reverse threading

the path back is the path forward

Category Archives: goodness


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most alive. [kerri’s blog on two artists tuesday]

in a non-rigorous scientific-community-questioned experiment back around 2000, a japanese researcher exposed water molecules to positive and negative input – commentary, music, sounds that are easily sorted into validating or dissing, softer reassurances or harsh aggression. the water molecules that had been privy to positivity turned into beautiful ice crystals while the water molecules that had been subjected to negativity froze into ugly shapes. the theory was that vibrational input – all the energy input – played a part in the effect on water, and the experiment posited a direct connect to how vibrational energy affects us as people.

whether or not this experiment had all the controls and data and science it purported doesn’t really matter to me. what matters is that this makes sense.

being kind, generous, positive, encouraging to someone, stroking someone with words of goodness is entirely the opposite of berating someone, demeaning them, being hostile toward them. clearly.

when you walk into the trader joe’s grocery store nearest us, the first thing you see – on your right – are bins of flowers. it is a wall of color, of beauty. we slowly browse through them all – so many are different than what your would find at a typical florist, these are intriguing and, obviously, very popular – as there are shoppers with armloads of these bouquets.

we haven’t bought flowers often there, though i have stopped and admired them each time we have entered the store. flowers weren’t in the budget so i enjoyed them at the store and thought about one day starting a new tradition of having fresh flowers around us, any time of year. my sweet poppo would buy my momma grocery store flowers for the little table in the foyer of their house and she loved that tradition, the ritual of changing the flowers, of having beauty right by the front door.

the last two times we went – which isn’t too often because it’s about 40 minutes away – we picked up a bundle of flowers. last time we picked up red hypericum, this time purple eryngium. each time we brought home a little posey of something uniquely different to us, something just simply so pretty we couldn’t pass it by. despite other shoppers leaving with multiple bundles, we have been quite pleased with ourselves, carrying out of the store a sweet bouquet of infamous tj flowers.

at home – in a ball jar on the bistro table by the windows in the sunroom – we enjoy our flowers every single day, for this is the place we sit most often. and every single day that we have enjoyed these flowers – this $4.99 investment in ourselves – we have felt the positive self-message that we are worthy of them.

it doesn’t take much. tiny affirmations. words of support, assurance, validation, self-belief. little gestures. big empowering. everything in between.

if i had to guess, i would think that having trader joe’s flowers around might be a catalyst – one among many others – for becoming beautiful crystals. that – even more than the 60% of our bodies that are water – our body is 100% beautiful. and in the overwhelming presence of that kind of beauty, we are most alive.

“we begin to find and become ourselves when we notice how we are already found, already truly, entirely, wildly, messily, marvelously who we were born to be.” (anne lamott)

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this TWO ARTISTS TUESDAY

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and then what? [kerri’s blog on merely-a-thought monday]

after my album as sure as the sun was released, the song slow dance was promoted to adult contemporary radio. listeners seemed to really like the song and it did fairly well on radio – eventually charting at #13 on the secondary market. i traveled to a lot of cities to be featured on radio shows – it was the early 2000s – and radio was still where it was at.

a very big radio personality in new york city – the program director of a big fm station there – invited me to dinner after our meeting. i met him – carrying the backpack full of music and clothes i needed for those recording/radio days in the city.

the bistro was veritas and it was way above my pay scale. the wine list was 3000 selections long – a full binder of choices with a wine cellar that had about 75,000 bottles of wine. it had earned a michelin star and three stars from the ny times. it was late 2002 and i sat down at what-i-remember-as a stainless steel bar, out of my league.

that evening the chef had a special offering – french truffles, just flown in – and my host – who was apparently a regular – ordered for both of us. i had never had a meal with courses that had their own wine offering before; it is not likely i will have such a lavish meal again. when the bill came – and its total announced itself off the check – i couldn’t help but think how many hungry people that amount of money might have fed right in that very city.

but the truth of it was that this was the core of things, how things worked, how things work.

