Dispatch from the field.

Agitation. Peace-making. March 13, 2026 journal entry

I am agitated. Set in motion

I brewed my coffee with vinegar water this morning; an accidental prank by Tom, an un-thought-out movement of Tom’s. In no way was I an intended target, but my mind and my body have been churning, set in motion, between two rocks and a large falling feeling, a bottomlessness. A leakage. No support for this strange happening on a day when I notice my attention is on War and on Jeffrey Epstein files, from the collective wound of being a young woman who is seen as an object more than a developing sovereign human, vulnerable, naive, innocent. I notice I feel an energetic push. I start to talk. I talk and talk and talk about all of it. No resolution comes. I try to listen to what I’m saying, too. What do I want? What is the issue? How can I/we/all of this move forward? Such agitation.

When we stop to study rapids before we run them in our canoe or decide to portage around them, we assess the water’s flow pattern around and through rocks, sometimes seen and other times submerged and invisible.

Rapids begin higher and move to lower; the water flows downhill; sometimes we paddle upriver, against the current; if it is too strong it turns us around. Gravity works for us or against us. We can only paddle what we can paddle. Sometimes we walk through muddy marshes, moving from clump of bush or grass to next clump of bush or grass. We are two of a few who might end up where we end up each time out. We leave a trace. We try to be good natured about it. No need to bring misery to such a beautiful place.

When we are in the wilderness or the wild or nature or a regularly travelled waterway path, our rest comes with the curiosity of future movement, of working our muscles, of navigating, of finding a way to hydrate, fuel, rest again, and, later, move ourselves back towards our home, our primary shelter, our family who waits for us. We have faith in our abilities and the kindness of nature’s 10,000 things. If we did not, we would not have arrived back here, again and again.

I notice we don’t use the word faith in our couple-dom or in our first families. I have never heard any of Tom or my family members use the word faith.

Faith is for the religion-persons, I guess. Faith is for the ones who are listening to an intermediary; one who says trust my words and you will be well.

Our families have suffered from having faith in other humans who want us to have faith in them, give our money to them, follow their rules, go to their churches on Sunday. Our families don’t abide by the conditioning that religion has offered us; we know stories of religious institutions harming the children in their care. We do not want that for our children. Perhaps others find a community of care with less focus on a leader who is deemed above the rest. Human is human. We rise and fall collectively, in collaboration, together, even if we cannot see it or try to avoid it.

Here, we find our balance between gravity and ascension; between the feeling of being held and the feeling of being completely unmoored/untethered…free. Our families are learning to create a community among them. We are not there yet. We are close.

We are all in process of finding a direct experience which we can call faith. That is, our own separate and connected moments where life shows up for us when we need it most. What will we name this feeling of being held, of realizing the thread of our lives is not untethered and unmoored but, actually, webbed or netted, part of a field of energetic vibration? If it is not faith, what is it? It is not belief. No way. Or opinion. Is it experience? What is the experience of faith?

Truth?

What is truth?

Love is truth.

Love is the flow between us.

Love is the undercurrent of all. Love is what holds us when we are studying the rapids, considering our best options.

Tom showed me a video clip of a new sport. Two men run full force at each other and run into each other. The force of their hit causes them to bounce off each other, their heads whiplash. The crowd gasps, laughs, cheers. The athletes fall flat to the ground, on their backs. They don’t move. Not for a long time. Their handlers try to rouse them and get them back up so they can do it again.

This is me. Me, sipping vinegar-water coffee and wondering why my tastebuds have abandoned me, wondering if this will be the final cup of coffee I drink because it tastes worse than most things and, already, my stomach is turning.

Too, I notice this mole on my back seems to be growing, is scaly with dead skin or maybe some pre-cancerous crust. Soon it will be over, I think. Soon, I will not be a human.

I read The New York Times online- a recent development- to access their recipe database and to play, each day, a game of Wordle, because I love how letters organize into words. I love consonant blends like STR and vowels likely grouping: ea not ae, ou not uo (expect after Q). I love the predictability of patterns.

