attack the panic

with love

These past 2 years I’ve been fortunate to visit family and friends throughout the US and NZ. In that time I’ve also been seeking ways I can help the natural world. It’s overwhelming. Since 2014 when I started singing for and to the water, I’ve become far more aware of water everywhere and in every form.

“What will you do for the water?”

This is the question Josephine Mandamin of Thunder Bay was asked by her elder. She took the question to heart and created the waterwalk, where each step is a prayer for the chosen body of water. Josephine answered the question with, “Well I can walk. I can do that much.” I met her when she joined us for a few days on the 2017 waterwalk of the Missouri River, led by Sharon Day, which was to be her last waterwalk before she died.

Since then I continue to ask myself how I can clear the waters. Clearing within myself is an ongoing purification process. Even today I faced doubt, grief, and fear which threatened to overwhelm my resolve in these new and daunting studies I’ve stepped into. Poisoning of the waters is not just the obvious plastic pollution, pesticide run-off, and pharmaceutical load that pervade all our waters, even as far as the Antarctic. We have the same in our blood.

“Blood of my body, blood of the Earth,” is how the first song I was given translates.

Where to begin? Anywhere. Pull any thread. Or rather, don’t. Let’s darn a few things. Let’s mend what we can. Save what we can. Change what we can. As soon as we can.

New Zealand banned single-use plastic bags and straws! Fantastic! Yet why are the producers allowed to package everything in plastic that we put into our cloth bags? Why is it always down to the consumer to do the right thing while the producers still profit from our eco-guilt and don’t seem to have any themselves?

This is what one man set about doing for the water — a good water initiative that seems to be as transparent as the clean water they’ve made available to millions.

And Veronica is a former student and dear friend of mine who has taken the plastic question and answered it with biomimicry. If a single bee can waterproof its nest without poisoning the planet with plastic pollution, so can we.

Meanwhile, in my wee world I feel a bit panicked because it’s week 2 of my first Term at the University of Queensland and I’ve had Covid, for the first time ever. After all those travels, I get it now?! What sort of cosmic non-joke is that? After all these years looking for my path, my commitment is being tested the day before I begin? Even my pursuit of a sense of humour through Stand Up comedy hasn’t helped me today. Truth is, if you look closely at comics, they’re often angry, depressed, or otherwise mentally unstable. Comedy is the only way to survive once the rose-colored glasses come off. No wonder there’s been a huge upsurge in people testing their mettle onstage in recent years. I reckon it’s a sure sign more of us are waking up.

I got into comedy in 2015 for this very reason. Nothing was funny. I figured if I could work out what made me laugh I might survive. And if I could slap myself with the truth and manage to make myself laugh in the process, I might have a chance at slapping others with the truth in the process of making them laugh too.

Today I’m panicked because it’s been 30 years since I’ve been in a university setting and I haven’t studied science since high school. And I’m panicked because my intended strong start has been sideswiped by a lurgy that I successfully avoided for 3+ years. Perhaps most of all I’m panicked because the burning sky is falling and there is so much to be done to mend the damages we’ve wrought on our beautiful planet, and I just don’t even know where to begin. What will my thesis be? What could I possibly focus on that almost no one else has focused on, that only I have the combination of interests and experiences to focus on?

What can I possibly do or say that will make a difference fast enough? Some things move so so quickly, like AI development, the toll of time on the aging body, forest fires. While other things are glacial, like getting my mind into gear to learn almost entirely online when it’s in a Covid fog. Like turning around a sinking ship. Like getting folks to do the right thing just because it’s right and good and benefits more than themselves, especially when it means changing habits.

Another water-loving friend advised, “Bring Science to the Song, and the Singing to Science.”

So what counters the panic? Love. Only love. Everything else is mind games that don’t run deep enough to save the suffocation of the heart. Just when I’m at the peak of choking on my own self-recrimination, regrets, and insidious envy, a message comes through on this very platform and it says,

"Kia ora Melissa, the various diverse and wonderful offerings I participated in during your time at Marion Street Powa Centre changed my life in profound ways, for which I’ll always be grateful!! I love following your ongoing adventures too… I hope you’re keeping well and enjoying your study adventure… Rei xxxx"

What I wrote about Love in the paragraph above came with the tears that Reiana’s message brought up. That wasn’t my brilliance, but the awareness that came from interbeing with her, across time and space.

Meister Eckhart wrote, “If the only prayer you say in your life is “thank you”, that would suffice.” I used to marvel at how the saints and holy people seemed so hard on themselves. Not that I’m a saint by any means, but I do see how the clearing of the waters is perpetual. The more I can see, the more there is to see. Purification is work that is never done because it’s a verb, a wave, a process. Never a done deal.

Back to work-ing I go. Untangling the tentacles of envy for lives I didn’t live, wrangling the information overload I currently face, and darning the garments I care enough to keep in good repair, like my heart. I’m not a big fan of battle terminology but sometimes that level of fire is needed to keep from drowning. Balancing the water element is not only a process of purifying the various forms of water within and without, it’s also a balance of amount. Too much water on a dry landscape, or in the lungs, is just as much trouble as too little. Care enough, but not so much that it kills you. Attack the panic before it attacks you. Smother it with love.