Songwriting, Scholarship, and Summer Dreams
The many lives of a notebook, a book that was once a tree, and honoring Juneteenth
“How would we spend our time if we realized the conflicts we are experiencing now urgently demand that we create a more loving world as soon as possible?” - Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Undrowned, p. 83
“For what good is knowing unless it is coupled with caring?” - Robin Wall Kimmerer
These two quotes open the notebook that I have been carrying around, by the looks of it, since 2005 when I returned home from the Peace Corps. It’s a recycled hardcover book, ideal for cutting and pasting and gluing things into, for big ideas and brainstorming. This notebook has had many lives. Its first dated fragment is a song lyric written on a coffee filter from a friend’s apartment in April 2005. This section of the notebook - its first life - is quotes and lyric fragments 25/26/27-year old Steph, who was traveling and mostly living in Idaho working at a guest ranch and singing songs. I love looking at this section and remember her, who is still me, and also no longer me.
If you open the notebook from the other side, you will find doctoral student Steph, dissertation Steph, scholar Steph. 41/42/43-year old Steph, Dr. Stephanie, scholar and professor. Its second life.
This summer I would like for them to meet each other again, to meet in the middle of these pages, in myself, past and current lives. For they have a lot in common and they are fuller together. I am happiest when I am singing a lot, and feel most like myself when I do. And I love being a scholar-professor-writer, and I sang for my students a lot this year. So they are still together, meeting each other, and I’d like them to meet more, in greater balance. I carry this intention, energy, and aspiration with me into the solstice.
Somewhere along the way, probably circa 2007, the notebook went into storage. And sometime years later, probably when I was clearing out things from my parents’ garage after my mom died and my dad was moving to Vegas in 2021, I rediscovered it, and repurposed it for scholarship. Songwriting and Scholarship, in humble service to life.
It is “summer” here, which I haven’t found a good word to call it. Summer in quotes because is not summer in a climatological sense, as rainy season recently resumed. It is summer in the sense that students have graduated and (mostly) left, and we have two months where we are not “off,” but we can do things we can’t do during the intensive teaching time, like dream and scheme and write and plan and propose and such. This week was our first week without students and classes, the start of our “non-teaching” months. And there’s only two of them, and they could easily slip away into scrolling and scattering, which wouldn’t be so bad, but it would be nice for them to feel purposeful. Creative. Spacious. Productive.
I started the week by trying to get my office in order and cleaned out my desk. I opened a drawer that I hadn’t opened in months probably, and took out the trusty old notebook, which sits in the top drawer as a keeper of important knowledge, something I don’t refer back to often but which keeps a trove of learning that I like having near me.
It had become ant fodder. It had become food.
Its third life.
I pulled it out, and it was swarmed by tiny ants, these little ants I see on my desk all the time, and often wonder, “I haven’t left any food here…what are you eating?!”
Well, they were eating the notebook!
It was quite miraculous, really. They were walking off with little pieces of the binding. It’s a natural notebook, recycled paper, and must have been good food for them. Or a last resort. Or building material. I had not left other offerings, so they were making off with the only thing I had left, my notebook.
The scholarship side of notebook is entitled “Relational Enlivened Vitality-centered pedagogies <3 (un)learning to serve life.” It contains lists, like the 14 mindfulness trainings of the Order of Interbeing, characteristics of white supremacy culture, the ten steps for life in the planthropocene, quotes, poems. And of course, the song lyrics of the 2005-2007 era.
It had become in service to life, indeed!
I debated about whether to just allow the ants to keep eating it, to sacrifice the notebook to the compost heap, but I decided to keep it. I shook it out, placed it in the sun, and brought it home. I’m going to trust that the ants got what they needed and will find other sources of food - I have no doubt that they will. There may already be an offering on the floor, a cranberry left behind from my trail mix.
In the circles I move in, we talk a lot about the need to compost old ideas and ways of being, to hospice modernity, of the need to realign ourselves with the Earth’s metabolism. This was a very literal metabolizing of the ideas within the notebook, the ants walking away with crumbs of the notebook’s binding. However, these are the ideas I believe we need to carry forward…so where does that leave us? Maybe that, at the end of the day, even the best ideas become ant food. Maybe, the best we can do is prepare ourselves and our ideas to become nutritious food, good soil.
