerunner
I’m not a replicant6 but as I stagger with less and less enthusiasm into my dotage I realize I’ve been fortunate in my life to see things too, things that fewer and fewer people, particularly young people, will have opportunity to. Let’s start with a night sky abundant with stars, no matter the season. Stands of old growth trees. Rivers and creeks still largely full of water late into the summer. More driving on dirt roads than pavement. And birds. So many lovely and ridiculous birds. All of these things are slowly disappearing.
I’ve raised animals and seen them born and dealt with their death, sometimes in grim fashion. I watched my mom take a lawn bags full of wool and manage them every step of the way from her spinning wheel into knitting needles into mittens or blankets. I wandered untethered and unmonitored by anything tech-related at all, with the only mandate being I needed to call home if I was going to be later than planned.
I haven’t done the math but I’m fairly certain I’ve lived most of my adult life, certainly at least half of it, in a pre-internet existence. From where I sit records and CDs and even cassettes are far superior means to enjoy the thing I loved most – music – than anything streaming or existing in the cloud. In fact, the constant societal migration away from physical media has led me to essentially almost never even listening to music anymore because the hassle every step of the way makes it all more trouble than it’s worth. I want to get father away from my existence being tethered to my awful phone, whose real purpose is to provide a gateway for constant assault via text messages, bullshit phone calls from loan officers approving loans I never applied for, etc. all in an effort to sell me stuff I don’t want or need. Ugh, just thinking about it stresses me out.
“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.”
Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods
I was happier before all of this stuff. Far happier. I’m not ready to be unhappy the rest of my life either. I don’t want to be desperate anymore, quiet or otherwise. I fully intend to live in the world, not a device.
A Return to Attention: A Writing Workshop (sort of)
Which brings me to this effort in offering, in the smallest way, a defiance of sorts that I think I am capable of. It’s been a couple years since I facilitated an online workshop and that all changes this coming July, when I’ve partnered with Chickadee Community Services to offer a workshop called A Return to Attention, which you may see more details related to, and enroll, HERE. It will run on zoom every Monday evening in July beginning on the 6th at 7:30pm Mountain Time. I’m offering it through Chickadee because they have a functioning education platform and billing system, which I don’t. When I did this kind of thing a few years ago keeping track of everything was a nightmare, which is part of the reason I haven’t done one in so long.
“But I’m not a writer!” you say. That’s fine. There is a writing component to this, which you may undertake, but it’s not necessary. The world doesn’t need more writers, in my opinion; the world needs more people directly engaging directly with it and being in relationship with it7. My workshops are more about encouraging different ways of thinking, or helping return to a way of thinking or relationship that you’ve drifted from. To me our future demands not something new, but a return to a more engaged way of existing in the world. Paying attention is the first step, and that’s what this workshop will be about.
As for how it will work is every week participants will get something to read and perhaps a prompt to write to, with the hope you they might share it the following week. There will be lots of open-ended discussion; I don’t plan things too carefully because I prefer lots of opportunity for the group to take each installment where it wants to go. It sounds vague but it seems to work.
“Every class I teach will begin with birds.”
Terry Tempest Williams, Emergence Magazine, 29 May, 2026
I recently sprang for a broadside of a poem by Tess Gallagher called Choices. It’s one of my all time favorite poems and it hangs in a frame I situated directly over my desk. I put it there because it is a reminder of the need to pay attention; in this case the poet prepares to prune some trees to improve her view and realizes that doing so will destroy a bird nest. So she stops. That moment of awareness saves … what? Who knows! That is the importance of attention. The pause we take before an action that could possibly change everything.
If nothing else, I think this mindful approach to the moments of our lives that we might otherwise miss if we are constantly seeking mindless distraction is a key element in taking advantage of the gift of life in the first place. So that’s what this class means to me, this pursuit. Everything I do is based in this, beginning all those years ago when I started writing a single sentence every day as an effort not just to write, but to freakin’ live with some semblance of intention. It worked for me beyond anything I would have imagined, beginning with my first book and everything that has come since, including this newsletter. Hopefully some of you would like to participate in discussing, practicing, whatevering this too. Again, you may learn more and enroll HERE.
Are There Any Irritable Readers in the Oakland/Bay Area Region?
I’m going to be at Clio’s in Oakland next week, June 23, at 7pm to discuss writing Indigenous memoir with Terria Smith. Terria wrote a lovely book called I Love You So Many, which comes out “officially” next week. I was fortunate to read it in advance and blurb it, and now Terria and I will be discussing our books and our lives in person next week. If you are in the area, come out and say hello. It should be spirited and enjoyable.
For those of you not in the area, you will have a chance too! I’ll be revisiting a conversation with Terria as part of a new monthly series on Indigenous writers called PERCH. That will go down via Zoom on July 26 at 6:00pm Mountain Time. It’s donation-based but free if you like; I’ll be talking about it more next time I write a newsletter. But if you’re interested, there is more info and registration details HERE. I’m excited about this series getting off the ground and I think it will be fun for everyone.
And Finally….
A beautiful bird-centric poem from my friend Chris Dombrowski, writing in The Sun, that I stumbled across entirely by accident … which means I was supposed to see it:
Miigwech for your time in reading this far, my friends! I hope this late spring/early summer is treating you well.
Yes, this means Robin is doing two gigs with us as part of the festival; her Saturday night, August 1st, thing at the Wilma (keep your eyes on the Wilma marquee, Missoulians!) as well as the PBP event, which they call a BLOOM, on Sunday. We are very fortunate!
My buddy Draplin did the design work for us again and I can tell you the results are spectacular. The dude is a graphics-design wizard; a hirsute, cantankerous, giant-hearted graphics-design wizard.
Typically and generally from the mouths of fresh-faced white people barely more than a third my age.
Less an issue, and therefore less necessary, with Niibin, summer, on the doorstep.
Okay, you got me, I’m totally judging them. shaking fist at sky [Okay, since you can’t footnote a footnote, I’m bracketing this. I was trying to put “shaking fist at sky” between asterisks but doing so auto-formatted to italics. I don’t want italics. If I wanted italics I’d have manually italicized it. I don’t know how to make this stupid website not auto-italicize that. This is the kind of thing that makes me want to 100% abandon anything tech, which I suppose is the proper course of action because it’s hard to imagine all of this stuff not just getting worse and worse.]
At least I don’t think so! 😬
There are so many great people out there who can help you become a better writer, at least the nuts and bolts of it, or the technical craft of it; I’m not one of them.
Looking forward to your workshop! I also think writing to each other is a form of reclaiming attention.. <3 https://www.sarabruya.com/post/please-write
Thank you for the poem. Your posts always bring me something worthwhile, and this one three.