Dear reader,
I humble myself low to your patience. I write to you once again from the front porch, this time listening to the frogs’ returning mist-soaked song, the deer's footsteps crunching in the cottonwood grove across the street, the sound of the yellowing leaves landing gently on the asphalt.
We’ve officially passed through the Fall Equinox, and it feels like everything is bending low. The sunflowers hang their heads heavy, the seeds return themselves to the Earth, we crouch down to view the fruits of the forest floor. All of us, in reverence.
Again, I humble myself low in gratitude to you, to your grace with this newsletter’s rhythm during what felt like a strange whirlwind of a summer season.
For some, the year is just beginning—the educators, the students, the caretakers shepherding their little ones back into their routines. For others, the year is closing—those harvesting seeds and cloching the last of the tomatoes, those nailing the final shingles on the roof before the rains come, those graciously forgiving as Elul1 waxes and wanes. As for myself—I’m contently wading somewhere in between, finding insight in the closure, inspiration in the decomposition, unsurprisingly, feeling most at home in the liminal.
I love places that are both. The intertidal zone. The sunrise and sunset. The river mouth. The equinox. I find that they are thin.2
Today, on the day where light and dark hang in perfect balance, we find ourselves on the holy ground of a threshold. It is here where abundance and scarcity meet. Where we reap the fruits of the entire year’s labor, celebrating the peak of harvest season, while feverishly processing in anticipation of leaner times. Preparing our pantries, our bodies, our psyches for when the sustenance of the past will be most needed.
Sweet reader, in this time of gleaning and gathering, there are so many reflections I long to share with you. Moments and memories that, in the midst of living them, I couldn’t wait to encapsulate into an essay for you. Moments and memories that perhaps made it from my brain into an iPhone note, and if they were lucky, into a bullet point in a Substack draft. Moments and memories whose urgency to share with you faded into an ambient background track while unexpected asks, pivots, and excuses rose like fireweed to the forefront. Moments and memories who may actually be better acclimated to the habitat of my journal, my roll of film, my therapy sessions, and conversations where I can stare into blinking eyes instead of a blinking cursor.
Per usual,
’s words arrive right on time:“I’ve been finding it incredibly hard to always try to find the words, instead of just allowing the experience. The ineffability of being a person seems in contrast with our highly-online culture: how do we make space for the mystery, grief, and beauty of an unfolding life to exist without simplifying it, without distancing ourselves from it by trying to make it shareable, without assuming it must be shared or wisdom-ifyed to be real and significant? How do we decide what we want to find the words for, what we want to capture — and what is meant to remain only in the heart, in the energy of our quiet life, in the realm of our own spirit? How do we let life surprise us if we’re always trying to fit it into a word count, a photo, a retelling?” –
, Like a River Flows
Dear reader, ironically enough, I’ve kept months of meaning-rich experiences close to my chest, though it feels different when it’s a result of underestimating and overcommitting, rather than intentional intimacy. I’ve felt a lurking sense of lack and a self-imposed guilt that I haven’t been writing these experiences into existence.
Perhaps it’s simply because my Mercury lives in Pisces that I must make meaning of this poetically complex world, or because my Chiron in Virgo loves to tell me I’m always behind. Perhaps it’s because I seriously love accountability and I struggle with discipline, and I’ve become too good at making myself feel bad about the latter.
Perhaps it’s simply because I said “yes” to other beings and needs that required my attention. Perhaps it’s because my mind and body had had enough output, even if it “was summer.” Perhaps it’s because I’ve skipped most of the past two winters and the excess yang energy clogged the channel. Perhaps I simply need to take a breath and return to the practice, to the mat, to the cushion, and remember that I admire far more the act of returning, rather than never falling off.
Last week, I ventured into Seattle for an all-staff office gathering, and traveled with a homemade bouquet from the garden. Holding a literal piece of the land in my hands as I navigated the fast-paced energy of the city kept me physically and energetically grounded, whiffs of tomato foliage and all. I kept smiling all day, envisioning how these rural sunflowers must have felt taking the underground light rail and staring at the skyscrapers up above. I wasn’t the only one smiling—this whimsical bunch of blooms and kitchen herbs lit up hundreds of faces between the ferry, the train, and the office, reminding me of just how alike we humans are. We are hardwired for this beauty.
I love the act of bouquet-making. Of piecing together what’s offering itself, playing with multi-sensory diversity, honoring the essence of the individual while assembling a greater whole.
Dear reader, I offer you a bouquet of what I had hoped to share with you this summer—an arrangement of stories and ideas that still live sweetly tucked into their beds. As they go to seed, may they feed the life and land around them, and perhaps emerge at another time.
Consider this a u-pick: Feel free to pluck one that calls out to you, and I’d love to talk about it with you in the comments or a private email. In any case, I hope seeing this bunch brings a smile to your face, or reminds you of just how alike we humans are.
I wanted to write to you about seeds and ancestors and how seeds are ancestors.
I wanted to write about seaweed.
I wanted to write to you from a scar whose teachings permeate every facet of my life’s work, of which I am waking up to more and more each day.
I wanted to share all of the poems that I recycled and made anew for the art exhibit that no one knew about.
I really wanted to take you on a four-day walk up to the summit of the Olympic Peninsula’s tallest mountain, into the lair of Thunderbird, and back.
I wanted to process the experience of putting myself out there over and over again, of how it truly felt to have my face plastered on a giant poster on the street, of how I’m integrating all of this into the next step forward.
I wanted to tell you about how unrealized expectations paired with money stifled my creative life force.
I wanted to tell you about the zucchini bread.
I wanted to tell you things that might devastate you.
I wanted to write about how it feels to contribute to an attention-siphoning economy with announcements and reminders and bite-size videos, even if it’s for an offering that’s in service of reclaiming it.
I wanted to uplift the wisdom of those who expand my awareness and bring me deeper into this world.
I wanted to write about celebrating the two year anniversary of buying a home and starting my life in Port Angeles. Also, the spaghetti ritual.
I really wanted to write to you about garlic.
I wanted to write to you about dancing.
I wanted to write about the seeds and starts that didn’t make it.
I wanted to write about wedding season, the institution of marriage, the grief around loss of ritual and ceremony, and how I want to celebrate the people in my life and community all of the time, just because, including sacred union.
I wanted to tell you about swimming in sungold tomato plants and the beauty of wildly inefficient and aromatic harvesting.
I wanted to write about my relationship with Judaism.
I wanted to write about the poetry of pole beans.
Today, on the threshold of the Fall Equinox, I got to spend the entire day inside the Earth, and inside this newsletter again. Toggling between writing on the front porch and dividing up the perennials to fill in neglected beds. An ending is always a beginning. Perhaps crossing the threshold is simply just returning.
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• Email: izabellazucker@gmail.com
ICYMI: In August, I talked about my in-person offerings and shared a poem. July’s writing covered chaos, grief, Leo season, the Hebrew month of Tammuz, and plenty more.
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Elul is the final month on the wheel of the lunar-based Hebrew calendar, known for its heart-opening energy of forgiveness.
A thin place—where the space between the seen and unseen, the physical and material, is permeable.
This felt like a celebration. 🙏🏻✨
Ah! Putting together bouquets from my garden was a such a meditative practice for me this summer. And I, too, regularly dove into renegade thickets of sungolds, emerging with that sharp green tomato smell wafting from my hair and skin. Such good moments.