Howdy.

This is a love letter. A celebration. A toast. To all of you.

And, to Mary Oliver.

CHEERS

The other morning, I woke up to see that the love child that is this blog surpassed 1000 subscribers. 1000!? I remember being so excited when it got just one. Most days I can’t believe the beautiful space that this blog has turned into, where people from all over the world connect over shared experience, thought, and emotion. That is a very, very cool thing to witness on a daily basis.

All to say, it’s an honor to host this corner of the internet and I hope to keep doing so indefinitely.

In honor of that wish, I’m excited to announce that Spinning Visions will now be accepting patronage. If you’ve ever felt that my work has touched your life, inspired you, or made a difference in your day, I kindly ask you to consider becoming a supporter of this blog. Your support fuels this ever-evolving nexus of meaningful connection, truth, and creative exploration, or, the things that get me out of bed every morning. The things that I devote countless, dizzying, deliciously delirious hours to every day, at no cost.

I have heard people say that they don’t believe in paying for personal blogs. To this, I have two things to say. One, personal blogs, when good, are art. And art is always something worth investing in. And two, Spinning Visions is, to me, so much more than personal. It’s universal. It’s borderline academic on most days, including philosophical analysis, never-ending book reviews, and intellectual insights that involve extensive amounts of research. It’s not about what I had for dinner. It’s about what it means to be human.

All to say, thank you for being a part of this creative journey. It’s a labor of love, to borrow from Maria Popova. Cheers to many more beautiful moments ahead.

You can check out the patronage form below, or click here to become a supporter.

Or, scroll down for some thoughts on attention, inspired by Mary Oliver.

DEVOTION 

In one of her brilliant essays, Mary Oliver writes that attention is the beginning of devotion. It is the thesis I strive to attach to my everyday life, the guiding light of meaning that brings us back from the brink of existential despair.

Yet, attention has gotten a bad rap. In the modern world of digital documentation and endless social media feeds, attention has become something perverse. Something to capitalize off of. And even earlier, as children, we are taught that wanting attention is a bad thing. Oh, they just want attention. Ignore them. Don’t get me wrong, attention whores are very real. 

Mainly because we all want it. We are born screaming at the top of our lungs for it. We chase boys around the playground for it. We raise our hands and collect our gold stars and dance on stage for it. But then we learn. We internalize wanting attention as a perverse trait to be eradicated from our treasure trove of desires. Which has its legitimacy to an extent. But not to the extent that I’m interested in. I’m interested in the other side of attention. The gentle, meditative, slow awareness of life that is so difficult to give in our modern world. 

WHAT 2020 TAUGHT ME

As many of you know, I’ve kept journals since I could hold a pen. I was flipping through some old ones the other day when I found one that stands out from all of the rest. It was the one that I began in October of 2020. As with every journal, I inscribed a dedication on the first page. It read, as an ode to Oliver’s Upstream collection, attention is the beginning of devotion.

I knew while writing in that journal that it would become a historical record of that nightmare of a year. It only felt like heartbreak at the time, like existing in a vacuum where time and space knew no bounds and I could never be sure where exactly I was within their continuum, but I wrote in it every day for purposes of historical preservation I suppose. I wanted to document the state of the world. I wanted to pay attention.

At the time, it felt violent and difficult. But looking back through those pages now, they are filled with the gentlest words I’ve ever written. There’s a sweetness to them, an innocence that you can almost feel dissolving from the hand that wrote them as you turn the pages. I remember that peace, the quietness, the serenity, the utter appreciation for everything. Most of the time, you look back at old journals and cringe a little bit. But not this one. This one’s beauty remains preserved in amber, for it was the most heartbreaking year of my life, yet every page is stained with grace. Attention. Precise documentation of what that broken world felt like. 

STEPPING OUTSIDE OF THE RAT RACE

Yet, here’s the thing. I was on my knees, humbled and heartbroken, but with eyes wide open. How could they not be? There was nothing else to do but look deeply at the things that busy, pre-pandemic life distracted us all from.

I spent most nights during that year with my head craned up to the stars, staring into the one thing I could think of that felt more infinite and enigmatic than what our world was going through. I learned about the stars, I took notes, I bought the nerdiest book ever on the human connection to the stars. I paid attention to what was right above my head. And I fell in love with life. It sounds so nauseatingly cliché, but I did, as is evidenced with the very last page of that journal, which I have attached here from August 16, 2021. Just one day before moving out into my first apartment, one day before life sped back up again.

Now, as the world spins around me at full speed once more and we all run around the little mazes of our lives, I notice the lack of attention. We forget to look up. We forget to look at each other. I spend hours punching a keyboard or swimming through books or racing from class to class. I’m absorbed in apartment searches and job applications and the quiet grace of that year is but a distant memory. 

All to say, I’m trying to remember what that shattered year taught me. I’m trying to carry its lessons of quiet devotion with me, as I dive deeper and deeper into the chaos of my own life. I’m trying to pay deep attention to the people I speak to, the sidewalks I walk upon, the flavors of the cappuccinos I inhale. I’m stopping on street corners and looking up, for just a moment, before walking back into the traffic of everyday life. I’m trying to pay attention.

BUT HOW?

But what does it actually mean to pay attention? What does it mean to cultivate a devotion for life?

“Attention without feeling, I began to learn, is only a report. An openness — an empathy — was necessary if the attention was to matter.”

–MARY OLIVER

According to Mary Oliver herself, it means to simply let yourself feel. This is the guiding idea that propels my work as a blogger, as well as my existence as a human. People often ask me how I find inspiration, if I ever worry about running out of things to write about.

My only advice to soothe these anxieties is to pay attention. Go outside, go out into the world, and be present. Watch the planes flying over your head. Listen to what the people around you are saying in the coffee shop. Look your friends in the eye and hear what they are saying. Observe the world. Don’t say anything, just listen. More often than not, your mind will do the rest, if you let it. Meaning, the feeling that Oliver is referring to.

It’s not simply about looking at the world and writing down what you see, but allowing the synapses of your brain to connect and make meaning out of it. It’s just a plane flying over your head. But maybe it’s also the sound of your childhood, the sound that enveloped you as you came of age. Maybe it reminds you of the night you stared out of a car window that wasn’t yours and watched a plane land in the distance as someone broke your heart. You don’t write about the plane. You write about that. What did it feel like? What does it feel like now, years later, to remember it still?

I find that as long as I do these things, as long as I allow the attention to awaken feeling, that there is always, always, something to write about.

Just look around.

Love, m.

GET ON THE LIST

Subscribe to give your inbox something to look forward to.