Quitting is the new August — the magical mundane

For the last few years I've been threatening to quit August, and this year, I finally did it. And it was fucking awesome.

August has been cruel to me these last years. You can go back to the August 2019 blog here in the Magical Mundane for a general recap of why, but what you won’t read there is all the truly fucked up stuff that subsequent Augusts have brought since I wrote that. But this post isn’t about all that…

In the August 2019 post I also wrote about ‘radical discontinuity’, defined as ‘an intentional breaking of personal patterns designed to disrupt the default mode network, stimulate our senses and make us awake and aware’. This is what quitting August was about this year… harnessing the power of radical discontinuity.

The first thing I did was book myself a 15-day solo writing retreat from the 1st-15th in a tiny little off-grid caravan in the woods of northern Portugal near the banks of the Mondego River. After some 3 years of internal gestation, it was finally time to birth my new creation: Claiming Each Other: Somatic First-Aid for Everyday Relationships. You can read the full birth story here. It was truly the best of times. All was quiet and I was immersed in nature. I worked with tireless ease to bring into material form the three-month training which will be offered for the first time next month. I wrote and wrote, rested and ran by the river, swam, slept and dreamed.

While walking the trail through the woods from the outdoor shower to the caravan, I said out loud to myself: this is how I need to live.

And I remembered Hawaii… living in the treehouse deep in Waipio…. How I went ‘crazy’... wild…awakened… enlivened… How I told myself, ‘Don’t forget this…’

I stayed in the caravan and the surrounding areas for two weeks. I will remember that time forever, I hope… on a cellular level. My bodymind will remember what it is to strip it all down to the basics and be at peace, and I will be able to recall and embody that state perhaps when I am in a less tranquil moment of life; when some confusion or chaos begs the medicine of our sweet, sweet mother.

I am looking forward to selling our house and moving into the caravan soon…

Collecting water from the public spring and carrying it home is one of my favorite human tasks.

For the last two weeks of August I was reunited with Skeets, Phoenix and my mom. We set off on a group pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago and on the first day, I was again remembering Hawaii…

It was the same there on the camino as on my last day there on the big island. I remember… I sat in front of the ocean instructing myself, ‘Don't forget this…. Don’t forget….’

Hawaii had worked me to the core. I had been re-shaped, re-educated, dis-membered and re-membered, and what I came to understand in that process… who I came to become, I did not wish to forget. I knew that leaving the wilds and returning to the city presented the threats of domestication. Balance can be hard for me to maintain in the city and in ‘normal’ society. Wildness is not well tolerated. Ditto craziness, messiness, ecstatic chaos. The city and normal society is about order, compliance and the illusion of safety. It can feel like the antithesis of natural law, creativity and transformation. I know people do it and I bow deeply to them. But after Hawaii, I just could not anymore. I needed to stay free.

It was May, 2010 when I was leaving Hawaii. Now, in August 2024, here on my first Camino de Santiago somewhere between Lugo and Ferreira, I was telling myself again, ‘Don't forget this… don't forget… This is how I need to live’. The experience of simultaneously remembering and presently living these words was some obscure state where memory, knowing, longing, sadness, clarity and hope mix and mingle in my heart and mind. (Saudade?) Once again, like a wild animal, I felt the ambivalent threat of ‘normal’ life… what I would trade for a superficial sense of comfort and security. And I felt the resistance again… I was preemptively sad at the possibility of forgetting myself… of getting sucked back in, distracted, overwhelmed with shit I don't even want. I was tasting deep freedom and peace once again just walking the trail. How to honor this knowing? Is greater balance possible?

Although my time in Hawaii is a specific guidepost for my path of becoming, I have never been a stranger to freedom, before or since. Yes, I have sometimes gotten trapped, lost, confused or otherwise wandered off the trail. However, when I take an honest look at my life, that within me which could never be caged shines most brightly and has led me in earnest. For much of my youth I fought tooth and nail against the forces that would try to belittle me, reduce me, shame me. I saw the burdens of conformity… ironically, and most painfully perhaps for those who seemed to already more easily be able to ‘fit in’. In some ways, growing up in a very ‘white’, racist, narrowly christian, football worshiping rural Texas town saved me. I could never fit it. I was basically a lost cause and so I was free to be myself… there was no need to even try.

