biography is dialogue

listening and traveling this summer

I’ve been sitting across the table from friends, listening to their questions and asking them of my Pamela Coleman Smith tarot deck, as I practice my new practice. The resonance between conversations is striking, and I suppose in part that is because they are all conversations with me. One of the reasons why I use cards is because they introduce another voice, which sometimes challenges and sometimes closely follows my own instincts. I think of each card as a tuning fork, or a click of echolocation, which I tap and tap until I feel a satisfying, settled response.

When I taught research, I called this “tuning our sensitive antennae.” Honing our somatic instinct for knowing when a piece of information connects, a question is leading us on the right track, or a puzzle is cracking in front of us, is an essential tool for any investigation, inner or outer. This knowing is also what happens when we see a card reverberate in a conversation after a reading, or we understand how multiple cards are working together to tell us something that we know is true. Often, the experience of articulating an honest truth to myself is a rush of tears. What does it feel like for you?

I’ve been sharing the what of my research here, for the past several years. Now I want to turn to the how. Partially because, a year after relocating, I am still sending out call-and-response queries to figure out a new what. And because I’m in training to read tarot, and what’s arising is similar to what came through when, during pandemic lockdown, I conducted oral histories with friends and educators, and began to weave those stories into collective understanding. As I notice patterns, I want to share them back, because we all can contribute to each others’ understanding, and this is my research right now. The research that is dialogue, that is the following of the paths through life that each of us are on.

What I am hearing is that we are yearning to be put to work, but not at the expense of our own creativity and rest. We are discerning the difference between fear of failure, and devotion to service. We are showing up for each other and want more of it, and we are also holding so much, and wondering how both of these can be true, and what to do. We are finding resonance in the slow, beautiful song of mother earth in all her forms.

The steady, supportive shade of a tree. The powerful moment when we utter what is most true, and trust it until we complete a task. The courage and patience to see a gift when it is offered, and receive it with gratitude when we are ready, and plant the seed that will grow over generations. These are some of the images that are showing up, over and over.

When I turned 40, I initiated myself with my own series of questions, and the what became the annsisters stories that I have already told you. The how became a new understanding of myself, vows that I took, a new middle name to express the purpose that had found, at midlife, after I was done having babies but most of my mothering was still in my future. The how is the basket of tools that I have as I move through the world and its constant shifting. The how is my work, and it will lead me to many whats.

This summer my work is leading me back to New England to tell stories about annsisters and talk to old houses, now with a new understanding of who I am and why I’m doing it. I’m talking about the Cambridge Cooperative Housekeeping Society, Aunt Zina and Sister Silvia Mitarachi Wright, at the Dublin Folklife Seminars in Deerfield, MA on June 26. Join me! I’ll be also in Cambridge, Harvard, and Dartmouth, doing what I do and talking with the past and reading the future. Come, come.