Author: Rachel Kulick

It’s been a year and a while since I have posted. I wanted to share about a couple of reflections and realizations that are rocking my world…

1 – MUDDLING: I have come to recognize that I muddle a lot.  At first, I thought this was a “bad” thing that I spent too much time in my head, that I was wishy-washy, that I was not linear, that I “should” have more clarity.  Come to find out, muddling is important these days.  Generally speaking, “business as usual” is not working for the planet, for BIPOC (black, indigenous, people of color), for low income communities, for women, for queer people, and even for the garden variety white person.  As such, these days I can get into lots of muddles.

Muddling is thinking aloud, talking through different perspectives, reasoning things out with another; unpacking a concern, a hope, a dream, a tension, a moment of shame with a friend; mapping a social issue on the whiteboard with students; owning up to mistakes, feeling super awkward and uncomfortable, and hopefully sooner/later learning from them; metaphorically throwing spaghetti against the wall and seeing what sticks. Lately I am learning how to embrace the muddle, to be in the muck, to not be alone in the muck, to find people that want to muddle with me in the muck, and did I mention there is so much muck right now.  For so long I was trying to fix the muck, fix myself, fix others, and fix, as if!

The more I can accept myself, others, and whatever reality holds including the muck, the more equipped I am to show up with grace, inner calm, peace, and even humor.  I used to be super reactive, I would go from having an awareness to reacting.  Maybe it is menopause, and learning how to take the pause and even muddle in it but it is really altering how I show up.

2 – EMBODIMENT: At the same time, too much muddling can be problematic.  Until a few years ago, I did not realize how disassociated I was.  I lived in my head like many academics.  I started dancing, somatic work, and Ayurvedic Abhyanga to get reacquainted with my body.

This fall, I started meditating.  Yom Kippur weekend was filled with eureka and tough patches of fear as I was getting closer to queering out.   I went to two conscious dance events one on consent and contact improv with Rebecca Foster and David Linden, the other was a journey dance with Elizabeth Robinson with of course, an amazing soundtrack which I now call Awe 2023.

Last Yom Kippur 2022, I made the conscious decision for 2023 to fast, not teach, and go whole hog (oops – not a kosher way to talk about Yom Kippur).  If I had known that it was going to be fricken brutal on the emotional and spiritual front, I might not have chosen this path!

Anywho, the afternoon of Yom Kippur a Souful Shabbat member led a meditation in the afternoon, and after the first round I shared that I was really struggling to get out of my head.  He used the metaphor of a river and boats for meditation as a way to gently recognize boats (thoughts) and get back to the river (ie. breath) and body. He described thoughts as boats that come and go.  It was really helpful for me to see, oh I’m on boat, another boat, yet countless more boats; this gentle way of recognizing thoughts/boats as a springboard to get back to my breath to get back to the river, to get back to the moment.   By the end of the meditation, I experienced this quiet inner calm, it was pretty profound.  By the end of the last Yom Kippur service around 7 pm; I was famished, delirious, and a little nervous that I was loosing it.  I went to a friends to break the fast, and then home.  I had trouble falling asleep that night, I was full of fear and terror.

The next morning I woke up at 6 am, it felt like another day, and it was actually quite reassuring to know that sometimes I am full of fear and even terror; and thank the goddesses it passes.  Midday, I went to my therapist who does a lot of somatic work with me.  I described the terror and she replied, it seems like you are having “fear of fear.”  I responded, OMG, I have been struggling with fear of fear for a long time.  She replied, “it’s just fear, like any other emotion.” She had me lie down and befriend my fear, first I stomped my feet and allowed my body to thrash; then I calmed down and said hello to fear on my fingers, arms, legs, feet, chest, neck and head.  It was “just fear” another emotion. This session was a game changer for me in helping me put fear into perspective.  To quote a friend, feelings are like children, you don’t want to let them drive but you also don’t want to hide them in the trunk.  In other words, you don’t have to overreact or hide/pretend, what a relief!

