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Rowan Mangan

Author. Explorer. #Looking for America.

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Bullet Journal: my best inanimate friend

3 October 2019 18 Comments

Bullet Journal: my best inanimate friend

Embarrassing revelation: when I look at this grubby, scuffed little yellow notebook—my bullet journal—I feel a genuine affection. A warm, swelly sensation in my heart, such as one might feel for a dear friend, or humankind. It’s odd, yes, but also kind of cool. It makes me ponder the concept of inanimate friends, like the […]

Filed Under: Blog, News Tagged With: bujo, bullet journal, inanimate friends, productivity

So Much to Tell You

28 August 2018 18 Comments

So Much to Tell You

It’s a little house on a hundred acres of oak forest. A canyon built like a cradle where, over 31 months, I’ve clambered, climbed and connected. I fell in love here. Today has been my last day on the ranch. We’re moving 3000 miles across the country to another forest and another home, starting tomorrow. […]

Filed Under: Blog, News Tagged With: North Star Ranch, road trip, saying goodbye

Tricked

20 July 2018 22 Comments

Tricked

I was given a new piece of America last night. By a coyote. Marty and I were coming home from our evening walk when we spotted the bouncy gait of the coyote in the pasture. Just a few shades off the tone of the gold-brown summer grass, he swept across the plain as if he […]

Filed Under: Blog, News Tagged With: coyote, mythology, native american mythology, plans, shattering, trickster

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Black lives matter #blackouttuesday Black lives matter #blackouttuesday
Friends! WE MADE A PODCAST! @themarthabeck and I a Friends! WE MADE A PODCAST! @themarthabeck and I are ecstatic to announce the launch of BEWILDERED, the podcast for people trying to figure it out. In it, we discuss how human culture teaches us to come to consensus, while our own true natures urge us to come to our senses. And the best way to figure this all out is by going through bewilderment into beWILDerment. ⠀
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You can listen to the first four episodes right now (link in bio). Hear us muse on everything from happiness and productivity to self-doubt and creativity. With lots of ridiculous accents, puns, and wild tangents to accompany the insights and advice.⠀
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We’ll release new episodes of BEWILDERED every two weeks until all of Season 1 is released, so subscribe through your favorite podcast medium this very instant. We can’t wait for you to join this thrilling new conversation! Love, Martha and Ro

PS If you like it, please rate and review! 💙
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#bewilderedpodcast #bewildered #marthabeck #rowanmangan #truenature #rewilding
Marty and Henry. Lighthearted encounters with the Marty and Henry. Lighthearted encounters with the occult are a mainstay of our family visits. #funwithtarot @julie.arizona
This is the feeling, trudging back to the office a This is the feeling, trudging back to the office after dinner, after a day’s work, to keep at it. When new material means I’m back in a first-draft space I thought I’d left behind long months ago. In the end the only way to rediscover momentum is to let the story take the wheel. I’m not the one who can do it. As @cherylstrayed points out, one does not simply *write* a *book*. And yet we do.

But I have something going for me. I’ve met this story. I know its feel, its face, its accent and its eccentricities. If I show up, if I step back, the story will drive.

On a good day, right? I know.

So we go, writers. So we go. Onward to the far side of defeat, where the story continues.
Working today in a patch of wintery sunlight. Grat Working today in a patch of wintery sunlight. Grateful for peace. Grateful for work that I can do lying down. Grateful to have work. Grateful for generous and understanding colleagues. Grateful for sunlight. Grateful for these funky socks @kegerdes brought me from Norway. #gratitudeisall
Yesterday I wrote about accepting limitations. Tod Yesterday I wrote about accepting limitations. Today, as a more upbeat follow-up, I want to celebrate stillness for a moment, and the honest-to-god magic that it contains.
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This song, “Love Itself,” is sacred. SACRED. I have volumes of things to say about the nineteen dimensions that Cohen slides into every line. But in honor of his gift for simplicity, I thought I’d just say one small thing.
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These lines describe an experience of being utterly transported—in a moment of stillness—into the Everything. “Formless circumstance”—I mean, can you guys even? It’s too exquisite.
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Those of us who have experienced deep stillness know the wonder that is to be found there. The way that when you get still enough, it begins to move again… but differently. You move, and it moves, and the galaxies spin and you perceive that the stillness contains it all and is contained by it all.
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Talk about tumbled up.
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When I was little, my imaginary friend was called Still. No idea why (I was a weird kid), but Still was pretty good company. I continue to think that playing with Still is probably a good idea. There’s such a funny cultural tendency to RUNRUNRUN and DODODO and then, if we’re lucky, to SITSITSIT (if you’re one of those people—and I am!—with a meditation app). We don’t glide in and out of things, or at least, I don’t. But maybe I could.
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Sitting with these Leonard Cohen lines tonight, I feel the ongoing desire to honor stillness when it wants an hour with me, or when my body or soul requires it. But I also want to seek out the small moments when I look up and notice dust motes dancing on the air. I want to give pure stillness a breath or two then as well, to remember the galaxies spinning inside me before returning to my email.
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At any rate, this: May we all have all the stillness we need. May we rest in it and may we play in it, too.
Today is a danger-slow-down day. I felt it first t Today is a danger-slow-down day. I felt it first this morning when I had to sit on the edge of the bath after climbing out of it. The recognition didn’t come in words, just with an “uh-oh” sound inside my head. Some of you know what I’m talking about, when the mind’s remote control for directing the body seems to be running out of batteries.

