Missing Witches - WF： Jarod K. Anderson aka The Cryptonaturalist - Give Yourself Permission To Take The Meaning You Make Seriously

00:00:00.340 We've been missing you. Do you want to find the witch friends you've been missing? Do you want 1.00

00:00:04.480 to participate in these conversations live? And do you want to support the work of recovering

00:00:09.080 a true history of feminist ideas about magic? Do you want to hang out? Do you want an invite to

00:00:15.440 Zoom together with Amy and myself, every new moon, along with our hilarious, diverse, wise,

00:00:22.600 queer creative anti-racist science and awe-loving coven you must join the missing witches patreon

00:00:31.200 it's pay what you can and we can't wait to meet you there patreon.com slash missing witches 0.97

00:00:38.360 you aren't being a proper woman therefore you must be a witch 0.64

00:00:41.700 you must be a witch we've been so excited by our first forays into having members of our 0.99

00:00:54.200 community and our circle participate in these conversations so um for witches who are listening

00:01:01.700 collaborators who are listening folks who are floating in and out please feel free to speak up

00:01:07.800 It's nicer together.

00:01:10.400 And I will say welcome practitioners of all kinds, word witches, artists, strangers in

00:01:22.360 the woods, you know, mitochondria, lichen, rainbow trout, whoever happens to be on the

00:01:33.140 line today. Welcome. We're really glad you're here. If you are a listener to this podcast,

00:01:42.680 then you may know or suspect we've had a guideline for ourselves from the beginning

00:01:46.500 about prioritizing the voices and ideas and histories in our storytelling and in our interviews 0.72

00:01:53.800 of women and of people of marginalized genders, because those are the ideas most violently

00:02:00.760 missing from pretty much all discourses and from my life and heart and that's and amy's and those

00:02:07.760 were the things we went researching but all rules for me are meant to be leaned against and bent

00:02:14.560 and all lines curve and so today we make our first exception and that's for a couple of reasons

00:02:24.180 one you know we like to play with things and two I started reading this person's poetry

00:02:32.780 I can see Jared's face so I'm not going to pretend I'm not talking about him

00:02:36.300 and I felt there was a writing there about magic like a willingness to engage with that idea in

00:02:46.760 the way that I like to play with it that connected to the like the thing that I know and need about

00:02:54.620 the natural world that makes me feel sometimes like things will be okay and I just recognized

00:03:01.160 a friend that I wanted to talk to and um and that is like enough of an impulse for me and then also

00:03:08.640 we'd had conversations in the podcast and in our in our coven circle and with our friends about how

00:03:15.460 Amy and I both mentioned in our book that we had found these good men and moved to the woods and

00:03:21.520 started to build a magical kind of life and people said that good man magic seems kind of hard to

00:03:29.600 find you know what tell us tell us a bit more about that and so my desire to lean against this

00:03:36.500 rule a little bit occasionally is also a kind of love note to a kind of masculinity that I know

00:03:44.980 has stood alongside women and people of marginalized genders from the beginning,

00:03:49.300 and that I want to identify and speak to and speak about. And those are the things I've been

00:03:55.800 thinking about tending the fire today, getting ready for this interview. It's a bit of a long

00:03:59.660 intro, but we have Jared Kanderson here today, the crypto naturalist, co-creator of the podcast,

00:04:06.180 poet, author, someone who is incredibly generous with sharing his words on the internet and

00:04:12.080 connecting with communities in that way. And I'm just really excited you're here. Hi,

00:04:16.080 thanks for coming. Hi, thank you so much for having me. It's so lovely to be here.

00:04:22.880 I meant to ask you before, you invited me on the podcast and I was thrilled to do it,

00:04:29.060 but I hadn't really spoken to you about where you encountered my work before.

00:04:33.940 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm an internet follower. I've been like someone who's like worked in

00:04:39.320 in web and social media for a really long time since before creating the podcast and during and

00:04:45.320 so I'd seen and like bookmarked and shared um crypto naturalist things without really realizing 0.78

00:04:51.940 you know without even imagining the person behind them just being like fuck yes the universe

00:04:57.080 it's funny um your point about masculinity I early in and I've been posting poetry on the 0.78

00:05:06.100 internet for a few years and um you know early on and still anytime i post any picture of myself

00:05:12.760 i get at least half a dozen people saying oh i thought you were you thought you were a woman

00:05:17.920 really i was like oh thank you yeah it's it's nice but yeah i i i tend to get that a lot

00:05:27.060 which is interesting it says interesting things about mainstream masculinity doesn't it

00:05:33.720 yeah yeah how do you how do you feel about that I mean also how do you feel about being our

00:05:39.300 our first exemption I'm honored I didn't know that I I've I listened back to to a few of your

00:05:45.760 episodes but I didn't notice um how do I feel about yeah my feelings about um masculinity have

00:05:54.880 been an interesting thing over my my entire lifetime I've I've um I've walked some interesting

00:06:03.380 lines with it you know the i remember um winning a statewide poetry contest when i was in middle

00:06:10.500 school and having to miss football practice for it and you can you can imagine the sort of response

00:06:16.060 that i got for that for that sort of pursuit but and i came from sort of a semi-rural rust belt

00:06:24.080 sort of traditional upbringing of sort of masculinity linked to violence and so i've

00:06:32.600 been grappling with that for a long time with how to think about it and i don't know how to perform

00:06:37.540 masculinity if i want to um i think i think largely in my creative work and just sort of my own

00:06:45.300 evolving philosophical identity i've sort of tried to get out of my own way about it like

00:06:50.900 you know i try to sort of listen to the quiet voice within myself and try to shrug off i'm not

00:06:57.980 so deluded as to think that I'm untouched by the context in which I was raised. But yeah, I

00:07:05.440 often think of things like, and in my work, I try when I'm talking to men to try to redefine

00:07:13.120 strength and toughness and what it means and how it can be linked to compassion,

00:07:18.320 you know, because I'm always talking about sort of the relativity of those sort of terms. Strong

00:07:23.420 compared to what? Tough compared to what? These can be virtues in themselves, virtues that men

00:07:30.740 certainly don't own. But the problem isn't extolling strength as a virtue. The problem is when it

00:07:37.160 becomes sort of worshipful. I think a lot of modern masculinity gets to the point where they

00:07:44.220 are worshiping the idea of strength to the point where they think they hate weakness.