Since then I have been meditating daily, doing Tara Brach’s mediation: vipassana – the practice of seeing clearly.

Meditation is really helping me cultivate more inner calm in my skin.  I have also been doing meditation in my classes.  My Yom Kippur gift to me (and students) was the mindfulness bell app that I use at the beginning of my classes to start and conclude short guided meditation sessions.  Even if students think it is corny, it is helping me arrive and get centered to teach and learn.

I wanted to post this while we were in Costa Rica but the year flew by….I wrote this about a year ago but it feels like a good reminder

1/2019: I think a lot about time here and the multidimensional value of sabbatical life.  For those of you who know me, my tendency for work (and life in general) is to pile it on.  Maybe it is just me or part of being embedded in this larger go-go-go culture, but I have been very aware of this machine-like tendency and its implications for spending way too much time in my head plotting my days: the household division of labor, my many to do lists and schedules, and how could I possibly add another set of assignments to grade, another evening to take Milo to Untapped (local game store) for  Dungeons and Dragons, another stop at Target on the way home from work, another, another….

Being on sabbatical has been this amazing privilege of increased spaciousness and time that should be more widely available.  But even when I first plotted out my research plans for Costa Rica, it was a large pile – with plans to do a food security research project at the Center for Social Action at the University of Costa Rica (UCR) in San Jose while also working on a local sustainability project through my research affiliation with the Monteverde Institute.  Fortunately within the first couple of months, it became clear for multiple reasons that I needed to let go of the food security project at UCR, and settle into working on ONE project with the Monteverde Institute.

Juliet Schor talks about “Downshifting” in her book, The Overspent American: Upscaling, Downshifting, And The New Consumer.  She wrote this a while ago but her message has resonated as I frequently ask myself, is this pile mentality really serving me?

Even though I still fall into the busy trap here, I am trying to downshift and embrace the notion that less is really more.   Here on some examples:

PRIVILEGING LOVE and RELATIONSHIPS: At orientation back in August at Milo’s school, the head of school explained, “the teacher’s first and primary job is to love our children.”  I could feel the goosebumps as I was completely taken back and impressed with this approach to teaching and learning.  She proceeded to talk about the importance of relationships in the larger Monteverde community, that people make time and prioritize relationships over work, and at work.  I remember my first month at the Monteverde Institute, most of the staff ate lunch together.  At first I was intimidated by the prospect of joining them so I ate lunch with my laptop in the library.  But after a couple of months, I started to eat lunch with the staff.  It has been these kind of shifts that have really altered my thinking about what matters, what is important, and how I want to spend my time.

Milo’s first day of school

Meeting his kindred spirit, Holden

Morning Peace Circle at Zac’s School

WALKABILITY: Initially we were planning to buy a car here but it was expensive and way too involved so we opted to rely on our feet and rental cars for times when we wanted to venture out of Monteverde into other parts of the country.  While walking is great for our bodies and the environment, it is also great for building connections.  With time being less constrained, I find myself actually stopping to talk to people, friends and other people walking on this planet.   Another benefit has been a raised awareness and interest in birds and other critters.  Walking from our neighborhood to the SuperMega (one of the larger supermarkets in Santa Elena, about 30 minutes), I find myself listening for birds; for mott motts, wrens, yellow warblers and the occasional bellbirds, toucanet, and toucan; looking down for leaf cutter ants, and noticing more than I ever would in a car.

 

 

I often say that my sabbatical was this chance to step off the rat wheel.  I shared this with a mentor this fall and she told me, “you do not have to necessarily step off the wheel, you can decide what your  ‘wheel’ looks like, and it might not even be a wheel, it could be something else altogether”

It is hard to believe that we have already been in Costa Rica for 4 months.  We moved into our new funky home the beginning of August.  From the outside, it feels like a scene out of the TV show, Lost, as the portico/main door surrounded by concrete walls looks to be a portal to an underground secret compound.

