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NB: I have a pretty important announcement down the page, under the heading Heads Up. Please make a note of it. Also, some of y’all sent items on our kitten-based Amazon wish list last week - thanks so much for that! - HH

Hey y’all,

At the best of times, I am a reluctant participant in my daily mindfulness practice, being more inclined to motion than meditation. It’s not unlike taking vitamins: I derive no joy from the practice, but it does no harm, and smarter people than I am are sold on its merits, and sometimes, I think it might be working.

So, I wake up in the morning, and after my first cup of coffee, sit upright in the chair at my desk, tell the Amazon spybot to set a 15 minute timer, and I meditate. Or I try to, anyway. Some days it goes, more or less, well. I have come to see it not as an attempt to clear the mind (which cannot happen) but to notice the distractions, and then return to the practice. As long as I notice, and return, it’s fine. If I notice and return 50 times a minute, it's not a problem. Returning is actually success.

It’s the noticing that holds me down. As I have relayed multiple times on these pages, I am a diagnosed ADHD human, and as my therapist endlessly reminds me, ADHD is actually not, despite the unfortunate name, a deficit of attention, but a problem with the regulation of the attention. And so, while many people report their attempts of meditation as endless noticing and return, my brain is perfectly content to let me wander and roam for many minutes at a time before I even notice I am not noticing, and then the timer is going off while I am reliving an argument I had 13 years ago with a person now dead.

If you are a meditation aficionado, this is where you will want to chime in and say that I should focus on counting my breath, to which I will tell you that my brain is perfectly capable of both counting my breaths AND considering contemplating the benefits of a new native hedge in my backyard AND also wondering if Sherlock Holmes had any siblings other than Mycroft. Minutes later I will wonder why the hell I am counting my breaths and then realize I am “meditating”, and I return.

It’s not pretty over here. This morning was particularly painful, as my quiet time at my desk was interrupted by the neighbor’s roof replacement, which involved nail guns and compressors at 6:15am. I suspect if they had been replacing roofs in the neighborhood of the bodhi tree, history may have been different.

And tomorrow, I will try again.

Why am I telling you this? A couple of reasons, actually. One is that the impulse in these letters is to put my best foot forward, to NOT look like a hot mess . Internet influencer culture is strong, and the impulse to seem as if I have it all put together to those who voluntarily read things I write is at times, strong.

Narrator’s voice: “Hugh does not, in fact, have it put together”.

The other is to remind you (and me!) that one way to build a life that sustains us is to cultivate a series of practices. And inherent in the word “practice” is the idea that this is not a thing we have mastered, which makes room for failure, missteps, and, thankfully, the noise of nail guns.

Five Beautiful Things:

“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.

What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.

And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”
― Howard Zinn (from A Power Governments Cannot Suppress) (via SwissMiss)

Photographer Sue Kwon’s book Rap is Risen contains more than 300 photographs documenting rap as it was blowing up between ‘88 and ‘08. Here is an overview and some sample photos - Method Man, Fat Joe, Biggie, Mobb Deep - it’s a who’s who of early Hip Hop.

From Kristin Kory:

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From Hendrik Karlsson’s newsletter: - this essay - Relationships are coevolutionary loops - is the truest description of a long-term relationship I have ever read, and that it is so beautifully written seals the deal. (via Laura Olin)

Photographer Bela Borsodi’s photograph series called “Lucid Dreamers”, of sleeping children and their artwork is captivating in its simplicity and profundity.

Bonus: This now-iconic photo of the first ever all-Black podium at the Olympics says so, so much.

In case you missed it

On my blog last week: When People Choose to Leave​

Last issue, the most clicked link (~11.5% of opens) was the found street photography from the Chicago nanny Vivian Maier.

Heads up:

My little publishing effort currently has two big projects happening.

Later this week I will begin transitioning this newsletter to a new email service provider. I will be moving to Buttondown for several reasons, most of which are nerdy and/ or financial in nature, but a big one is that they take your privacy pretty seriously. I have put this off for ages, because it will mean changing to a new email address, and can end up with me ending up in your spam accounts until the email gods figure out that you actually want to get email from me.

It will also means changing my publishing process, but the new process is more streamlined, which reduces friction, which means it should be better for all of us overall. One hopes.

In any event, look for an email from me this Friday that I will want you to open, click on, interact with, and save to your address book. This will hopefully help “teach” the inboxes that you want email from that address.

I wanted to make this change before announcing the next thing, which is a change in the membership program. Until now, members have never really gotten perks - rather, it’s just been a way they could support my existing work. But next week, that will change. Announcements will come to Members this week, and to the rest of y’all in next week’s letter. I’m pretty excited about it.

Thank You

It is never not amazing to me that I write things and people want to read them. I am grateful beyond words.

It is only made possible by the patronage of my Members, who pay for things around here. If you want to support my work, you can learn more about being a member, or buy me a cup of coffee, or just forward this email to your friends.

Take care,

HH