Looking for a light in the darkness on Election Day 2020.
It’s Election Day, 2020, and things couldn’t be more uncertain. The only thing that is crystal clear is that this day is going to last longer than 24 hours – Maryland alone has until DECEMBER 8 to count all of its votes.
So it’s crucial to mind our central nervous systems and practice some deep self-care. These are my plans for today and the rest of the week:
I have deleted the Instagram app on my phone for the next few days.
I will take a daily walk in the woods.
I have already done an hour of yoga (and will do an hour of yoga every morning).
I am on a technology fast for 12 hours a day, every day, in perpetuity.
I am planning on cooking deeply comforting foods today: crispy quinoa, African* peanut stew, and an apple galette. Tonight I will have pizza, my favorite.
I have selected a non-election-related documentary (Spaceship Earth) for election night and am busy lining up more for the rest of the week.
There is no certainty in the outcome of this election, and when that is the case the whole world seems to be tilted sideways. Add to this the crazy wind (blowing in some change? Is it a metaphor?) and the end of Mercury in retrograde (but still in restroshade for two weeks) and things are bound to feel unsettled.
How will you care for yourself on this day? What do you need, and how can I help?
I have been in the past, and still am, if I am being honest (which I always try to be), a cynical person to varying degrees. I have referred to myself as an optimistic pessimist – things could get better, but they probably won’t.
But then here comes COVID and the asinine people who refuse to wear a mask because ‘MURICA, and all things Black Lives Matter and the repeated and unanswered request that rights extend to all of the people in the U.S., not just the white ones, and I can feel the pendulum silently swinging to the pessimistic side of things.
It’s unnerving and upsetting to see how childish and ridiculous the U.S. is.
And yet.
There remains some reassuring and incontrovertible evidence that A) the universe doesn’t really give a rat’s ass about us humans, but B) if we can get even just a little bit quiet and attend to the world around us, that same universe is actually lousy with the things we actually need.
Case in point: referring the to aforementioned anxiety, I have very specific symptoms that range from gastrointestinal malfunction (will leave it at that) to pulsating tinnitus, anger, depression, and fainting. During the pandemic, I have done my level best to practice yoga (daily in July, but that’s new) and walk outside every day. I recognized early on that as attractive as lying around binge-watching trashy television appears on said trashy television, the reality of it is a noxious stew of flab, perseverating, and self-flagellation that feeds the beast of anxiety.
So outside I go, hiking, foraging, WEARING A FUCKING MASK.
And here’s where the universe pops in. When I am experiencing some specific symptom of anxiety, for the last three months, the medicinal herb to address it has popped up in my path.
Headaches, cramps, fatigue, nausea, dizziness, shortness of breath: each time I have walked out into the world and felt one of these (COVID negative, don’t panic), I have within minutes of walking stumbled upon the natural treatment for that symptom.
This past week I was on a solo camping trip in western Maryland, and I had the great good fortune to go hiking on the Appalachian Trail. I was born in D.C., lived in Maryland for 25 years (plus these past five), and I have never once stepped on the AT.
And I almost didn’t again. I woke up on the day of the planned hike short of breath with ringing ears – two bellwethers of an impending anxiety attack. Rather than cancel the hike, I imagined the worst that could happen, made plans to address that in my head, and laced up my boots (this is my technique for dealing with anxiety. Ignoring it doesn’t work, and sometimes taking medication is not a good option).
I walked along the sunny path and headed towards the first incline, reminding myself that I could always stop and turn around, when I spotted it: prunella vulgaris. Self-heal.
I have been looking for this common medicinal plant for a month, with no success. Self-heal (also called (heal-all or allheal) is in the mint family (without the yummy smell or taste – look for a square stem and know that all plants in the mint family are edible). It is the most-studied medicinal herb ever; some cultures refer to it as “Heart of the Earth.”
It’s antiviral, good for the belly, and tonifying for the whole system.
If you are grieving and sad and struggling and anxious and feel a deep and thorough exhaustion and uncertainty, self-heal is the plant ally to reach for.
So to have this plant appear in front of me seemed momentous. The world is on fire, aching with wounds both superficial and deep. The fortuitous appearance of self-heal at the beginning of my day’s journey was a reminder that we have, often right in front of us, the tools we need to heal ourselves and our communities.
It is vital to remember, though, that like other healing solutions, self-heal is not the pill that erases the symptoms. It takes time and careful attention to work, something that our myriad problems deserve.
I did not gather any self-heal to make a tincture. At my first glance, there was not a profusion of it, and I think that it’s a no-no on the AT to harvest plants. On the way down I saw much more, but by that time the medicine of knowing that plant stepped itself in front of me was enough. So I leave you with this video from She is of the Woods. This woman has SEEN SOME THINGS, and I love her for it. Here is her intro to this “plant ally”; follow her on YouTube to see how to make an oxymel, or follow my link to the dandelion oxymel here.
Not my actual one – the one that I use in my work.
A combination of fear, doubt, grief, the weight of the world. I feel silenced and flummoxed and am trying to just listen, learn, and act. No one needs to hear what I have to say right now, but I can still spread the word of others.
Today, though, here’s a white man. Wendell Berry, a Kentuckian, even. This poem is for me, and, when he wrote it, also for himself, as a reminder of how to do this thing that, for me, in many ways, is as reflexive as breath.