Remaining true to myself in those formative years carried me for the rest of my life. I knew myself and I had cultivated a relationship with the freedom to be and explore. The freedom to be honest about my fears, doubts and desires, freedom to taste new worlds and to change course when it no longer felt right, freedom to explore the taboo and freedom to admit when I was in over my head and to ask for help when I got in trouble. This is freedom as I know it and I have had the good fortune, and also the courage, to embody it in many different situations… most interestingly perhaps, in times of strife. Who we are in struggle, challenge and conflict, I do believe shows us something about who we are… if we are brave enough to know it. Or at least it shows us something about where we’re at. More on this some other time.

Yes… I was on the Camino and I was telling myself, “Don’t forget this’. And I knew… it wasn’t over. Not yet. Because I hadn’t forgotten. The sadness, anxiety, and dauntedness of forgetting was not inevitable… What I was experiencing… this memory to remember… was another guidepost pointing me to the possibilities of my various paths. Which way will I choose? And another phrase came to mind: ‘if you don't change courses, you're gonna end up where you're going’. And I knew it was already done.

and don’t forget to stamp your pilgrim passport

I withdrew from grad school on my second day off the camino. I had enrolled in a second master’s program after a year of consideration and in a flash, it was over. It was a big move which immediately created a lot more space and time in my life. Besides my prayers, It was the question I had taken with me on the Camino: should I quit school? As I walked, I asked my question again and again and I asked for signs to show me the way. It was on the fourth or fifth day I got my answer… hidden right there all along, baked right into the question. ‘I should quit school’. So I did. And with that, I had another realization about something else I needed to do…

On the third or fourth day walking I had already decided to walk the whole thing again. But not just the 100 km pilgrimage from Lugo to Santiago as we were doing this time. The whole Camino Frances: 780 km from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port to Santiago de Compostela. And I wouldn’t just walk it, I decided that I would pick up every single piece of trash I saw along the trail.

I was awakened with purpose… with freedom.

Perhaps this revelation is underwhelming for some of you. I would understand, if so. Being called to walk almost 800 kilometers on somewhat rugged terrain picking up other people’s gross toilet paper and litter is maybe not most people’s idea of freedom or enlightenment. When I told Skeets and my mom about it, they initially supported me. But as the reality of the situation set in a bit, Skeets expressed a little bit of reserve. “You don’t have to pick up every piece of trash you see… just some would be enough. If everyone did that, it would be much better for everyone. Picking up every piece along the entire trail is too much for one person. It’s a bit ridiculous.”

Bless Skeets. He’s supported me so much in just about every single damn thing I’ve wanted to do in this life. Yes, he’s had his trepidation sometimes… his reservations. A couple times he flat out didn’t like the path I was on, dug his heels in the sand and chose not to go with me. But he didn’t stand in my way either. See… we’ve always both valued freedom… it was promised to each other in our vows: ‘Open your hearts completely but be independent, for the Free make the best allies… they give allegiance instead of obedience’.

My eyes water now remembering this allegiance we have gifted each other in our nearly 13 years together. He expressed his hesitations about my sacred trash walk and I, in my shaky, yet full resolve said, ‘Yes… I do need to pick up every single piece. Yes, it would be better if everyone did a little, but they don’t and sometimes big efforts make a difference. And anyway… it’s not for anyone else. It’s just for me. It’s between me and god. So I don’t need to hear anymore about why it’s too much for one person or why it can’t be done. All I need now from you is your full, undying support to figure out the challenges to make it possible for me to do it.’

And he said, ‘Ok. I got you. Let’s do it’.

Thank you, Skeets. I love you.

