A List Of Questions

Do I have everything I need? Do I need everything I have?

Have I eaten? Have we eaten? Have they eaten?
Who needs to sleep? Who needs to cry? Who needs to rest and heal?
Am I ready? Are we ready? Are they ready?

What do I rely on?
Am I relying on things that hurt me?
Can I change that?
Where can I get the things I rely on?
If the things I rely on now are taken away, who will I rely on?

What do my loved ones rely on?
Have they slept?
What do my enemies rely on?
Have I let them sleep?

Have I looked up? Have I gone outside?
Have I rested?
Do I have everything I need?
Do I need everything I have?

Is the rule I’m following real?
What am I proving through my actions?
Have I pursued disobedience?
How will I?

Have I forgotten anyone?
Have I forgotten myself?
How can I make myself remember both at the same time

What am I looking forward to?
What can I build?
Who is building with me? Have they eaten? Have they slept?

Where am I now? what do I see what do I smell what do I hear what do I taste what do I feel
What do I feel?
What do we feel?
Have we felt it enough?

Am I looking?
Should I look closer?
Does it hurt to look closer? Is it useful to look closer?
Is the pain helping me? Is the pain helping anyone?
Do I need it?

Is that true?
Is that true?
Is that true?

Do I have everything I need? Do I need everything I have?
Do you?

From the archives: March 26, 2020.

From the archives: March 20, 2021.

From the archives: February 25, 2022.

Earlier today, I sent the below to the Stone Soup Supper Club. I'm sharing it with you, too.

Yesterday, I was walking along the Cheonggyecheon, which is a seven-ish-mile long stream in downtown Seoul. It’s a natural stream that has been shaped and reshaped by human proximity. By the middle of the 20th century, thanks to nearby human occupation and development, the stream was filled with waste and trash. So the city poured concrete into it and replaced it with a freeway. 

Half a century later, the freeway was disassembled, and the stream was painstakingly restored. 

As I walked along the water yesterday, I saw so much life. Blueish koi the size of cats, swimming against the current; schools of minnows; families of pigeons, mallards, and a pair of incredibly pissed-off brown-eared bulbuls harassing a perfectly innocent turtledove. And then I came out from under a bridge, and I saw two enormous grey herons in flight over the water. One landed on a rock in the middle of the stream. The other landed on a willow branch, which swayed precariously under its weight but did not bow. 

These two huge, elegant birds watched as the people walking along the stream stopped to photograph them. Their bright eyes tracked the movement of phone camera lenses, instinctively watching for the darting flash of fish. This stream had been restored thoroughly enough to become their home. 

They have no experience of the version of the stream that was filled with waste and runoff, nor of the freeway that, for a time, replaced it. All they know is the water, and the rocks, and the willow branches, and the fish, and the camera lenses.

A little while ago, I dropped the signoff from this newsletter. Because, I don't know. It felt like it was maybe overkill. I shouldn't have. I should keep it in every Stone Soup dispatch, forever. Because it is always true.

Do what you can. Care for yourself and the people around you. Believe that the world can be better than it is now. Never give up.

-gailey