00:07:49.380 And if you worship the idea of strength, I think you will always feel weak because you're not. I

00:07:53.260 mean we're we're we're fragile biological beings and so you know the premise becomes that if you

00:08:00.380 worship strength there's always a secret voice in you that says well you're broken you're not

00:08:04.260 strong enough you're and then that's just not a good foundation to build an identity on you know

00:08:10.760 to build a to build a life on so yeah yeah i i i wish i could have more of a hand in sort of

00:08:19.380 redefining what, what masculinity is. I certainly try through my work. Yeah. Yeah. I think about

00:08:25.860 masculinity a lot. I think about it. I'm not sure what to do with it a lot of the time, but yeah,

00:08:32.800 these issues come up again and again. Yeah. You use the word worship, which I think about a lot.

00:08:41.260 I mean, I'm like an atheist universe loving witch who talks to my lake or, you know, like, I don't have that figured out, but I don't know that there's much that I worship.

00:08:58.160 Do you think you worship anything now that you've sort of shaken out of that idea of strength?

00:09:03.980 I'm uncomfortable with that word in a strange way.

00:09:07.440 Maybe because I, so I was, I was raised by atheists. And strangely enough, I did a, I did a master's degree in Renaissance English. So I had to suddenly come to the Bible and learn Latin. And, and I told somebody I was on a podcast called the existential happy hour, speaking to somebody who came from an evangelical background and was now a deconstructionist was redefining it and pushing back.

00:09:37.120 And I told him when I came to the Bible, I could sort of say, oh, neat, neat, neat stories, you know? And he's like, yeah, he's like, yeah, for me, it's an open wound. I can't find it neat. You know, it's like, oh yeah, I understand. I respect that.

00:09:52.060 but still the idea of worship the idea of worship to me has connotations of like unexamined love

00:10:00.840 sort of um in a way that it feels like maybe orthodoxy is the word like like hard line

00:10:09.540 unexamined love or love doesn't sound like the right word sort of um buying into something so

00:10:16.720 completely you're not allowed to to talk to it anymore you're not allowed to question it

00:10:21.700 I think the closest thing I have is, I think if I have anything that's analogous, it's that I like to feel sort of a often directionless gratitude for nature and the natural world.

00:10:36.100 But whereas worship feels like a one way street, I think sort of the gratitude that I like to feel when I come to nature is much more of a dialogue.

00:10:45.560 I feel like it's much more of a give and take, an actual relationship, not, you know, praising something distant and untouchable.

00:10:57.560 It's something intimate, if that makes sense.

00:11:02.120 Yeah, it makes complete sense.

00:11:03.400 And it also makes me feel validated.

00:11:05.580 All the questions I wrote when I was trying to think about questions to ask you had the word relationship in them.

00:11:11.800 Like, what's your relationship with masculinity?

00:11:15.040 what's your relationship with the natural world so i'm glad to hear that that that is a way that

00:11:20.380 you sort of think about things yeah that's that's how i think about most things because if it's

00:11:25.640 it is a relationship you know if you if you take sort of the um

00:11:30.100 if you take on kind of the ideological burden with the idea that like most of these philosophical

00:11:37.840 ideas we interact with is, you know, meaning happens in collaboration between you, your

00:11:45.700 identity, where you are now, what your values are at the moment, and then all of these external

00:11:50.820 forces in the world, then like something in between those two tensions is where I think

00:11:57.160 meaning happens. Yeah, it's a relationship. I think it's always a relationship.

00:12:01.160 yeah i think so too this feels like the right time to ask if you would read a poem

00:12:07.980 sure yeah uh would you like me to read candle facts yeah i would i'd like you to read all of

00:12:16.380 them but let's read candle facts one and then talk about okay i'll read as many as you like

00:12:20.680 i know i know i know you said you had a few yeah i got a list all right sounds good uh candle facts

00:12:29.080 number one. If you whisper a secret to a candle flame, then all fire everywhere will know that

00:12:36.080 secret. The words will crackle in every campfire and churn like an ocean deep in the belly of the

00:12:42.780 earth. Fire will translate your words to smoke and ash, telling no one but the sky.

00:12:49.120 it's so funny like i i read that just recently and i had been you know i i have i sit in like

00:13:00.320 my partner and i like tend the fire all day in this part of the year um so i was having like

00:13:06.740 this very visceral moment of like looking at the fire and feeling and right before i read your poem

00:13:13.440 and feeling like this fire is all the fires like this this life is all the lives this instant is

00:13:19.460 all the instance they're unique and then they're everything and that felt like suddenly very true

00:13:24.620 and then like whacked my head against that poem yeah yeah i i yeah i've always sort of thought

00:13:32.800 of candles as sort of a great um embodiment of that that idea that like i'm looking at a piece

00:13:39.500 of a hole of um sort of a natural phenomenon that this is an individual shard of that huge

00:13:47.180 incalculable hole you know um and and then you know you can you can spend from that on to yourself

00:13:55.060 as being sort of a candle flame of the larger inferno of life so yeah i think there's a reason

00:14:02.960 that candles show up so much and and all sorts of magical and religious practices yeah i think

00:14:09.280 so too do you um what's your relationship with the idea of magic yeah so nothing organized

00:14:20.160 i will say um i was talking to my my partner about it coming on this podcast i thought oh

00:14:26.540 i should probably have this conversation kind of articulate these sorts of questions for myself

00:14:31.860 because you know and she pointed out like that i do things that i consider magic sometimes and

00:14:39.020 ritual and spells but there are always things that sort of there are always things that I kind

00:14:44.160 of have come up with in order to take an abstract thought something sort of fleeting or incorporeal

00:14:52.760 or a hope or an intention and then if it kind of works the same that really parallels with poetry

00:14:59.860 and writing if I want that thought that intention to take on more weight than something that might

00:15:06.480 fleet through my mind then I think ritual is often the way to do that um and so you know I've done

00:15:14.640 I've done things writing things on leaves and burying them I've done burning certain things

00:15:20.040 and in certain ways certain objects gathering things I've uh I've done just writing the same

00:15:26.120 phrase over and over again for for a week and carrying it with me things like that where it's

00:15:30.760 like you you build up kind of inertia with with an intention and and you know i think there's so

00:15:38.520 much tremendous mystery and magic in the universe that i i've i've always felt sort of called to

00:15:45.140 participate in it but in a way that's always been sort of um private because i've always felt like

