This week, I’m delighted to share some wisdom from Jane Ratcliffe.
Jane is a writer whose work explores how we live with change, loss, and the things we can’t control. In our recent conversation on The One You Feed, we talked about accepting what we can’t change without giving up. Today, she’s sharing a piece from her Substack, Beyond, called “Leaky Windows” along with a practice and reflection written just for you!
“Leaky Windows”
Michigan has been going through it this summer. Relentless skyrocketing heat, day after day—pavements too hot for doggie paws, air too humid for pulling weeds, for even sitting in the shade sipping electrolyte water and writing.
An almost-tornado that knocked out power in the midst of the endless heat over the 4th of July weekend; my neighbor’s diesel-fueled generator rattling the rooms in my house and the inescapable, non-stop drone rattling my sanity.
The soul-crushing wildfire smoke, hazy and unbreathable—all the wildlife that could not escape it; all the people without homes or in homes without AC. The Detroit area had the worst air quality in the world for two days running.
And we’re the epicenter of the transmitted-by-lettuce explosive-diarrhea parasite.
Everywhere on the planet has their own burgeoning list.
In the midst of this, I’m getting new windows. The windows I have now came with the house. Cheap and falling apart at the time of purchase nearly two decades ago, the springs that allow the windows to go up and down have been busting. I hate to add to the landfill, and windows are expensive (I mean, whoa!), so I’ve taken to propping open the sashes with books.
But that’s not the only reason. These windows leak just as my windows in all my NYC apartments leaked. Leaky windows have always felt safe to me. My fears have long revolved around indoor toxins: mold, paint, polyurethane, insulation, CO2, VOCs. That sort of thing. Leaky windows let all that dangerous stuff out and welcome in the healing breath of the planet.
This isn’t just my own intuition guiding me, myriad experts confirm some amount of leakage is vital for a healthy home.
But now I find myself wanting to keep it all out.
When the third window broke at the beginning of this summer, a key one that offers air circulation to the upstairs and downstairs, I knew I could no longer put it off: I ordered sturdy windows with proper seals that will protect against heat and noise—and that I will be paying off until I’m seventy.
I knew the windows were necessary and that I would enjoy the benefits of them. But other than being much more aesthetically pleasing, I wasn’t particularly excited for them. I would rather have spent the money elsewhere.
And then this summer slunk in. And I found myself obsessed by the windows: counting the days in near panic until installation. Rather than the outer world leaking in, I wanted it locked out.
This is a place I’ve not found myself before.
And yet, of course, the outside world is golden light and tiny blooming flowers and all those sparkling insects. It’s the neighbors, everyone hot, with melting food and devices losing charge and bad sleep, who helped each other through the blackout during a heatwave. It’s the streets that lead us to friends and good restaurants and parks nestled along the river. It’s the smell of honeysuckle and grass. It’s my sweet old man kitty Rudy Lu, possibly in his final months (maybe not…he’s a bit of wonder!), nestled on the stone path in the back garden, absorbing the sun.
And it’s the boys, just two days ago, on dirtbikes, so young and cool in their black helmets and colorful jerseys, who stopped their sidewalk conversation midstream as Delilah, slow and panting with age in this heat, and I walked past, to tell me that they liked my dog. “She’s so cute,” one added. The other two nodded. Their future manhood already present in their tight, upright chests. And later, we crossed their paths again, and they called out across the street, these three tough young boys, practicing bike maneuvers in the middle of the town’s main road, “Hi, again! We still love your dog.” Their hearts were so shiny, their words so sincere, I almost wept.
This love, this hope, this brightness, I do not want to block out.
 Delilah on her eleventh birthday…not really loving her crown. |
We are stardust, we are golden. And we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden, wrote Joni Mitchell.
And it’s true. The American Museum of Natural History states, “Every atom of oxygen in our lungs, of carbon in our muscles, of calcium in our bones, of iron in our blood – was created inside a star before Earth was born.”
What the stars created, we are destroying.
I am filled with daily despair over what are we doing to the planet, to her animals, to ourselves. Everyone I know, in varying ways, is having an I’m-okay (soft-speak for stressful) summer. One of my English cousins, who is in deep communion with the earth, and I were incandescent with fury that largely, we’re fighting our own governments to make change.
Earlier today, I interviewed Claudia Rankine. Her heart and her mind are as vast as the universe. No matter the question—from creating a just society to self-care, even craft—her answers invariably returned to the importance of community. The garden.
We need one another. And the planet and the animals need us to truly grasp that.
I don’t have a pithy closing for this newsletter. Rather I’m sharing a corner of my bruised heart because I agree with Joni Mitchell that we have to get ourselves back to what’s left of the garden. I also agree with Claudia Rankine on the importance of community, the importance of grieving, the importance of rising together.
I like this version of Woodstock, because Joni first tells the story of why she wasn’t at Woodstock.
Try This:
Take a walk—with or without some doggies! Don’t check your phone. Just stay open. Who or what crosses your path? Do you feel a connection? It could be a tree, a rock, a human, a fast car, an enormous building, a squirrel. Does it feel like you’re getting yourself back to the garden?
Reflect on This:
What’s something that you’ve been wanting to keep out of your life? And why? Might there be a fresh, safe way to let it in? Might now be the time?
Jane Ratcliffe, Beyond
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