I open the webpage and the headlines shout, “Read me!!”

Here is more news of war, of oil prices skyrocketing, of death, of despair, of fighting, of a man with the last name Epstein, so far away from Einstein in practice (I hope!) and yet just three letters difference. I notice my jaw is tight. I notice I experience the grim resolve of paddling into a strong headwind but I have stopped noticing the water underneath me, the shore, the feeling of being alive, of energy flowing through me. I open up to the Wordle page. Five letters, six chances. I put in a few choices:

Trace

Steal

Fated

Matey

I realize I have the middle three letters correct on move three. I cannot find a beginning letter. I cannot find an end letter which makes sense.

How poetic.

I am still, and then, spiralling down to a place where the wound is so great, it’s nearly impossible to see the edges.

I read a book by Mary Mackey, a poet who, in 1971, survived a difficult year and continued to survive; moved to a place where the teargas streams would not flow into her window while she wondered about words like Jaguar and Panther. She lived in Berkley then, during the Vietnam War, during a time when the military persons gassed the protesting persons. She found a refuge not just to write, but to be. To be is to be still, she mentions. And more than that, she offers, to be is to be engaged in potential. I focus on the flow of potential:

Potential is connected with imagination. Imagination is connected with manifestation. Manifestation is connected with change. Change is connected with rapids. The obstacles in a river’s flow. Change is connected with headwinds and tailwinds. Change is connected with agitation, movement. Sound is more effective at conveying all of this, but words are my constraint. And white space. Pacing. Flow.

How am I doing? Do I make sense to you? Do you want to re-read the last paragraph? Are you wondering, what next? Or are you tired of the exercise of holding a new point of view, a vision?

The snow falls, creating beauty and misery, depending on your perspective, your positionally, your ability to flow with it.

We might say faith is flow.

We might say to have flow is to have faith.

Perhaps Flow is the replacement word for faith for those among us who are not following a religion and instead following the seasons, the cycles, finding love for all the beings- the snow, the rain, the bird, the rock, the plant. We want to care for it all. We have friends who follow a religion and they are among the most loving people we know. So…faith and flow...? At the very least these words are friends, engaged in some sort of ceremony and ritual of aliveness and deep care.

Does every point of view have a balance point? When the agitation becomes too much, the stillness arrives?

Tom returns from taking Athena, the canine goddess, for a morning walk.

Hello! He calls out.

Hello! I call out.

Inside the field of flow and faith and vinegar-water coffee, I call out Hello! Hello!

I notice someone in the field is building a campfire.

I can move closer. I can gather others as I flow towards it. Energy is particle and wave.

Waves flow.

I am ocean.

I am wave.

I am.

It’s all am.

There is no stopping. No certainty. The religions attempt to and sometimes achieve creating a feeling of safety for us or they challenge us to question for ourselves, to learn how to love and apply it to all the uncertainty we experience. There is no safety. Do not have faith in a person. Have faith in your own care, your own flow.

Flow is always happening. Change is always happening.

The snapshot of a moment can hold many images. War is one image.

It is not the only image.

I walk in the snow today, all of me warm but my hands, tingling with cold inside my gloves. Still I take them off a few times to capture beauty in a photo. I notice I capture beauty when I stop at the Apple Tree I love to meet, the one who used to hold Christmas ornaments and baubles in her winter branches. My friend Tess tells me in Ireland, the care-takers of the land suggest you make a small loop of grass to hang as an offering to the trees and the wells below them. One might pull a hair and let it rest over a branch. I offer my gaze this time. I see this tree with such tenderness, such love. I imagine the tips of her branches greening and growing, imagine the day the petals open, the bees who will visit, the scent and the noise of the wind and the bees and the traffic going by on the highway nearby. I am both in this moment and in the past and in the future. I am tethered here to the land, for this brief engagement of love. Like a daughter looking up to her mother, I smile and say, “wow, you are amazing.”