From the inside, we are living in the cloud forest surrounded by trees, birds and their various calls to each other, sounds of the babbling river below, and a spectacular view of the Pacific Ocean (that depends on the day and the cloud coverage).   With the many windows throughout the house, it is a great space to drink in the forest and enjoy visits from monkeys, agutis, geckos, coatis, etc.

When we arrived in Costa Rica in July, Milo remarked that the animals and insects are much more free here.  This realization has prompted him to stop eating meat – which is a good thing for the planet, and a little less ideal for me as he has always been my partner in eating all things meat.

I have been pondering this notion that animals and insects have more freedom in Costa Rica, and living in the  cloud forest, Milo often says, “we humans are the intruders!”  I have to concur with him, and I want to share some ways that we are attempting to co-exist with the critters.

CATCH and RELEASE: Our first day, we learned the catch and release approach to rescuing moths, gem beetles, morpho butterflies, leaf bugs and others when they venture indoors.  The idea is to place a cup over the critter, slide paper over the top of the cup, and then remove the paper from the cup once you are outside to set the bugs free.  The first couple of weeks, instead of asking for screen time, the kids were actually vying for who could be in charge of the rescue cup.  They sometimes spend large chunks of time in the evening liberating our critter friends.

 

Last week, Zac and I rescued this hummingbird on our patio with sugar water, a technique we learned from Costa Ricans.

RESCUING SCORPIONS: Up until living in the cloud forest, it never crossed my mind that we would actually want to save a scorpion with their reputation in the league of scary, vicious, more dangerous critters.  Well a friend, suggested if we see one, we should capture it in a jar, seal it, and walk it across the forest to the other side of the street.  I wish I had a picture of our first scorpion because she was huge.  And Milo volunteered to escort the scorpion in the dark with his headlamp to the other side of the street.  He was even a little concerned that we were taking a mama scorpion away from her scorpion children but we weighed the options – killing it, ignoring it with the possibility of getting stung, and relocating it – with the latter rising up as the best case scenario.

CHECK ALL SHOES for SPIDERS, SCORPIONS, and SNAKES, OH MY: Last month, we found a snake in Zac’s rain boot.   Finding the boa definitely evoked some nervous energy around the house.  First, the gardener took its life out of fear that it was poisonous.  I showed pictures of the snake to folks at the Institute (where I work) who identified her to be a dwarf boa and not venomous!  It was a bit awkward to show them a picture of a dead snake as they were a bit dismayed to see that she was no longer alive when all living beings are valued here, even snakes.  Since then, we try to be extra vigilant about checking and shaking our shoes for potential forest friends.

HORMIGAS (ANTS)…SUGAR ANTS, LEAF CUTTER ANTS, ARMY ANTS: So the story on ants definitely warrants its own blog post as I am trying to appreciate their sociological lessons but for the purposes of now, I am a bit embarrassed to admit that thus far, the tiny sugar ants have been my arch-nemesis.  I don’t mind the scorpions, spiders, shrimp bugs that jump around on our carpet in the evening, or the vast community of moths that we live with but the ants……  From a sociological perspective, I observe their highly developed systems and practices as they are diligent workers that can scout the slightest morsel of food (often the sweet and savory food that we value most) and then mobilize countless tiny peers to infiltrate and transport the food to their colonies.  As a result of their sophisticated social systems, I spend a good amount of time in the kitchen with my disinfectiva spritzer (i.e. vinegar) combating  ants.  I am hoping over time I will find ways to accept, embrace, and co-exist with them as they are a great metaphor for the many things that we sometimes think we need to banish when maybe they can be instructive models for considering and beginning to value the social systems of critters and other living beings.  I never knew that part of this year would be about gaining more perspective about how humans can more be open to all living things (including ants!) even when they are trying to infiltrate your beloved potato chips!

 

 

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