My Greedy Heart

i try not to leave nail marks in everything

Dear Friends,

Happy July 12th. Only two calendar weeks until my birthday, the only holiday I acknowledge in July.

This week, I’ve spent more time than usual deep journaling, while simultaneously spending less time on my usual daily activities. As I come around to the close/start of another year in this body, my brain and heart naturally get together and start collaborating, asking questions like, what next and was it a good year and so forth. I like marking the turning of my own personal year more than New Years’ Day (is it the Leo in me? We’ll never know), and this has usually been a time of assessing and goal setting. It’s not not that right now, but I kept finding that I was reluctant to chronicle these kind of purposeful reflections. My journaling, deep as it has been, is a loosey-goosey map of loosey-goosey thoughts, as usual.

In the absence, then, of having either a grand vision for my coming year or a thoughtful summary of my year past, I must come to you with my hands full of a different thing: anticipatory grief. I do not mind aging; it is a privilege. I do not mind getting closer to the part of my Life that is dying, either: the larger goodbye is the natural thing. It’s the smaller partings that are hard for me. It’s the actual changing of seasons and closing of doors, that one moment when New Years’ Eve clicks over into New Years’ Day: the moment that what is becomes what was. I have spent oh-so-much of my life mourning the smaller goodbyes.

I guess if I only have one life - signs pointing to yes - then I would like for it to be in service of Life itself…I would like to know: did I pay attention, did I taste, did I breathe deeply, did I linger, did I let the feelings in, did I get curious about others, did I honor all beings, did I tread carefully, did I love well? If so, to Life I will return my own Life… trusting that a small life, lived well, is no small thing. That god, if she exists, has given me This and asked nothing of me - but the ask is in the gift; ergo: to your sum I add what I have, hopefully, in this brief span made oh-so-mine. ¹

I think I’m always working out what mortality and meaning have to do with me, and this year is no different. The writing above - stream of consciousness journaling which I am including here perhaps unwisely - led me back to Song of Myself, in which Whitman engages in a perpetual tug-of-war between the individual and the Conscious Whole.

I find I incorporate gneiss and coal and long-
threaded moss and fruits and grains and esculent 
roots,
And am stucco'd with quadrupeds and birds all over 
--Song of Myself

He does not, in my unstudied opinion, ever reach much of a resolution, but I do think he ends up making the point broadly that to live as oneself in the midst of the multitudinous energy of Life is enough. He is showing, and asking, can you keep remembering that you are single and that you contain multitudes? Can you hold on to this your whole life, can you keep returning to this understanding?

So: anticipatory grief. I want the pieces of my heart that are made up of other people to be always around me. I want to have everything all at once: to be stucco’d with quadrupeds. I want, in loving, my love to be returned immediately, deeply, forever. I know this will not be, and try to steel myself for every eventual parting and sea change. I break my own heart a thousand times before it actually gets broken in reality.

I have a splendid imagination for the future, if we are talking about hurts and griefs. I am learning that I have little to no ability to imagine the good that also waits ahead. What is here always feels like it is better than what might be next. In this, Whitman would disagree with me.

I do not know what is untried and afterward, 
But I know it is sure and alive and sufficient. 

Each who passes is considered, and each who stops 
is considered, and not a single one can it fail.
--Song of Myself

It’s really risky to pay close loving attention to the present, because it can make whatever is coming later seem less worthy. I am still learning - I will learn my whole life - how or if it is possible to love what is without worrying about what will happen when I must let it go. I am learning to have more faith in what is ‘untried and afterward’. Here, Mary Oliver (always, forever):

In Blackwater Woods
Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

- "In Blackwater Woods", from American Primitive, 1983

This has been a good year, full of days. It is a year I feel proud to give back to Life and say, here, I made this very much my own, thank you for the loan. Because I am proud of it, I also want to leave deep nail marks in it when it’s pried from my fingers. I hope I won’t. I must empty my hands again for what will be. No matter what the following year of life brings, I hope - I hope, I hope - that I am poised to take hold of it gratefully, carefully, greedily, in the certainty that it is sure, it is alive, it is sufficient. And when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.

Thank you for your presence here. I am stucco’d with you.

Here are three things I love and recommend. They are all things to watch.

1. The Leftovers

This show came out in 2017; I have tried repeatedly to watch it since and made it no further than episode 2 or 3. BUT at the urging of my friend Ben D. whose taste is impeccable, I have been trying it again. And he was right! Of course! It’s a slow burn but very worthy of your time.

The show starts three years after the disappearance - sudden and total - from Earth of approx. 14 million people. If your grew up in church, like I did, this premise is familiar - The Rapture being An Event that was certain to herald the end of days, in which the faithful would be whisked away by God in the blink of an eye. The show is not religious, and it is not interested in this particular biblical narrative, but it is very interested in what kinds of religions, what kinds of faith or devastations of faith, come to preoccupy anyone who has survived such a cataclysmic event. It’s interesting to rewatch something made in a pre-Covid world that tries to predict or imagine what a global response to a global disaster might look like. It’s especially interesting how accurately they were able to imagine that there will be no long-lived global understanding of such an event; the fractured aftermath, and how it goes on fracturing, is to me what’s most interesting here.

I’m almost mid-way through Season 3; I think Season 2 is one of the top-five seasons of television I’ve ever seen.

2. Arrival

This is my favorite movie of all time. I recently felt very validated when it showed up pretty high (#29!!!!) on the NYT’s 100 best movies of the 21st century, because every time I recommend it to someone, the response is, “huh, never heard of it,” and now you have! If I haven’t already insisted that you watch it before!

I love it because this is an alien movie about linguistics. I think it’s the most thoughtful take on extraterrestrial life and the possibilities of language and time that I’ve ever seen. It is directed by Denis Villenueve, if that is important to you. Amy Adams is incredible in it. I watch it every few months, I cry every time.

I will watch it with you. That can be your birthday present to me.

3. Chicken Shop Date

This interview show is getting more publicity lately - and bigger stars - but it’s been good forever and has always deserved a spot on this list. Amelia Dimoldenberg has celebrities - they used to be mostly musicians but has expanded to include many other kinds of artists - meet her in a chicken shop in London somewhere, they both eat nuggets, and she creates an atmosphere that is delightfully perfect in it’s resemblance to the awkwardness and discomfort of a first date. The videos are anywhere from 5-10 minutes long. I love them all, but the recent one with Idris Elba is a good place to start. Or this old-school classic with Aitch.

Okay, friends. We carry on.

Love you very much.

Corie

1. journal entry 7/8/25