Just down the path, we pass the wound tree, the mother tree, the one with the strength of thousands of kilometres of roots underneath her; she is from the Aspen Family, though when I attempt to call her by any of these names or even say she is a she, she is silent. I lean against her and place my hand on the center of her wound, the top of a mountain which is what is left of the front of her. This mountain, flat-topped like the one in the Close Encounters movie or the one near Ghost Lake, Devil’s Head, it drops away in steep steppes to the valley-of-wounded-tree-belly. And, the reason I call her she is the wound looks very much like a vagina stretched open. If you’re familiar with Sheela Na Gigs from Ireland, you might recognize a familiar feeling of…is that a vulva?…the first time you see one. And…knowing this aspen for many years now over all the seasons, I’ve come to see the power of the wound, the energy which is possible and the authenticity, the truth of a wounded mother who continues to nurture. The Sheela seems to be saying, Yes, this vulva is here and we welcome vulvas and we are not ashamed AND we can talk about power. And the tree seems to be saying, we are wounded and we are willing to be seen and we can talk about power.

We continue to walk through the valley where the trees are sponsored by a funeral home and many have dedication plaques expressing the love of a human who was a caretaker, a listener, a friend, a kindness. The plaques decay more and more each season and yet the whole of it feels friendly.

We arrive at the top of the hill, near where the car is parked.

I notice my brain is on fire about the importance of peace, about how peace could be expressed and shown, nurtured and grown.

A line of trees seems to bow from the street over the snowy patch of park here. I listen to the wind and the sun and the ground under my feet. I walk with purpose but not direction. I want to feel the ground. War is in my body. Meet the earth. She is my friend, my kindness. She listens by receiving the vibration of whatever I am carrying. She accepts me for who I am. With her, I am free to be.

I walk under the arc of the trees and as I near the end I hear, It’s a celebration! A ceremony! I turn to walk back the other way, under the snow-weighted waves of elders humming to me. Yes, peace. Your intention is very powerful.

Yes, peace.

Tom is glad to have me back, the whole me. It was a hard morning. I fierce-cleaned for awhile. I ranted for awhile. I listened to the silence. I was ready to go for a walk in the snow with Athena when he asked me if I wanted to join him. Nature, this third thing reflects the care between us. When our eyes meet, they soften, we soften. We make toast. I carry mine up the stairs to write, here, my laptop set on top of a big paper scroll I’ve been adding to…usually big thoughts which need space to be seen- words and symbols and lines- with white space in between to better view the connection, to leave room for potential. The whole me is glad to be focused, too, on the moment I am. Not thinking about the future or the past. Here. A candle burns to the left. A small speaker plays an album by Natureland with songs titled Drifting Through Distant Skies and That One Quiet Friend. To the right, a paint-your-own-ceramic “Sloth in Lotus position” in shades of green with closed eyes and red peaceful mouth. A sprig of cedar is nearby, a drawing I made on a beach one significant day. Outside the window, I send love to the MooGoo Pine tree. They are one of my friends.

What do you think so far of all of this I’m writing?

I’m so curious to know. I’m so curious about my experience. And embarassed, too. It seems odd to me. And familiar. Sometimes it feels like a sacrifice to be a writer, to be writing the story seems to take one step to the side of the moment I am, and, yet, memory comes through this body as if it’s tuned to a radio station. I write what I hear. Almost always I affirm life in the writing along the way. It is as if once my walk is complete outside, I can talk a walk inside. Stroll through the moments, interpret the signals into words.

The Moo Goo pine stretches from the ground, reaches west before curving, in one smooth motion of several trunks, up to the top of the sky, as if reaching for the moon. In their branches, a nest. Magpies wait out the spring snow. Soon the snowmelt will reveal more twigs and branches for them to add to the place where they will lay and tend to eggs. Lucky us. New life, right here.

Thank you for attending to these words. I posted a piece on a blog on my website which I won’t post here. If you’d like to read it, here’s the link:

https://www.marcemerrell.com/murmurations