00:15:52.340 well it's about me does that make sense i mean full body full body nod i know exactly what you're

00:15:58.700 tell you about i think most of the witches and i mean we play with the word witch right uh mostly

00:16:03.240 because we were you know women or queer people or marginalized people who who felt like we weren't 0.86

00:16:10.000 drawn to the princess you know so we were probably the fucking way we were outsiders wherever we were

00:16:15.740 you know or are we related to those stories but i mean amy and myself i'll at least you know i can 0.54

00:16:22.380 refer to our own experiences and i think people in our community and our listener base have a wide

00:16:27.020 variety but i mean the same like we're not we weren't we're not wiccans we didn't really feel

00:16:32.440 attached to a lot of these branches of the spiritual new age like there's a lot of racism

00:16:37.640 that can lurk in their appropriation and we were really interested in in stories of a history of

00:16:43.880 ideas that had been excluded to try to understand our own impulse it was so much like yours it was

00:16:49.020 just like you know we got together and sang and and wrote things on candles and invented our own

00:16:55.100 rituals and had always done it so then we just started doing it together yeah that's wonderful

00:17:00.680 yeah yeah there have been people before they've talked to me about like oh you know you're like

00:17:05.100 a druid and i'm not really comfortable with that like i don't i don't need it if that's you know

00:17:12.100 but that's not for me yeah yeah i don't know um yeah i think we've been in sort of a project of

00:17:20.380 building found family a lot over the last few years so I have a I have a two-year-old with

00:17:25.260 my partner and several of our friends have kids and um we're all fun oddballs and so we're all

00:17:32.500 kind of like I want traditions but we don't necessarily want like or necessarily want any

00:17:41.280 of this kind of pre-packaged traditions it's like so we've been sort of engaging in this like giving

00:17:48.060 ourselves permission to make our own sort of uh traditions whatever they may be and and kind of

00:17:55.040 considering the importance of ritual togetherness as as a as a good in itself which you know it's

00:18:03.240 i think it's the same for sort of group meaning and it's the same for individual meaning that

00:18:07.920 that a lot of um i think a lot of healing comes when when you start to give yourself permission

00:18:13.860 to take the meaning you make seriously, you know, rather, rather in your own mind or sort of

00:18:19.860 together in togetherness rituals. Yeah. I think that for most of us, we are drawn to that

00:18:25.860 ritual space, um, from pain, I think from trauma, from healing, from like not having a set of

00:18:32.680 rituals that we can go to anymore. So we make them up. Yeah. Yeah. Can we, um, talk about mental

00:18:41.920 have. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a big one. Yeah. Just like what's your relationship with

00:18:48.500 mental health? No. I mean, yeah, I've had lifelong sort of brutal chronic depression. And

00:18:56.100 if anybody reads a lot of my poetry, they'll see a haunted house metaphor come up a lot for the

00:19:01.900 mind. And I'll say I'm doing better than I ever have before. And a lot of it has come from sort

00:19:11.700 of um I think I wrote a poem about this can I find a poem yeah yeah and while you while you

00:19:20.400 pull it up can I say um I had read a lot of your your poetry and your work online and then I was

00:19:26.440 digging through your website and I found a blog post you had written like relatively recently

00:19:31.120 like a letter to yourself oh yeah and um and I sent it to uh like a family member who struggles

00:19:41.200 with depression who is like one of the people I love most in the world and and I'm like terrified

00:19:46.680 by the way this thing haunts her you know and um and there's a bit in it about magic words

00:19:53.460 you know which I I love yeah yeah um it's funny I'm I'm some writers remember their writing

00:20:03.420 so well and I am not one of those people like I get it onto paper and then like if I read it again

00:20:10.140 a year later i'm like oh this person has some good points so so like i know the yes i know the

00:20:17.760 letter you meet but i i i yeah and i and i remember the the kernel of it for me was saying

00:20:23.800 that like stop adding shame on top of the burden of this thing yeah yeah i mean you you have a

00:20:32.460 piece in it where and i can paraphrase it it will because you don't remember it but um he said

00:20:39.160 how you talk about magic words you say that they're they are mad that words are magic that

00:20:44.540 that every everyone knows this in some way just something you know as a writer and a child of

00:20:51.360 writers whatever I think about all the time like we've called all of this world into being with

00:20:56.700 the power of words for the most part we convince each other of things and share people's ideas and

00:21:03.000 that you give this super concrete example of uh that you've been like a weightlifter at times in

00:21:11.860 your life and then you realize that there's you have more strength in your body if you count to

00:21:16.720 five twice than if you count to 10 once i did that earlier today yeah it's it's still true it's

00:21:22.120 it's um yeah somehow eight sends a signal to your brain that like uh-oh it's time for this to get

00:21:28.060 too hard to do whereas if you try to count to five twice it works and it's just like the the way

00:21:34.140 the ways in which the mind can really exert change over reality are so so myriad and and

00:21:40.860 mysterious and fascinating and and you know trying to find ways to poke and prod at that and experiment

00:21:49.980 with it I feel like language is the tool to do that with I have another example recently I just

00:21:56.780 finished, um, a novel. And so for myself, I always have to gamify big projects, not just gamify. I

00:22:04.260 have to write them down. So I have to write on the calendar every day. And for a while I was putting

00:22:09.500 a check Mark when I got my word count and that wasn't doing it for me. And so I started to write

00:22:15.660 things like victory exclamation point seven that changed it. That changed the tone of it. Like,

00:22:21.300 okay, this is really a thing to celebrate. Not a, not a check Mark. It's like, okay,

00:22:26.160 if I celebrate myself rather than acting like I'm, you know,

00:22:30.680 punching a card or something that, that, that it really changed.

00:22:35.240 It changed my whole day. And so, yeah,

00:22:38.920 thinking about how you talk to yourself is such a big part of how you face,

00:22:43.120 face depression and mental health too. I have, I have this poem here.

00:22:47.080 So this one, this one came sort of from people talking to me about, um,

00:22:51.500 because a lot of followers of my work know that I struggle with depression and

00:22:55.100 know sort of my overwhelming love of nature and often ask how those things fit together.

00:23:01.800 This one's called The Treatment. I can't say spending time in nature heals depression.

00:23:07.880 For me, the outdoors changes sadness from a pain to be endured to a state to be experienced.