and though i believe that people nationwide did indeed like my song, the inordinately steep price tag of radio promotion – for which i – as the owner of my recording label – was paying – was merely machination for the game. and my charting song was choreographed by a group of men who enjoyed eating at michelin star restaurants – on their radio tabs – around the country.

now, this enlightenment didn’t come to me sitting on that barstool that evening, having careful conversation and eating divine foods, sipping wine. that was all part of the design – to create a tapestry of reality around me – and every independent artist – so that we might continue to over-invest further and further into a system that was, at best, rigged and not real.

it seems more than ironic to me that the place of this learning – in retrospect – was at an establishment called veritas. veritas – the latin word for truth or reality, representing honesty, moral integrity and the alignment of one’s actions and words with facts or core values.

the restaurant was – in and of itself – lovely, though i stand firm on my thoughts about how better to use that kind of money.

but that word – veritas – has been coming up for me a lot lately, sort of stuck in my head, like gestures of songs get stuck on repeat, time and again.

as i look around – in the challenges we have faced and face – it would seem imperative that truth should be the basis upon which decisions are made, that truth and integrity should actually dictate actions and words, that facts should matter, should set the stage for accountability.

it would seem that all manipulation of the facts, warping of narrative, revising of the truth – to escape culpability – should fail in the end. ahh…perhaps we must be patient.

i sat on the barstool at that high-brow bistro – trusting a process that was not to be trusted, wined and dined, my very cautiously spent independently-owned-label’s marketing and promoting budget exploited by a system. i was one of the little people, taken advantage of.

and just as we look around in our current country and its circumstances, just as i – or you – deal with other personal matters of trauma – we can see the grooming systems – the skewed-to-one-side systems – out there – not to be trusted.

all too often, these words speak the truth: it happened. it was wrong. it matters.

and then what?

from my place off the barstool i’d add this: vincit omnia veritas – truth conquers all things.

*****

SLOW DANCE © 2002 kerri sherwood

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a good takeover. [kerri’s blog on k.s. friday]

sweet potato black bean chili was on the menu, so we went to the hanging basket in the stairwell to get a couple sweet potatoes.

lo and behold, one of our sweet potatoes had sweet pink tendrils growing, growing. we giggled as we recalled last year’s pink-tendril-adorned sweet potatoes and how we planted them in big planters and they took over the world.

because the world could use a good takeover, we decided to plant our little catalyst and watch goodness grow and spread and blanket every single everything.

it didn’t take but a few short days and, already, this sweet sweet has leaves.

i have to say – it gives me hope.

nature – despite all the contrarians out there who don’t care about it – will prevail. and deep down – underneath all the evil intent and the scripted corruption and the yuck that is distressing those of us with moral centers – there will be goodness.

the sweet potato will vine. the tomatoes will ripen. the trees will turn in autumn. the hummingbirds will migrate. stars will explode with light and galaxy dust will scatter. there will be symphonies of sound in the woods and by the shore. love and compassion, empathy and altruism will roll in on the tide.

we need to believe. we need to stand steady.

the sun will rise.

our sweet potato told us.

*****

THAT MORNING SOMEDAY ©️ 1996 kerri sherwood

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make-do-ers. [kerri’s blog on not-so-flawed wednesday]

i always feel like i have to explain – to people new to our kitchen – that our kitchen is old (like our almost-centenarian house), that the range is at least sixty years old, that – yup – all told, we have some significantly old stuff.

we are make-do-ers. we’ve been make-do-ers all our lives and we will likely be make-do-ers the rest of our lives. it is a mindset. not a bad thing or a good thing, it just is. and neither of us can imagine a different way.

the heat and humidity and rain of the last months have made our basil go crazy. we have two plants and i have cut them back – which actually makes them grow more. we’ve made pesto and tabouli, pizza margherita and tomato soup with fresh basil – it is caprese heaven.