On our second official day of “summer,” in our little department office suite, we had a meeting of the minds and hearts to plan our hopes, dreams, aspirations and manifestations for this time. At foot of our beloved Earth Charter tree (which I learned this week is actually three trees!), we did some dreaming and scheming for the “summer” months. Here is my mind-heart map:
The themes for Dreams and Schemes of “Summer 2023” are: Writing, Planning, Learning, Proposing, and Sharing.
Also: Spaciousness. Desire. Pleasure. JOY. Love.
Devotion to Magic and Creativity.
Flirting with nature.
Learning: Canva. Espanol. A few online courses I’m signed up for.
I want to dedicate my summer to creativity and productivity - not in the capitalist sense, but in the sense of just wanting to make things. I want to minimize distractions, practice attention liberation (adrienne maree brown), and be devoted to my vocational and creative responsibilities. I also want to rest, dwell in spaciousness, and not do, which minimizing distractions supports.
I want to write the heck out of this summer.
You’ll notice that top and center is:
BOOK PROPOSAL.
Because I am writing a book, or a book proposal, that I am not sure what it is yet. But it came in a dream, asking to be written, so I will tell you the story of the dream.
This book started with a dream.
The kind of dream with a clear message. A declaration. This is the kind of dream you wake up from and realize you were given a direction, and you now have to figure out what to do with it.
In the dream, I was talking to some people, including some of my peace education students. And very clearly, to these students, I said,
“I want to - no, I WILL! - write a book that helps people remember and experience that the book they are holding in their hands was a tree.”
That was it. That was the directive. And now I am trying to figure out what to do with it, how to write a book that helps people remember and experience that the book they are holding was once a tree.
I have felt in my bones for a long time that I needed to write a book, and had many things I could write about, so I began asking the universe what it should be. Please guide me. I am here. I will write. Please show me.
I told this to a friend, after she asked, “Have you thought about turning your dissertation into a book?”
“No,” I replied. “Well, I thought about it, but I feel like there is something else in me. I’m not sure what it is yet. I’ve been asking the universe for guidance around this.” The friend, not uncoincidentally, is someone with whom I share dreams often, with whom I started a dream club on campus for a few months this year.
A few days later, this dream arrived, which had the feeling of a dream with an important message. A directive. A dream with gravity, with weight. A dream that sticks with you. A dream you don’t forget. A dream you are tasked to not only remember, but do something with. Take action around.
What does it mean? I ask myself. How do I do this? How do I write a book that helps people remember and experience that the book they are holding in their hands was a tree?
I don’t know, but I know this is how I have to begin. And I know the only way to figure it out is to write my way through it.
So, I am writing. I have begun. I will keep you posted. I will share fragments with you along the way, and welcome your feedback and input!
Tomorrow is Juneteenth, a day that commemorates the emancipation of enslaved people in the US which became a federal holiday in 2021. For white folks like myself, it is a day for educating ourselves on and reckoning with our history, of reflecting on how we can divest from whiteness and dismantle white supremacy, and a day to take action towards reparations and justice. I found this post from Kina Reed of @divestingfromwhiteness to be a very helpful Juneteenth primer with many actionable items for how non-Black folks can honor the day:
I will be sending payments to Black content creators/educators like Kina Reed who I learn from, and making donations to reparations organizations like The Truth Telling Project and its Grassroots Reparations Campaign (which I also donate to on a monthly basis). The Grassroots Reparations Campaign kicks off Sacred Reparations Season on Juneteenth through August. I will be watching their teach-in - and invite you to join me - which you can find here:
As Kina notes in her post, Black folx have asked for reparations (and more) and instead got this federally recognized holiday that gives everyone the day off. While moving resources isn’t the only work that needs to be done, it is definitely part of it, and we don’t need to wait for the US government to act to engage in micro-reparations. I invite my white US readers to join me in this practice, and invite everyone to let us know in the comments below how you are honoring and celebrating this day.
Happy Juneteenth!