00:23:14.620 It's still sadness, but in the context of green growing things under a limitless sky,

00:23:20.360 sadness is simplified not a wound a tile in the mosaic even so depression needs more

00:23:28.900 I resisted trying therapy for a long time because I thought I was too smart for it

00:23:34.520 here's the thing you can't think your way out of depression any more than you can think your way

00:23:40.500 out of drowning asking for a life jacket is more important than knowing the physics of buoyancy

00:23:46.280 and so you know i i go to nature a lot as sort of a way to soothe sadness and depression and it

00:23:55.800 works but you know i never want to tell people oh it's magic and if you just go put your palm

00:24:01.760 against a living tree you know you'll feel all of the it doesn't work that way but what it does

00:24:06.900 is it changes your context you know if you're sitting in a in a square beige room and then

00:24:13.100 you go outside and remember what the world is and the universe is and nature and what you're a part

00:24:18.580 of that changes sort of the power and the menace of mental health problems. But yeah, I didn't

00:24:27.320 start really making strides until I embraced some humility and started going to other experts

00:24:34.680 experts and letting them in in a real and honest way. And do you think that that changed your

00:24:44.040 writing? Like, does it change who you talk, who you're talking to or how you talk to them that

00:24:48.920 you had this sort of opening or this outside perspective? Yeah, I think so. I mean, so finding

00:24:55.080 a therapist for me, it's hard. I think I went through five. I remember one person told me that

00:25:00.640 maybe i just needed to be sad because i'm a writer and you know that's that's good for art 0.99

00:25:05.360 oh fuck you oh no cool there's a lot of therapists out there oh yeah yeah and then um i found a guy 0.98

00:25:16.220 i really liked and i i brought my partner in on a session to sit with me and sort of because i 1.00

00:25:22.240 you know i trust i trust her opinion and i don't trust my own opinion on on matters of the brain

00:25:27.580 sometimes um and she was just like where did you find this guy he's perfect for you i mean he he

00:25:33.900 was this sort of long gray hair guy that like makes his own maple syrup and lives out in the

00:25:40.420 woods and you know he he kind of that's it's like um she's like it's like you drew this guy

00:25:48.120 and he came to life and but the point being you got to kind of find in terms of therapy it's so

00:25:54.260 important to find somebody that that you feel like you connect with and that their sort of sense of

00:25:59.320 the world echoes yours a little bit especially if we're talking about you know cognitive behavioral

00:26:04.720 therapy where what you're doing is sort of talking to your own thoughts and recognizing them and

00:26:09.420 interrogating them um but yeah that's it's it's hard work um it's a lot easier if you have a

00:26:15.360 support system that is kind of nudging you along but it's work i feel like a lot of time when i

00:26:20.420 read your poems I mean they're almost all addressed in the second person like you are you're you're

00:26:26.400 calling out to somebody or to everybody do you picture is it all for your partner is it is it

00:26:32.980 you is it a great internet mass of friends um I think it's me um to a certain extent but it has

00:26:40.740 changed a little bit so I I only sort of jumped on broadcasting my thoughts sort of publicly a few

00:26:48.600 years ago um you know rather than writing poetry and leaving them in my own journal um and i've

00:26:54.340 got like i've got like 90 000 followers across social media now um yeah sorry to interrupt but

00:27:00.740 some of the things you write like you'll see just suddenly everywhere like people are just like this

00:27:07.080 is the thing i needed and and on your facebook almost every response is i needed to hear this

00:27:12.720 today I need to hear this today I need to hear this today yeah I only bring it up to say that

00:27:17.340 like it it it changes it a little bit now where it feels like um there's almost a service component

00:27:23.360 to it where I feel like where I sort of sit and and you know I I publish stuff most days on

00:27:30.700 and I often sit and think like what is eating at me and what can I say back to it and maybe I can

00:27:37.280 articulate it in a way since i'm you know i'm i have sort of a lifelong study of words and how

00:27:44.960 can i i use that skill bring to bear to help other people who maybe don't have the response to say

00:27:50.860 to talk back to certain anxieties um or or that maybe don't feel don't know how to articulate in

00:27:59.100 their own mind how to feel sort of a swelling of hope about their own connection to the to the

00:28:06.340 natural world. Cause I've seen so many people who are so wounded by, by early exposure to different

00:28:15.260 theologies. And I see people move through the, like I'm wounded to the recoiling, to the sort

00:28:22.700 of isolation. And then, and then I guess I want to reach out to some of those people and say like,

00:28:29.080 it doesn't have to be that or nothing. One of the ones I read that hit home for me like that.

00:28:35.140 and then i i felt that you were both saying it to yourself as like a kind of cognitive behavior

00:28:42.900 therapy spell and and and to listeners like it really reads like that it's uh naming the river

00:28:51.380 the water in your body is just visiting it was a thunderstorm a week ago it'll be an ocean soon

00:28:56.740 enough most of your cells come and go like morning dew we are more weather pattern than

00:29:02.100 stone monument sunlight on mist summer lightning your choices outweigh your substance i mean that

00:29:09.100 i sat with that for a really long time you're more weather pattern and stone monument

00:29:14.180 yeah i'm i mean it almost goes back to the candle flame right like in my mind at any given moment

00:29:24.540 um you could take an individual person and sort of view them as an instance of nature um

00:29:30.640 sort of an awakening of of nature not necessarily kind of an unchanging landmark but um a personification

00:29:41.580 in a very literal way and you know it can be more complicated than that but remembering that

00:29:49.480 the the forces that made the mountains you know and and the processes that that brought

00:29:55.000 the leaf into the world are exactly the same that came to bear to to get us here having this

00:30:01.960 conversation i think that is both true and i think it's worth worth pondering in a way that

00:30:08.860 sort of changes our relationship to to the world especially for people who feel kind of a um

00:30:15.020 a vacuum of spirituality you know i see i see people i have sort of different genres of fans

00:30:24.780 sometimes and i see sort of the hardcore science people and then i see sort of the um the the i

00:30:32.500 love magic people and sometimes i see sort of a clash between them and it's just like i feel like

00:30:38.100 you're both holding half an amulet here and you need to you need to put them together um yeah

00:30:44.360 but you know where i then feel a duty is it's like all right so okay you know lover of words

00:30:53.460 figure out how to do that figure out how to how to help these people find their common ground

00:30:58.880 yeah the violence of that binary is something we we talk about a lot and a lot of the witches we

00:31:06.000 talk about uh talk to and talk about people we research can you dig out and read a poem called

00:31:13.720 the chain if you're taking requests sure let's i'll take requests put put a dollar in my guitar

00:31:21.420 case. Yeah, this is a good time to mention that Jared and the Crypto Naturalist have a lovely

00:31:27.360 Patreon that we encourage you to join and support. Well, thank you. Jared needs to put an index in

00:31:32.200 his poetry book next time. Okay, here it is. The Chain. You were once very much part of your

00:31:42.120 mother's body. The same is true for your mother and her mother and so on back to the beginning.

