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Making sense of summer

The mind, embodied.

Asha Dornfest

Jun 29

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A coherent and understandable idea “makes sense.” When I’m trying to “make sense” of something, I think about it. Making sense seems to take place in the mind.

And yet my brain’s constant narration quiets when I focus on my sensory experience — sight, hearing, smell, etc. My senses put me in direct contact with the world around me. From this perspective, making sense happens in the body.

1. Lady of Shalott 2. Ketchup & Mustard

Smell

The scent of a rose might trigger grief or joy. I never know which one.
Portland is also called “The Rose City.” We have an International Rose Test Garden, a Rose Festival with parades, floral floats, and an annual Rose Queen. Roses climb neighborhood telephone poles, bloom in sidewalk strips, and line freeways.
Roses were my Dad’s favorite flower. He taught me to prune roses when I was 9. Whenever he visited in June, we’d walk my neighborhood, crossing streets for whichever rosebush was blooming most extravagantly. We tried to identify the cultivars: Double Delight, Sutter’s Gold, Tropicana. He liked the scent of Double Delight best.
After Dad died, I dug up two of his old rose bushes from my parents’ front yard. One of those bushes holds 40+ years of his tending. The bushes waited in pots in a family friend’s yard (she has the greenest thumb of anyone I know) until I could retrieve them after the pandemic. I transported them to Portland in the back seat of my car. They’re now blooming in my sidewalk strip.

“Mind” and “body” is a false dichotomy, but I’ve only recently come to understand this in a visceral¹ way. For most of my life, I’ve treated my body like a dumb vehicle for my brain. I mistook my mind for me. My body only got attention when the oil needed changing or the brakes squeaked.

I barely noticed my effortless good health because I didn’t comprehend how much my health reflected my youth.

Well, I’m no longer young. I’m still in relatively good health, but a few markers are going in the wrong direction and my mind, which arrogantly insisted on gripping the steering wheel for so long, finally admits it needs help with the driving.

Hear

In a recent episode of the On Being podcast, host Krista Tippett and psychologist Christine Runyan discussed how the stress of the pandemic impacted our nervous systems and how we might begin to heal. Most poignant: the episode is a rebroadcast of a conversation recorded in 2021, because, as Krista observed, we’re still dealing with these impacts in 2024, and little space has been made to address or even acknowledge them.
The On Being studios are located in Minneapolis, and I frequently travel in and out of the MSP airport. Earlier this year, Krista Tippett was standing in front of me in the Starbucks line. She was close enough for me to recognize, but too far for me to offer to buy her coffee. It’s weird to approach someone you know from the Internet — it feels like barging into their space — but I screwed up my courage and did it anyway. I wanted to thank her, awkward as it was, because her work means a lot to me. She was a little taken aback. “This never happens! No one recognizes my face because I’m a podcaster!” Sorry/not sorry, Krista Tippett. Thanks for so graciously bearing with a fan.

When I notice I’m lost in thought, or I feel my anxiety building, I try to pause and shift attention to my senses, just for a moment. What do I see right now? What do I hear? What can I touch? Where is my breath? In my lungs? My belly? My nose?

I rarely remember to do this. Days and weeks go by in a blur of thought and phone scrolling. But sometimes, when I can remember to come to my senses, everything slows down and grows more vivid. Just for a moment, I can rest.

I’ll be taking a Substack break in July to focus on an offline project + a parent-of-adults milestone: my youngest kid turns 21.

My youngest kid turns 21. 😱

I’ll leave comments open so we can hang out here till I’m back in your inbox in August. Till then, I’d love to hear how your summer’s going. And as always, thank you for being here. 🩵

Notes of note

Some of these notes contain affiliate links.

I’m trying to disrupt my phone habit with books. Reading on a screen agitates me, but reading a physical book settles me. I’m convinced the sensory-ness has something to do with it: feeling the weight of a book in my hands, turning the pages, running my fingers along the cover…
Favorites so far this summer: Sandwich by Catherine Newman, The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green; I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, and The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula LeGuin (in process).
📣 🥪 EVERY PARENT OF TEENS OR ADULTS MUST READ SANDWICH. You’ll laugh and clutch your heart and run to the nearest deli for lunch. Read the NYT review (free gift link) then buy the book.
Catherine Newman is on book tour for Sandwich right now. Go see her!
I heard John Green speak at a WorldOregon event about his community’s efforts to fight tuberculosis. What a mensch. I recently heard he’s taking an Internet break to care for his mental health. I wish you well, John Green. I’m sure glad you’re out there.
Did you know Maya Angelou was the first Black streetcar operator in San Francisco?
I loved reading Now We Are Sixty by Lisa Renee.
“Raising an elderly person is hard. You want them to be as they were, while all the while they’re growing backwards.” Via this post by Julie Lythcott-Haims, huge-hearted author of How to Raise an Adult and Your Turn: How to Be An Adult.

The irony! Visceral refers to viscera, your soft internal organs. Feeling something viscerally is also described as having a gut feeling. Mind/body indeed.