This pilgrimage this year was about being with my family. Phoenix is 10, my mom 71, Skeets 44 and I, 40. I suppose every pilgrim has their unique challenge, mission, motivation or reason for walking. This time, part of our mission from god was simply moving as a group. Each of us are very different people and committing to walking as a team required different things from each of us than had we gone it alone. As I saw it, part of our mission from god was celebrating our vitality and resilience as a family and doing it together. And we did it! It took us 6 days. We averaged about 1.75 miles an hour and walked an average of 8-9 hours a day. Skeets and I were equal parts so proud of Phoenix and amazed my my mom’s sheer determination to complete the journey. Many of y’all know my mom. She’s an inspiration.

Thank you for that, mom. I love you.

My dad was there and Melanie, too. I experienced Melanie through me, mostly in times of frustration. I felt as she felt, saw as she saw, and I had compassion for her. I felt how she just could not ‘let things go’... how they ate her up inside. I felt how ‘right’ she had been in her own experience of things that made her mad and sad and how unable to make peace she had been… until the very end. This helped me remember the necessity to return to my own patience, my own people, my own capacity and willingness to let things go. Not perfectly, of course… but enough to be able to stay together in all our unfinished humanness, with the gifts of it all clearly in focus. I don’t know how, but somehow this camino was healing for her too; we are still connected after all; she released for me what I could not and still today, I offer her the same.

Mom told me she heard my dad’s footsteps behind her a few times and when I tuned in to feel for him, it wasn't just him… There were so many of them. For the last few years, as I’ve more deeply honed my ancestral practices, I've stopped needing to know every single one of them who accompanies me on my path and started just trusting more that who is with me is ok and welcomed, as long as I'm in my right intentions. The camino was different because it was obvious that the people walking with us on the other side weren’t just ‘our people’… they were people from everywhere; and everytime. They were the souls of those who were still on the pilgrimage from thousands of years ago and those who were still to come … turns out, The Way is always filled with pilgrims from the past, present and future.

At some point in our walk my mom asked me if I remembered how my dad used to regularly canoe the local rivers around where we lived cleaning up the trash. I didn’t remember that. What I remember is that he taught me to love adventuring in the outdoors. I remember camping, hiking and canoeing. I remember road tripping and star gazing and eating outside. I remember the wilds of the Chihuahuan Desert and that we had always been part of it… for many, many generations. It makes sense that he would take the initiative to go clean up the rivers.. That he would help keep the places he loved to be nice and clean. Service of this nature isn’t just a drag. It keeps you canoeing… it keeps you on the river. Both of my parents were inclined towards service in their own ways and that certainly influenced my own sense of responsibility towards giving back and doing perhaps a little more than what is typically considered one’s own share of collective responsibility. But still… I hadn't remembered. And mom reminding me of his trash missions came in perfect timing. Unsurprisingly, since he was with us.

Thanks, dad. I love you.

You see, the night before, doubt had already threatened me. ‘I'm not gonna walk 800 kilometers picking up trash. That's ridiculous. There’s probably some organizations that do that, or the city does it. Why do I need to do that? Maybe it doesn’t have to be every single piece. Maybe I should just finish grad school as planned instead.’ Back in the comfort of a hotel room, I felt the obscure sorrow of being off the camino. The grief of the material world pulling me back in… telling me why my inspiration was stupid, pointless and unreasonable. I kept giving myself ‘the out’. ‘I don't have to do it. Maybe I won’t do it…’

But then again…

…maybe I will.

“Why do you want to do this? What’s your motivation?”, Phoenix asked me about my sacred trash walk.

I just shrugged and took a deep sigh. “It keeps me on the trail and it keeps me in right relationship with the trail,” I told him simply. And he just nodded his head in quiet, thoughtful acceptance.

I love you all. So much. So much it hurts.

May we all find freedom in more raw simplicity. And may our caminos be at least sometimes, clearly marked.

Aug 31 Quitting is the new August

A Practice

Aug 31 Quitting is the new August

Sep 30 Drinking the Autumn Elixirs

Jan 31 The Manifesto

A Practice