00:31:48.500 it's a biological chain that stretches back to the first living cell awakening in a young ocean

00:31:54.800 millions of years before the first spoken name we are links in that chain can you feel its weight

00:32:02.520 a clear path back to ancient waters you are here in modernity as familiar as thirst

00:32:10.980 just remember what else you are your mother her mother the ancient seas beneath a thin new sky

00:32:19.760 i'm very thankful that poem exists and that it goes out to an audience that includes i think

00:32:29.020 lonely men who struggle with the concepts of masculinity that we were talking about earlier

00:32:37.040 and I think it's nice on your podcast we hear your old cowboy voice sometimes we hear like a strong

00:32:44.240 version of masculinity that wants to remind uh and I mean there's a there's a mental health

00:32:50.160 crisis among men there's a suicide crisis among men in Canada I think it's the same in the United

00:32:54.260 States and yeah it's totally totally haunting you know we we have a rising uh rate of murders of

00:33:02.900 women in Canada and the United States, but also like looming large over that is the men who just

00:33:08.100 kill each other. And there's just such a crisis in culture of violence that I'm glad there are

00:33:13.620 poems being written from a masculine voice reminding us that we are connected to

00:33:17.940 our mothers too. Somehow that feels helpful. Yeah. And, you know, those, the statistics are

00:33:24.660 so brutally sad and just so obvious to me. You know, I was very much raised in a way that was

00:33:30.740 like you look inside the the traditional man's toolbox and the the one tool there is violence

00:33:38.080 or anger um or sort of stoic silent loneliness so you know and then and then at some point it's like

00:33:47.740 i feel like some of these men are like cornered animals where they know that

00:33:52.100 the tools they have don't work and the world doesn't work and there's no there's no honorable

00:33:57.480 way back. Nobody gave them a different path to sort of self-actualization or new ways to think

00:34:06.740 about their identity. And, you know, we have to start modeling different ways of being and

00:34:14.200 interacting with the world and talking to your own emotion. I mean, in order to talk to your

00:34:19.160 own emotions, you have to first acknowledge that they're real and worth paying attention to. And

00:34:23.620 um that's a pretty big hurdle for for a lot of men i think yeah it's sad and dangerous and

00:34:31.660 terrible i mean yeah it's almost you know akin to finding ways to regenerate soil like find

00:34:41.120 fertility again in in these places that we've stripped so so fucking bare yeah and it's not

00:34:47.220 unprecedented you know it's it's it's not through all history and cultures it's it's it's perfectly

00:34:55.280 clear that there are all sorts of historical precedents for a more thoughtful caring nurturing

00:35:00.940 kinds of masculinity it's i don't know i think a lot of it comes down to role models and i will

00:35:05.760 say that i am encouraged from my time as a teacher and and sort of the the boys and men in my own

00:35:12.840 life that I do feel like, I do feel like there are shifts happening. Um, and I think there will

00:35:18.640 be growing pains, but, um, the smaller the world becomes, the more stories are disseminated. I

00:35:24.560 think that, that for the people paying attention, I think we'll notice that, that things need to

00:35:29.920 change. That's my hopeful statement about it. Yeah. I'm hopeful as well. Sometimes I wonder

00:35:35.960 if I'm just like wired to be hopeful. Like it's like, I'm just going to, I'm just going to do

00:35:41.280 that like obnoxiously whether whether it makes sense or not but that's sometimes that's a gift

00:35:47.060 to you you know that's and that's not a bad thing either yeah i mean it's definitely a gift sometimes

00:35:53.020 it's a kind of magical thinking both in the healthy way and in the unhealthy way i think but

00:35:57.740 that's yeah that's that's definitely the cloak that i cast around myself to protect myself i

00:36:04.460 think well and at some point you know it's a choice you know we don't know it's not set so

00:36:10.080 you know you you push toward the world you want and once you do that i think there's no reason not

00:36:17.140 to um give yourself the gift do yourself the kindness of of of saying that it's both worth

00:36:24.320 doing and that that your efforts in the world do something you know and that there are more

00:36:29.840 people who care that don't and i think that's that's a worthy thought you have poems about this

00:36:35.700 choice. Sounds right. Like I do probably. I was just reading one, but it's not in one of the

00:36:44.040 ones I bookmarked. Oh, except it is because I sent a bunch of them to that person I was talking

00:36:48.820 about. I sent like 12 of your poems back to back in text today. Thank you. Yeah, no, I was I was

00:36:55.480 I was really, really moved and really having a day with it. Seriously, though, it's called

00:37:00.960 if you can make peace with the unlikely fact that squids the size of school buses patrol the dark

00:37:08.300 oceans at a depth that would crush you to paste then i have faith you can also make peace with

00:37:13.760 the unlikely fact that you are worthy of all the happiness you have imagined

00:37:17.720 both those things are true they're just both true

00:37:21.760 yeah uh i had a poem i think called the work that oh i'm thinking of many hands let me read

00:37:32.800 many hands real quick it's on the subject uh many hands the world will always be troubled

00:37:38.880 this is true you deserve to feel happy and comfortable this is also true if you feel the

00:37:46.400 first truth undermines the second, I offer this. Own a share of the virtuous work towards solutions.

00:37:54.180 Don't burden your worth with global outcomes. The good and the evil are happening concurrently.

00:38:00.940 The choice to focus on the good is itself a way to defy the evil.

