Love without Sorrow
The lingering blooms of May
Boozhoo, indinawemaaganidog! Aaniin! That is to say hello, all of my relatives! Welcome to another edition of An Irritable Métis. May is behind us. It was a lovely month, especially when compared to April, despite the usual and relentless cavalcade of societal travails instigated by soulless villains. Here’s to an even better June! What follows are a few shallow thoughts, followed then by a bunch of announcements of various depths. I appreciate your time and attention, as always….
In the golden light of evening wisps of cotton from the area trees float in the air. Little gusts kick up here and there, catching any number in a dust devil of sorts and it’s beautiful. I can sit and watch and feel I am being transported somewhere magical … except I’m not. I’m here, in this world, and it is magical, isn’t it? Despite the previously mentioned travails and villains.
A fair amount of cotton wisps end up snagged in the spiky branches of the cherry tree, where some of its waxy leaves are green and some are a kind of reddish something-or-other.1 This spindly relative has been a constant companion out my window for more than ten years now. It shows up in a lot of the poetry that comes to me while I stare out the window, daydreaming.
One of the things I look forward to most every spring is when the tree flowers. I didn’t realize how much I look forward to it until I missed it entirely in 2021, when the event came and went while I was out of town for the month of May. I was afraid I was going to miss it this year, as I had a week out of town scheduled toward the end of the month. But I didn’t! The buds began to bulge ten days or so before I was scheduled to leave, then it burst magnificently into flower a couple days later.
cherry tree blooms | abundance of pink flowers | no fruit but bees
For an afternoon or two it buzzed with buggy life of various shapes and sizes. Then, just a couple days before I was to leave, a big storm erupted with surging rain and a vigorous wind that blew most of the flowers away. It made my heart ache a little bit; then I hit the road and, returned, I find no flowers remaining. It’s as if they never happened.
I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t make me a little sad. It also makes me a little sad that the neighbor’s lilacs that hang over my back fence, that I make a point to pause while mowing the lawn2 and lean into nose first for a good, deep whiff of their intoxicating perfume, are also fading and turning kind of brown. They aren’t entirely gone but certainly heading that way.
It’s all quite a lesson in impermanence, isn’t it? So much comes to us and then leaves again, all in the single season, while other elements linger … then also disappear as summer scorches, fades, and autumn finishes the job. We love it all so hard and it is difficult to not be a little bereft when it leaves, which is okay too so long as we don’t cling so hard to the sorrow that we forget the joy it all brought in the first place. So much of living requires we live with loss, or change, or whatever we want to call it. I’m not very good at accepting it myself but I try and do better. Sorrow is a companion I’ve had to make friends with though the relationship is often rocky and fraught. There are other flowers that still haven’t bloomed, after all, and so much abundance yet on the horizon, what do I have to feel sorry for? Every moment alive is a glorious one. It’s just hard to remember that sometimes. I’m sure we are all doing our best. If you’re struggling, you know you’re not alone, right?
love without sorrow | the lingering blooms | of may
Of Particular Interest to Intrepid Readers
I made this trailer to hopefully generate a few more sign-ups to my Missouri River workshop on behalf of the Freeflow Institute this summer. It would sure be awesome if a few more of you could make time to join us. It will be a once-in-a-lifetime experience, a certainty anchored purely on the merits of that particular stretch of Turtle Island regardless of whatever babble comes out of my mouth along the way….
Of Particular Interest to Missoula Area Readers
This Friday, June 2nd, is First Friday in Missoula. If you live around here you know what that means. What you don’t know is that for the last few months Julia has been cranking her way through a bunch of paintings and she is doing a gallery show. Some of the paintings are big, and some of them are medium-sized and they are all gorgeous. They are a combination of Audubon wildlife images over bright colors and shapes. There’s other stuff too, some I haven’t even seen. Swing by her shop, ShowRoom Missoula, at 101 E. Broadway downtown and check them out. They’ll be up all month (and longer), I’m sure.
Of Particular Interest to Readers Looking to Build and Monetize Their Own Newsletters with The Writers’ Co-op
I’m beginning to wonder if I’m the right person to be in this discussion because I’m floundering in the middle of a deep pool of disillusionment as not just a newsletter writer, but as a newsletter reader too. I suppose that monumental struggle is another aspect3 of the entire hellish experience of the online doomscape that one must navigate if one seeks to try and do anything that doesn’t involve working some bullshit job that finds one throwing up in one’s mouth every time one is forced to endure some over-buzz-worded putz from middle-management-or-worse too bashless to recognize nothing anyone does in the organization really matters.4 Regardless, come June 8th, 2:30pm – 3:30pm MDT, I’ll be online, shooting my mouth off as requested. Here are the details:
When freelance rates have gone stagnant, and some publishers are closing altogether, stability as a freelance journalist may feel more precarious than ever.
Many are creating their own lifeboats by producing – and monetizing! – newsletters and building their own audiences. But for those of us who are newsletter-curious, how exactly do you get started? How do you take things that you’re interested in, and build a following?
In this one-hour webinar, The Writers’ Co-op will be joined by two freelance journalists, Chris La Tray and Melinda Wenner Moyer, who will share their wisdom in producing their newsletters. They’ve both built their newsletter audience (without the benefit of a staff job!) and monetized them. They will dig into the nitty gritty of how to find their target audience, and the ins and outs of treating their newsletter as a business.
Registration and other details may be found HERE. It’s $35.00 to attend.
Of Particular Interest to Bozeman Area Readers
At 6pm MDT on Thursday, June 15th, I’ll be at the Museum of the Rockies doing an IN PERSON! presentation of my Métis Buffalo Hunters of the Northern Plains bloviation. This is on behalf of the lecture series sponsored by The Extreme History Project. This will be fun. I haven’t been to the museum in several years and, even more amazing, I found a place to spend the night in Bozeman for under $500. Miraculous!
Of Particular Interest to Jackson Hole Area Readers
I’ve been invited to be a Featured Speaker at the 2023 Jackson Hole Writers Conference. I’ll be doing a keynote address, a couple workshops, and trying not to flail. It’s in a beautiful place I’ve never visited and I hope some of you can make it! All the details HERE.
Of Particular Interest to Everyone Who Has Read This Far
You have made it to the end! Miigwech, my friends, as always. That’s a lot of activity for one month. I’m asking for your thoughts and prayers…. 😬
I’m not very good at identifying colors beyond Roy G. Biv with any real accuracy.
Surely an example of an odious travail invented and foisted on us by villains. Lawns? Mowing?! Truly diabolical!
Undocumented feature?
That’s a lot of “one” and “one’s” I know but this passage courageously survived every edit purely for my own amusement.
We are not alone in our sorrow or our joy or the ever-changing nature of this fragile business of being human. Thanks for the reminder. 💗
I feel very much this way about all the seasons of plants. I’ve said goodbye to the trilliums flowers, a few of them that have still hung on now just look like brownish dried pieces of paper. And the foxgloves and daisies have now appeared which is cause for celebration but I know I will mourn the moment when they fade too. One ongoing lesson in impermanence and celebrating what is here in the moment. Thank you for your words!