We will someday come out of these things – pandemics, the clutch of systemic racism – and be, hopefully, better on the other side.
For now, here is a note to self for when I have more to say.
How to Be a Poet
(to remind myself)
i
Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill—more of each
than you have—inspiration,
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity. Any readers
who like your poems,
doubt their judgment.
ii
Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.
iii
Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.
I keep coming back to the idea of being at home in the muddy water, this notion of being ok with uncertainty. Understanding that the most beautiful things come from the murk (people. lotus flowers. Sea monkeys.).
Today, though, I am struggling with the murky depths of my own self. That dark place that is hardest to peer into. The place that is fear-filled and hidden.
It doesn’t really matter which day “yesterday” actually was because, let’s face it, no one really knows what day it is, and if they say they do they are a bald-faced liar.
But yesterday. Woke up with another headache, many weeks straight, anxiety, overall fogginess in my whole body and brain. I was glutened accidentally a couple of days ago, and this accounts for some of it, but I think the general medical term for what I am experiencing is malaise.
I, and many all around the globe, are suffering from malaise: a general feeling of unwellness or discomfort whose cause is not possible to identify.
Yesterday seemed to be the culmination of a long-building malaise. The simplest of tasks were challenging, like swimming through pudding.
I have no solutions. I have no quick fixes. I did the long walk, I taught the yoga class, I hydrated like a motherfucker. I ate well. I took meds – prescription and CBD and allergy meds.
Today?
Today I feel a little better.
I am not going to say that these oranges were the thing that helped, but they certainly did not hurt. Long-time readers of this blog will recall my uneasy truce with citrus (my grandmother is now 101), but I actually went out and bought oranges on purpose for this use.
Correction: I bought them online, and Octavius from Giant on 41st, as wonderful a person as ever walked the earth, put them in my car.
This is not my recipe, these cold, candied oranges. This recipe belongs to The New York Times. Because they sometimes have an annoying paywall, I am going to go ahead and write things out here (copy/paste, actually). I cut the recipe in half because I cannot eat six of these, and even still I will give two away.
But my goodness. The orange, encased in a festively striped peel with the stained glass orange flesh peeking through, becomes plasma inside – not liquid, not solid. The peel keeps a satisfying chew, but the orange itself becomes Something Other, rising above its pedestrian squirty self. The flavor stays true to the orange, and once you’re done eating the orange itself, you’re left with a delicious orange simple syrup for the best old-fashioned you may ever drink.
Get at it. Can’t hurt.
Cold Candied Oranges
Ingredients
6 firm, juicy, seedless oranges with thin skins (Cara Cara oranges), no bigger than a baseball
6 cups granulated sugar
Preparation
Bring a stainless-steel pot of water to a boil. (It should be large enough to hold the oranges submerged.)
Wash and dry the oranges, and channel from stem to navel at 1/2-inch intervals, removing strips of peel while leaving the pith intact, until the oranges resemble those onion domes on Russian churches. (Suzannah’s note: I had no idea what a channeler was, but I actually had one in the drawer in my kitchen. I don’t know that you could substitute any other tool, but I suppose you could try).
Place the oranges and their long, fat threads of channeled peel into the boiling water, and reduce to a simmer. Cover the oranges with a lid one size too small for the pot, to keep them submerged. Let them blanch for about 25 minutes to remove the harshest edge of their bitter nature. They should swell and soften but not collapse or split. (Suzannah’s note: SIMMER. Not rolling boil. They will split)
Remove the oranges and zest from the simmering water with a slotted spoon, and set aside. Dump out the blanching water, and return the dry pot to the stove.
In that same pot, combine the sugar with 6 cups water; bring the sugar water to a boil over medium-high, stirring until the sugar has dissolved, then allow to gently boil, and reduce for 10 minutes, uncovered. You want some water to evaporate and for the syrup to take on a little body.
Carefully place blanched oranges and zest into the sugar syrup, and reduce heat to a very slow, lethargic simmer. Cover oranges with a parchment circle cut slightly larger than the circumference of the pot (by 1 inch is enough), then place the too-small lid on top of the parchment on top of the oranges, to keep them fully submerged (and sealed under the parchment) in the sluggishly simmering syrup.
Cook the oranges in the syrup for about 45 minutes, checking on them frequently to keep the temperature quite slow and stable, until they take on a high gloss and appear vaguely translucent and jewel-like. (We have several induction burners that come with features that can hold a temperature, and I leave the oranges at around 170 degrees for most of the candying, sometimes with a little bump up to 180. But without a thermometer or an induction burner, just a visual slow, slow, slow bubble is a good cue.)(Suzannah’s note: I clipped a candy thermometer to the edge of the pot and watched the temp)
Cool oranges and peels in their syrup for a full 24 hours before serving. This kind of “cures” them. They get even better after 48 hours. First, you’ll want to let them cool at room temperature until no longer warm to the touch, at least 4 hours, then refrigerate them until thoroughly chilled. The oranges last refrigerated for 1 month as long as they are submerged in that syrup.
Serve very cold. Eat the whole thing, skin and all, with a knife and fork. It’s like a half glacéed fruit and half fresh fruit — refreshing, tonic, digestive and so great after dinner.