the other day – on one of the days of tornado warnings and severe thunderstorms and torrential rain – i went out and snipped off a whole buncha basil, placing it in water in ball jars and small vases – so that later in the day we could make basil cubes. how lovely to have a harvest so plentiful that we now have both basil cubes and pesto cubes in our freezer for the winter. pretty amazing.

so she was here only for a day – and as we showed her around our house, chatting about the basil cubes we made the night before – i got to see our home through someone else’s eyes.

and for a moment or two, i took in her truly delightful comments about what she saw. for her enthusiastic words about our old kitchen, her laughter about our chunks of concrete and repurposed “furniture”, her “awww’s” when we told stories about rocks or branches or tiny baby shoes or old suitcases – these were so welcome, particularly for two people whose cars have ages that add up to 100 years right now.

we make-do. we are kinda proud of it. some of our best stories are stories about how we made do. we are convinced we would have nothing to talk about if everything were just … you know … perfect.

the suntea is out on the deck steeping now and the mint for it is at hand; the basil is ready for another shearing. we used the tomatoes on some homemade pizza last night and have all the ingredients for jalapeño poppers – both of ann’s recipes. we are soon to make another batch of tabouli and are – rightly (right now) – staying away from (as they say in colloquial wisconsin) “boughten” lettuce and other dangerous parasite-dwelling produce. our range is ancient; we wash all our dishes. we take back roads and turn our shampoo and conditioner upside down for weeks before calling them done. we have a window a/c unit, there are clamps on the edges of our roofing (waiting for the roofing guys), and a zip-tie holds the rocker molding onto littlebabyscion.

but heck. we wouldn’t be interesting any other way.

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this NOT-SO-FLAWED WEDNESDAY

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all the phases. [kerri’s blog on two artists tuesday]

the sowthistle can’t help but stand in all the phases of its life at the same time.

and i wonder what wisdom it can impart by doing just that – standing simultaneously in bud through flower through feathery seed into senescence.

being able to see the stage that is next, the stage that was before, the stage that was the beginning, the stage that will be the end – perhaps this is perspective-arranging, perhaps it zeros one in – on what is right now.

i wonder if the sowthistle thinks about any of this. does it base any of its thistling decisions on this omnipresent view of the arc of life, on the conglomerate-rock plant approach – or does it just live, detached from stressing, disconnected from the mindset of striding through stages upon which it has little impact?

and what about us? what if we could see our whole life right in front of us? what if we knew – from beginning to end – how it would all shake out?

don’t we, though? sort of?

don’t we know that we will somehow travel through these stages – the beginning, the middle, the end – that we will somehow grow and change and celebrate and grieve and jump and hang back and be active and sedentary, brilliantly productive and passively idle, bowled over and resilient, profoundly angst-filled and radically happy, loving and beloved, young and – hopefully – old.

is the sowthistle consistently sanguine, glass-half-full, amazed at simply living?

as we hiked by this bit of meadow, sowthistle wild on the side of the trail, i was struck by the all-in-one-frame of thistle – all its life cycle – a life arc in one tiny space of dirt.

and in the way that nature reminds us – all the time – i was immediately aware of my own life arc, my own mysterious timeline.

and mary oliver whispered – once again – this time from the tangle of buds and flowers and seeds – because she can never ask this enough – “what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this TWO ARTISTS TUESDAY

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before another step. [kerri’s blog on merely-a-thought monday]

the clouds parted for a tiny bit of sun, the tiniest bit.

it seemed well-deserved after a week punctuated with heavy. it seemed well-deserved after the torrential rains that were the bookends of the last six days.

and there, in the middle of grey skies and uncertainty, was the smidgiest smidge of blue – a bit of an inhale, a few moments to catch our breath, to recover – before setting off to continue on the route.

there. there was the chance to stoke up, to firmly plant our feet, to focus our attention on what we need, to rest – before we look onward, before we discern what is ahead, before we take another step.

