“Viv lay on the floor of the tiny room. Well, almost on the floor. The place hadn’t been built with orcs in mind, and the bed was too short by at least two feet.”
                -Travis Baldree, Bookshops & Bonedust, p. 6

                That’s how Chapter 1 opens. Later tonight, my partner and I will read that together. Maybe she’ll be listening to my orc-narrator voice. Maybe I’ll be listening to hers. Either way we’ll trade off, curled beneath our blankets as outside the temperature dives below 15℉.
                There’s something tremendously cozy in reading together before bed. Part of it is probably that I grew up reading with my family. Unfolding the story together, walking through it, talking about characters and happenings the next morning before we go back to say hello—all of that for me is a practice of home. And in another way I think home is a practice. I’ve been thinking lately about how strange it is that the structures of my society make it so easy to live next to someone, live with someone, and not feel like you’re in the same room. (That has a lot to do with how my society imagines, builds, and understands rooms, but that’s another post). So my partner and I practice. We fold ourselves into the little space of the book, realize how interwoven it is with sounds and colors and being togethers, and snuggle in.

                “To me, an experiment is a kind of conversation with plants: I have a question for them, but since we don’t speak the same language, I can’t ask them directly and they won’t answer verbally. But plants can be eloquent in their physical responses and behaviors. Plants answer questions by the way they live, by their responses to change; you just need to learn how to ask.”
                -Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass

                I remember as a kid being so excited about the idea of being able to talk to birds. Some people I knew immediately turned that idea toward a kind of spying—you could ask what so and so was doing, they said—but for me it was more about what the birds might be saying without any direct prompting from me. What were the chirps? The trills? What did they say to each other? How does this bluejay describe her own paths through the air? Does she have names for the trees she lands on, or for individual branches?
                Looking back, I think part of what I was wanting (or imagining, as a result of shared language) was a greater ability to listen. To learn from, and sometimes simply to participate with, to be in relationship with. I was scared of a dog across the street. But if I knew what it was saying, knew which growls meant stay away and which growls didn’t, I would know more about how to walk near his house. It’s a lovely wish, but it’s also something that I didn’t need the wizardly spells of fantasy novels to do. I think I’ve heard the excited “Food!” of a bluejay standing over a peanut, and I learned something about which of the growls meant stay away. To be connected with is more about time. Spoken language is a way through, but not the only, and there are so many ways of speaking and listening.

                “I’ve had this tab open for maybe a month now.”
                -L. D. Lewis, in the “A Note from the Editor” for We’re Here

                Lately I’m entranced by in-process moments. By the pauses in practices, sometimes calm and quiet. A step outside before washing the dishes. Sometimes hurried and harried, mental gears grinding. The bus ten minutes late and me already worried about getting to a meeting on time. Which is to say, like L. D. Lewis, I tend to leave a lot of tabs open. Some of them are projects I’m working on. Some of them are things I’d like to read, sometime. One of them’s a TV show I’m partway through. And yes, for me, there’s something about hurrying in that, something about a messy feeling where I can’t seem to finish x before I start y. But then again what I’m doing isn’t usually x or y: specific projects and relationships aren’t variables, they’re all the context and nuance of particularities, delights, sometimes confusions. That article I’m partway through reading, the ideas are still turning, rooting down, and the why takes time.
                Which is to say: lately, with so much going on, I’ve been trying to finish things. Knock items off the To-Do List. Sitting with L. D. Lewis, I realize my To-Do Lists don’t know how to list the confusion of a thought half held. A movement still mellowing. How do I listen to more of the open spaces inside what I’m doing?

                Nine months ago I talked with the wonderful faculty of my PhD Committee for my PhD Fields Exam. We talked about lots of things, including some of the community organizing work I facilitate. And I said something like, “It’s hard for me to say ‘I do this’ and ‘I do that’ to organize things, because everything I do is woven through with what so many other powerful people are doing. And there’s a long history of people (especially white men) saying I did this as a way to take credit for or hide all the other work that other wonderful people are doing. The work they themselves are relying on.”
                Jenny Davis, a Chickasaw scholar, poet, and educator, told me that was one way people use “I.” Another way is to say Here I am. Here is my place in my communities. Here I recognize and choose to live up to the responsibilities and duties of our interwoven lives. I’ve been thinking about that ever since. What I’m sitting with today, what I’m wondering about and mourning and, yes, celebrating, goes all the way down to what I mean by “I.” What we might mean by “we.” Because here I am, and I choose to work to recognize and live up to the responsibilities and duties that flow through this wonderful web of living things of which I’m a part. That can feel heavy. That can feel joyous. That’s the “I” I practice.