00:38:07.040 Yeah. I mean, yeah. You know, so I was a scholar of Renaissance literature, and I mean, in the

00:38:14.120 17th century everybody thought the world was ending all the time so the people that i think

00:38:20.920 went out are the people who then you know took their their child out to pick flowers or the

00:38:26.520 people who still got on with you know making art and and love and and doing the things that that

00:38:33.700 are that you know come together to make a a satisfying worthy kind of life because i know

00:38:41.160 you know, with, um, environmental dread and political dread. And, um, there's so many kinds

00:38:48.880 of, of dread that really get its hooks into you. And then, you know, in, in the internet,

00:38:56.540 especially, there are so many people who understand how sharp and clinging those hooks are

00:39:00.960 and we'll use them to capitalize your attention. You know, whistleblowers at Facebook talking about

00:39:08.460 how they always push the articles that get angry emotes because those are the ones that get more

00:39:14.300 engagement. And I mean, there are people, there are forces at work to try to keep you angry and

00:39:20.120 sad all the time. And so I think it takes some real, an active will to push back against that

00:39:26.860 sometimes. Yeah. And I think there's tremendous power, like you said, in The Choice. Tremendous

00:39:32.760 world-changing power i really do yeah yeah yeah me too i want to offer um if you feel like just

00:39:40.600 saying hi you're here it's a treat it's real there's real people feel free to unmute and you

00:39:48.820 can share any feedback or any questions um no i just wanted to say that your poetry is beautiful

00:39:55.460 and i am buying your book on amazon so there you go thanks mary and hello hello thanks mary

00:40:05.080 it's nice to hear your voice it makes it feel more real than just seeing your name in a square

00:40:09.240 so i just i just started snooping your your instagram and i stumbled across a post that

00:40:17.960 said if you've ever grabbed a stick from the ground and thought oh this is a good stick

00:40:22.320 then we're family so hello family yeah yes we're kin exactly well thank you i got a lot of

00:40:31.040 comments on that post like do rocks count yeah rocks of course rocks count

00:40:35.020 they all have a collection of good rocks yeah rocks just have a really slow metabolism right

00:40:41.380 oh go ahead i keep buying at thrift stores they make these um bizarre things that are for

00:40:49.400 displaying golf balls i don't know if you've ever seen them they're just like a grid of little

00:40:53.660 shells and i keep i keep finding them around here and i've gotten like three of them you know for a

00:40:59.220 dollar each and i put them on my wall and they've become where i store little tufts of moss or like

00:41:05.260 a bird skull or a pebble um because it's like i can't just leave them around on tables so you

00:41:13.020 know i've attached them to the walls now so that i can keep expanding my collection of just little

00:41:17.500 bits of of nature that as soon as i saw them i was like oh that that's precious i want to put

00:41:22.120 that in my room it's a cheap way to decorate too yeah i mean um in some of our language we would

00:41:30.880 call that altars to the things we love you know oh yeah yeah i often find that that um you know

00:41:37.680 i know precious little about about sort of witchcraft more broadly but i have i've had a

00:41:43.680 number of um of kind sort of self-identifying witches tell me over over the years it's like

00:41:50.180 oh what you're doing we call this oh cool i feel like i feel like we we dovetail really well

00:41:55.980 understand each other it does make me kind of glow to hear you say that you have an improvised

00:42:01.720 form of ritual or that you are making these assemblages of things that like resonate and

00:42:07.900 make you feel the astonishing universe in your house and you know like those are um it's funny

00:42:16.860 to like read your poetry and be like that's a kindred spirit and I was so nervous today to be

00:42:22.240 like I'm going to talk to a man from the podcast it's so weird like I want to talk about masculinity

00:42:27.240 and the complexities and all this stuff and like I don't know if this is gonna work like we just

00:42:31.580 we talk about craft and magic and stuff but it's really uh it's really heartening to know that

00:42:37.240 that feeling was right good yeah i i like to think i'm pretty easy i'm happy to talk about anything

00:42:44.200 it's yeah i don't know it's interesting oh you talking about an altar it's funny i look at all

00:42:52.400 these little objects i have i've got you know beach nuts and pebbles and pine cones and um

00:42:58.180 i often think of them as sort of stand-ins for broader concepts right and so that's also what

00:43:04.080 words are um so that little shelf full of little bits of nature is kind of its own text too and

00:43:12.540 where i often use sort of the language of writing and writerly things um as my stand-in for for

00:43:20.820 magical language too and same with poems i mean i always told students back when i was a teacher

00:43:30.140 years ago that like often I don't know what I think until I try to write it down, you know,

00:43:34.860 until I pull it out of my mind and make it real by putting it in text. And then once it's text,

00:43:40.260 I can have a conversation with it. But when it's still just sort of impulses shooting around my

00:43:45.960 brain, it's too slippery. I can't interrogate it or really sort of look at it in the light of day

00:43:51.760 and see if I really believe these things. So altars and rituals and taking ephemeral things

00:43:57.420 and giving them a little slice of the real world

00:44:01.500 to call their own so that we can engage with them.

00:44:04.980 I think all of that is fascinating and good.

00:44:07.380 Yeah, there's definitely a piece to making altars

00:44:10.180 or doing ritual work or spell work

00:44:12.880 that is very much like,

00:44:14.720 I'm going to give this thing a symbol.

00:44:16.820 I'm going to give it meaning

00:44:17.740 or look at the meaning that it has for me

00:44:20.040 and then put it in assemblage with other meanings

00:44:22.100 like writing a text.

00:44:23.560 And then I'm going to put them together

00:44:25.120 in a container in a safe space together

00:44:27.020 and I'm going to protect them and pour energy on them and it was for me because I was a writer

00:44:32.320 and a witch and didn't really know I was either of those things I was just like sort of a lost

00:44:36.760 person finding the language of both those things helped me understand the other you know like they

00:44:41.720 gave me the metaphor to understand the other in a way yeah that makes perfect sense yeah is it yeah

00:44:47.960 do you feel like you have a ritual practice to your writing in specific like is there something

00:44:53.540 material you do when you're sitting down? It's almost the other way around for me. I will often

00:45:00.620 feel called sort of, I live, I share a fence with a cemetery, which is sort of a very thoughtful

00:45:09.660 place. I always find it to be a very sweet place too. I mean, just sort of all of these remembrances

00:45:15.680 of loved ones. And so most days I will walk around the cemetery and then I have lots of

00:45:23.680 tracts of wilderness near me and I will walk around there. And so why I'm saying it's almost

00:45:29.320 the reverse is that it's like I do the thing and then the thought or the intention to write comes

00:45:36.140 after. So it's, I don't necessarily go out with the idea of coming up with something to say on

00:45:43.740 the internet but it's such a contemplative um process of of kind of going out and emptying my

00:45:52.640 mind um to walk around any of these places that you know to borrow to borrow language feel sort