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this MERELY-A-THOUGHT MONDAY

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the view. [kerri’s blog on k.s. friday]

and in lessons that remind us:

our out-of-town guest had never been here before. not to our state, not to our town, not to the shores of lake michigan, not to our home.

staying at the local hotel right on the harbor channel, she sent photographs right after arriving, stunned by how beautiful it was. she repeatedly expressed this – along the lakefront, on the channel, by the rocks, in the gardens, in our neighborhood, in our old house, on our patio.

through her eyes we saw Home.

this week i passed through my 37th anniversary of living in our old house. more than half my entire life, it’s longer than i’ve lived anywhere else.

sometimes – no matter where you live – you stop seeing it…really seeing it.

and you get caught up in every everything else.

and you miss the sweet creak of the floors, the breeze off the lake, summer sunlight streaming in all the windows, the fresh basil in ball jars in the kitchen, the dogga-holes in the backyard, the giant pots filled with flowers in the parks, people out sidewalk-walking together, the birds lined up for grape jelly, sunset’s eastern sky over the water, the sound of children giggling in the surf at the beach or an amplified live band drifting over from by the harbor.

it might benefit each of us – even for just a few minutes – to just follow the advice of this chalk artist:

“sit down and enjoy the view.”

*****

THE WAY HOME ©️1997, 2000 kerri sherwood

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there’s still softness. [kerri’s blog on d.r. thursday]

given the chance, softness catches your eye.

in these times of unmitigated chaos, it feels important to somehow remain open – to have just enough stillness in your mind to see it – the soft thing.

i often click on videos of puppies, horses, cats, birds, wildlife, vast expanses of national park lands, tiny carter cooking. my analytics are clear, i’m guessing, because those are the videos i find when i open my social media. well, that and thru-hikers, tiny houses, a plethora of musicians, random acts of kindness, people growing basil or dahlias or raising kung fu emus.

they keep me going.

because the chaos can be all-consuming.

and if you add your own personal set of challenges to a chaos bar that has been raised just by the tenor of this country, you are faced with the nearly impossible task of trying to maintain some sort of balance, some sort of steady, some – any – sort of zen in your days.

but softness is still out there. and it’s all around us.

the universe waves its arms at us, trying to get our attention, “look! over here! “

and every now and then we listen. we look to where grace has pointed. and soft wraps itself around us, reminding us:

“there’s still softness in the world” (tyler merritt)

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this D.R. THURSDAY

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facts and fire. [kerri’s blog on two artists tuesday]

i read these words recently:

“facts are stubborn things.” *

no matter what someone wants you to believe about something, facts will stand the test of time, they will rise to the surface like a bobber on a lake, floating in incandescent shine into the air, ready for discovery. facts will – and should – lead the way, speaking loudly, burning down all the detriment of machinated false narrative, twisted stories that serve no purpose to truth.

facts. the intense combust of silence.

facts. silence. fire.

i have chosen facts.

i have chosen fire.

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this TWO ARTISTS TUESDAY

66 and 19 (mixed media)

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*heather delaney reese wrote these words in a recent post, but they are also attributed to president john adams in the history of this country.


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get after it. [kerri’s blog on merely-a-thought monday]

sometimes it feels as if you are at a starting gate, a jumping-off point, the very membrane between what is now and what is next.

sometimes it feels as if everything is hinging on that moment, that all you have been, all you have done, all the ways in which you have prepared are coming together – the confluence of it all.

sometimes it feels as if you are no longer in total control – as if you were at any time – and you are facing down something most giant, most pivotal, reaching this pinnacle from wherever you came, this place you have arrived.

sometimes – when you arrive at this place – the weight of which is enormous – you know you must take a deep breath, you must give over, you must trust all the dots that have connected you from before and through next and next and next to now, and, though you know not how it will all turn out, you must lay down every everything and somehow trust that the universe is rigged in your favor.

sometimes this place comes and the only thing to do is to get after it.

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this MERELY-A-THOUGHT MONDAY

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