Every week or so I get an Instagram post from Kangaroo Sanctuary in Mparntwe, Australia. Kangaroos are playful, smelly, smart, violent, loving, creative beings I love to watch. I am linking to a video here because it is incredible to see these dozens of kangaroos moving through wide open desert on their morning walk, but once you’ve watched it, you might want to listen to it. It is the lack of mechanized sound that struck me: wind, the persistent rustle of tall scrub, thumps on thick bare dirt, a bird call now and then. It is the rare, reassuring sound of undeveloped planet and cared-for beasts.

Image credit: "Marsupials," Art and Picture Collection, The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1902.

John Cage described his album Bird Cage as “a space in which people are free to move and birds to fly.” He used the I-Ching as a kind of Oulipian composing constraint. Today, I asked the I-Ching how I could best live and write in the world as it was becoming–a much triter question than the ones I imagine Cage asked. I almost asked how I “should” best live because that sounded less selfish. Either way, the question struck me as melodramatic gimcrackery. Then, I asked anyway because I meant it.

I was open to big swipes like: stop writing and focus on your children, or become a therapist so you do some more directly significant good, or move to the Olympic Peninsula because there will be clean air there ten years from now. I was open to small suggestions like: listen to the jackhammer in the distance then listen to your pen on the paper in front of you.

But, the I-Ching sent me to the gua, Pi, which means hindrance. The gua’s ideograph (line-drawing-like picture) was a bird flying under heaven because heaven and earth were not working well together, or rather, “Heaven and Earth Falling apart.” Fanfuckingtastic. It did emphasize that hindrance and advancing are two parts of a cycle, but it more or less told me to stay put and cross my fingers.

With fingers crossed, I am determined to reconnect to the world in which I am staying put. My new plan is to take time to attend to every sense. Today, I’ll deal with my ears. In grad school, I napped to the album, Colleen et les Boîtes à Musique, which always reminded me of birds. Right now, I am writing to it and/or contentedly staring out the window. I would love to hear about sounds that engage you, especially if they are a little unexpected.

And also, here’s some John Cage.

Image credit: "Greenfinch-Canary Mule," George Arents Collection, The New York Public Library Digital Collections.

No answer, boy. Puerto Rico, mass murder and my lovely friend Julie offers on social media, “Does anyone need a direct dose of compassion and support today?” I remember that this still happens in the world, too. We are still here.

Image credit: "The Haunted Sentry Box, San Juan, P. R." The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1898 - 1931.