00:46:00.320 of holy to me um and and then i will often come to the writing after that um not always sometimes

00:46:07.860 i think to myself i haven't posted in three days and i'm gonna sit down and write something because

00:46:14.580 i'm a writer and i'm gonna you know make this happen but at its best it sort of happens um

00:46:20.660 organically when i'm when i'm sort of more in touch with nature yeah it sounds very much like

00:46:29.420 how I mean I live on a lake so I walk the circle of the lake yeah and then there's a kind of

00:46:38.820 relationship that happens um do you feel like you ever I mean in your podcast there are hauntings

00:46:46.400 there are there are ghosts there's there's creatures you live next to a cemetery do you

00:46:50.820 think they're are they in the novel are they haunting you are you are you writing channeled

00:46:54.940 work um not not i don't think so not in that way i mean to me i think about death constantly it's

00:47:04.720 just kind of one of my favorite things to think about and i don't mean that in a grim way it just

00:47:08.760 is um and i often think of death as sort of coming back to sort of a wholeness um so it's sort of in

00:47:17.600 my own inner landscape i don't really picture picture ghosts um in the cemetery itself um i

00:47:23.800 don't nothing about it feels like an unquiet place to me i don't know the cemetery i live

00:47:29.240 next to is a cemetery and arboretum it feels like a place to me about the living and sort of about

00:47:35.400 love and memory i don't know i find myself calling headstones memory stones to my two-year-old

00:47:40.800 um says i have to call them something because to him it's an alphabet um show place so he wants to

00:47:48.760 go touch heads doesn't be like hey yeah good job um at some point we'll have to come to terms with

00:47:54.640 what it is but and not hauntings the podcast the podcast is interesting it's

00:48:00.480 so what happened was i i left a job in academia um well four years ago and i was sort of really

00:48:09.280 on the edge of kind of an existential crisis i didn't like the work i was doing you know i was

00:48:14.900 putting on a suit, and I was an administrator, and I was in budget meetings. And eventually,

00:48:21.540 and I was trying to find other jobs, and it was hard to find other jobs, and they were all the

00:48:25.720 same sort of jobs. And I stepped into that because before I was an adjunct teacher, and it really

00:48:32.700 wasn't a livable wage in teaching English and literature. And so, you know, we made the math

00:48:40.320 work with my partners just for me to leave just I don't know what's next but it's not this and so

00:48:46.460 I kind of went into a little bit of a reclusive healing period where thankfully I mean it's such

00:48:51.900 a privileged position to be in but I was able to get sort of outside help and I was able to be sort

00:48:57.900 of sheltered for a time of healing but so the podcast grew out of that and it grew out of all

00:49:03.580 right I need to stop I've spent all of my time and energy writing things I don't particularly care

00:49:09.620 about for other people if I could write about anything I wanted what would it be and so I love

00:49:16.200 fantasy as sort of a metaphor I sort of love fiction as the idea that it's the truth inside

00:49:21.940 the lies nature I love odd nature you know stories of strange so that all kind of came together as

00:49:32.460 and I love nature shows I grew up with you know wild America and you know David Attenborough all

00:49:38.500 these different nature shows i just love shows of just a person talking about nature and so these

00:49:44.140 all kind of came together into this hybrid creature that was a nature show about nature

00:49:49.160 that didn't exist but you know i've been a nature poet since i was 10 um and so you know it's more

00:49:57.960 than just i didn't want to do the x files that that's not what it was it was it was sort of i

00:50:03.400 wanted to use fictional nature to at its best I like the idea of using fictional nature to remind

00:50:12.860 people that real nature is exactly this strange and fascinating because you forget you know you

00:50:20.060 see birds every day and you forget how mind-blowing you know birds are and so it's like I want to

00:50:28.040 write about nature that isn't real so that i can always guarantee i'm introducing somebody to

00:50:34.140 something new so you know i don't write about bigfoot i write about always invented creatures

00:50:40.020 because the point is the enthusiasm um and then it's me so there was there's you know a poetry

00:50:46.880 section in every episode and um it's caused this interesting you know if i was a business person i

00:50:54.820 would say it's like a branding issue right because it's like I have this one thing this podcast

00:50:59.580 that's sort of fantasy and then all the other time I post sort of nature poetry and then sometimes I

00:51:07.060 post bad dad jokes and but it's just I have found creatively that most success I have ever had is

00:51:14.920 when I just stop trying to imagine what an audience wants and start trying to be my truest self

00:51:23.000 in my writing and what I produce so I'm just trying to continue in that vein and and you know

00:51:29.880 I'm not going to engineer whatever it is uh my my brand is I hate that word but you know what I mean

00:51:36.980 I'm just going to continue to sort of try to be try to be me and and people people seem to get a

00:51:43.400 sense of what that is even though I feel like a lot of the things I put out are kind of all over

00:51:48.100 the place yeah i i mean yeah i relate to that a lot i also just interviewed um sophie strand

00:51:55.820 the writer she on instagram she's cosmogony an amazing fucking writer and um cool similar to you

00:52:03.360 she different she puts really long essays with every post i mean she's just pouring her words 0.87

00:52:10.080 out and she's had this like insane response i mean insane glorious um emotional understandable

00:52:18.580 response of you know just a big wave of followers and and i was talking to her about it and she's

00:52:25.100 like honestly i don't know what the fuck is happening to me like i got a diagnosis that

00:52:28.480 i was probably dying and so i just started sharing everything like as though these were my last 0.65

00:52:33.420 chances to say whatever i wanted to say and now i don't know what's happening

00:52:37.360 yeah you know to hear you say the same thing you were in an existential crisis like an emotional

00:52:44.960 death and just to say just whatever we need to say you know just now's the time it's the end

00:52:53.380 of the world or it's not but yeah well and yeah I don't know if it's just how I was raised but

00:53:00.900 there was so much artifice like I don't know it's high school and middle school and cliques and

00:53:06.320 masculinity and and it was always this carefully crafted artifice that that like i don't know i

00:53:12.640 was in my 30s before it was like uh maybe i need to start trying to figure out who i actually am

00:53:19.180 you know because i would realize i would speak differently depending on who i was speaking to

00:53:25.200 and it's like well yeah i'm sort of a performative self and that's not something you can just turn

00:53:31.160 off. I mean, and talk about unexplainable sort of magical things. I think people really resonate

00:53:37.280 with your work when you do find a way to be your truest self, because something about the human

00:53:42.460 brain, there's just this innate sensor for when someone is trying to tell you what you want to

00:53:48.240 hear or trying to act out a role. It's just earnestness and being genuine or something that

00:53:57.580 like we have a sixth sense for i think and i also i don't know it was i graduated from high school in

00:54:04.140 1999 and at the time it was just the the thing that was so in vogue was irony just sort of

00:54:11.420 a layer of irony on everything and so casting that off and being like no i'm gonna like the

00:54:18.060 things i actually like be enthusiastic about things i'm actually enthusiastic about feel how

00:54:23.380 I'm feeling and not try to add a veneer of irony to it all. So, I mean, you know, this is, I think

00:54:29.980 this is the process of being a living person is just making mistakes and then figuring them out

00:54:35.360 and healing from them and smushing it all together into an identity. I usually ask towards the end

00:54:41.920 of an episode and I'm going to circle us towards that time as much as I want to just keep hanging

00:54:47.540 out while our kids sleep and read poetry and stuff i want i always want to be respectful of

00:54:53.560 your time and energy and mine too because i i i i i'm so electrified by these conversations and

00:54:59.780 i just fall flat on my face after just like there's something about um trying to be like

00:55:07.820 so present and think out loud like i want to i want to write everything down beforehand and so

00:55:12.260 just having to yeah yeah so why am i so tired i was just talking but yeah i get it yeah you're

00:55:21.880 like we live in the woods so maybe i mean maybe you have a bit more of a community than i do it

00:55:25.860 sounds like but i just don't i'm used to quiet i know what you're saying yeah i know what you're

00:55:31.940 saying yeah um anyway that's like a detour but usually towards the end of an episode i do like

00:55:39.020 to ask is there a ritual you do that you can share i think now especially in the context of

00:55:44.840 the conversation we've been having is there something that helped you or helps you crack

00:55:50.120 that irony or the constraints of a of a brand voice to to find your your real what you really

00:55:59.360 like who you really are is there something you do yeah it's not a ritual but i'm trying to

00:56:07.860 and i think a turning point for me in a lot of my mental health struggles was

00:56:13.720 learning to it goes back to the writing victory on the calendar and not the check mark is learning

00:56:22.780 to give the small things the same weight as the big things you know i think we all have all of

00:56:30.500 these narratives in our head of the hero journey and the big victory and i think shrugging out of

00:56:37.120 a lot of those expectations for yourself and starting to love, you know, love that you made

00:56:44.360 the effort to write something down or love that you, that you painted your nails or that you

00:56:50.460 brushed the dog, or sometimes that you got up and took a shower and not because it's a mental

00:56:56.540 health thing, but because those are actually the building blocks of life and actually deserve

00:57:02.060 respect and being cherished. So I have something of a ritual where I will try at least once a day.

00:57:11.360 And for a while, it was meditation, sort of the kind of empty my mind and just experience the

00:57:16.180 world kind of meditation. But I've added on the aspect of finding a way to extend gratitude sort

00:57:24.460 of broadly to the world, into nature, but then also applaud something, a choice I made.

00:57:32.040 And it can be, you know, making a sandwich for my partner.

00:57:36.680 I didn't have to do that.

00:57:37.840 It can be sitting and making the concerted effort to write a poem with the idea that

00:57:45.500 I'm going to try to touch somebody's life.

00:57:48.680 It can be going out and working in the garden.

00:57:52.680 And any of those things, realizing and respecting that that was a choice, you didn't have to do it.

00:57:59.460 And, you know, you deserve to direct a little gratitude toward yourself and the way that you're exercising agency over the small things in your life.

00:58:08.280 And then the jumping off point from there is that the small things are the big things.

00:58:12.420 The ritual comes because you can think to yourself, oh, good idea, but unless you actually make time to do it.

00:58:19.380 And I don't know what that is for, for the people listening. Like it can be setting an alarm on your phone. It can be part of your bedtime ritual. Maybe there's a tablet on your nightstand that you write down your appreciation of yourself, but it happens because you, you know, you make it happen. And I think making that happen, that self-gratitude coupled with the broader gratitude is really worth doing.

00:58:42.100 yeah that's a powerful one that's kind of a figure eight shape to that gratitude and it

00:58:48.860 relates back to so many things we've talked about the like the tiny thing in me that is

00:58:53.980 also the enormous thing everywhere yeah yeah would you i have a i have a going out on palm

00:59:01.060 if you want and it ties into this that's what i want yeah okay i felt i felt it coming here

00:59:07.420 so this one's called unlearning death when we die they may bury us or collect our ashes

00:59:19.360 but remember this from baby teeth to skin cells and everything in between most of the matter that

00:59:27.160 has worn your name is already spread throughout the world we bury our remains in the soil of our

00:59:33.500 lifetimes. Can you feel it? So many of the cells that have formed the community of your body have

00:59:40.500 returned to nature. Most of the water that has fueled your life has returned to the sea.

00:59:46.580 The substance of your form is not fixed. It flows like a river to and from the wilderness.

00:59:54.760 Moss doesn't think about being alive, and mountains don't consider themselves to be dead.

01:00:00.940 death has no place in the vocabulary of nature to worry about death is to forget that we

01:00:08.420 the moss the mountains are all parts of an undiminished whole that isn't measured in breaths

01:00:15.420 thanks jared thanks listeners thank you thanks for being here you can find jared's writing and

01:00:26.080 poetry under the headline the crypto naturalist on all the the social media places jared thank

01:00:32.360 you so much thank you for facing that moment of existential crisis and choosing to be exactly

01:00:40.660 who you are it's meant a lot to a lot of us and will continue to do so so i hope that when you

01:00:48.480 walk through the cemetery you see my face and all of our listeners thanking you and walking with you

01:00:54.680 when you choose to send words out they matter they are spells thank you it's it's um i'm honestly

01:01:02.960 honored um i i can tell you have such a such a great community and thank you for inviting me in

01:01:09.660 to to be a part of it tonight i feel really glad i did and i was really nervous before 0.82

01:01:14.940 answer it's awesome you must be a witch

01:01:21.600 the missing witches podcast is brought to you by the missing witches coven

01:01:27.960 join us right now on patreon.com slash missing witches blessed if I can be

Missing Witches - January 06, 2022

WF： Jarod K. Anderson aka The Cryptonaturalist - Give Yourself Permission To Take The Meaning You Make Seriously

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