I was diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome seven years ago, but I’ve had it for decades. I’m luckier than many, because the illness waxes and wanes in me. When I push too long against that uh-oh feeling, I crash. Some crashes are small, and I just have to take it easy for a few days to get back on track. But a bad crash can leave me virtually bedridden for months, where just the thought of climbing the stairs to bed makes me cry.

Danger-slow-down days are never convenient. For me, the temptation is huge to deny it’s happening and push my shoulder hard against the wheel of the day’s tasks. I won’t lie, I tried that today. Until mid-afternoon, at least, when I literally crumpled. And then remembered, and told myself for the millionth time that the danger is not a freaking joke, Ro.

And it is dangerous to push myself past my limits. For sure. But I realize as I lie here, finally flat on my back, that the greater danger is making an enemy of my body. Or of creating a false separation between my weak body and my strong will in the first place. It’s all me in here.

I love my work. I love Getting Shit Done, I love all my creative side projects that I also want to play in. I love moving my body.

But today my work is to lie on my back and accept that my physical energy is like the seasons: just happening inside me, exactly the way the first snow flurry happened outside a few hours ago. Today is a wintery day, that’s all.

So my work for now is to love the feel of the soft duvet. It’s to love chatting with my beloveds and staring at the fire. It’s to love letting go of expectations as well as tasks. And to try and love the person with the courage to let it all go. For today, at least.
I think about rivers all the time. In my novel, th I think about rivers all the time. In my novel, the protagonist is sort of haunted by a river. In a… good way. Point being, I love me a river. There’s something to me about running water that’s uniquely beautiful on the planet. The sight of a stream rolling over stones, the sound of it. Even the smell of damp earth. I mean, guys—River Phoenix. There’s just nothing not-beautiful here.

So you take a beautiful thing like a river, and then you add in these lines from John O’Donohue. And then, if you’re me, you just stop. For a long moment. When poetry—language—creates silence, that’s some kind of alchemy. O’Donohue had  game.

You know what I love most about this? “Carried by the surprise.” It says to me that when we thrive in the the face of all that’s uncertain in life, it’s not in spite of the unknown. It says that we are actually SUSTAINED by what we don’t know. That it’s the mystery that’s holding us in the darkness.
What sweetness to wake up to on a Sunday morning f What sweetness to wake up to on a Sunday morning from these beloved dorks. As winter closes in, our sprawls start giving way to snuggles. We spontaneously begin moving closer to each other, closer to the fire. After the expansiveness of the warm months, I love this closeness. Love the blankies. Love the robes. Love these kind, furry souls.
FOR ITS OWN SAKE Under what conditions do we find FOR ITS OWN SAKE  Under what conditions do we find the courage to put our voices into the world? And with what intention? Can we justify making things just for the glory of their own existence and no other reason?

If what we make helps no one, can we justify it? If it isn’t beautiful, can we justify it?
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What I’m wondering is, what’s the human calculus of “for its own sake”?
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And what about us, ourselves? Simply to live by giving what we are: is that enough? If we just show up in truth, is that tantamount to mercy? To beauty?
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And perhaps: if we dare to offer our voices purely for their own sake, are we also opening ourselves up to the possibility of taking part in a greater intentionality? Is that why the air shimmers around us when we do it?
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I think, maybe. Maybe so.
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This masterpiece of a song, which you should all listen to, begins “Up up up up up up points the spires of the steeple/ But God’s work isn’t done by God, it’s done by people.” Is that how the calculus functions? Is “God’s work” (whatever we imagine that to be) achieved by those living life for its own sake?
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So today I offer these exquisite lines, which have touched me deeply over the years. I offer these tangled questions and crooked maybes from an unexpected airport hotel in San Francisco. I offer gratitude to those of you who connect with me here and make me feel like a freak among magnificent freaks.
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And finally, I offer thanks to the beautiful stranger who called across a room to me in California this last weekend to tell me to keep posting Ani lyrics. ❤️
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(Song: “Up up up up up up” from the album of the same name, Ani Difranco (c) 1999)
It’s been such a wonderful gift to spend a few d It’s been such a wonderful gift to spend a few days back on the California central coast. This place was the setting for so many huge changes in my life, and I will always be grateful for it. I mean, peeps, I’m literally watching dolphins roll by in the ocean while I tap this out on my phone.
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In a few minutes Marty and I head to the airport and begin the trek back East, to our deep green forest with its deer and foxes and chipmunks. What a life. What rich and generous blessings.
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More and more I believe that wherever we go, we’re always heading homeward.
I often censor myself when I feel that I’ve said I often censor myself when I feel that I’ve said something different in the past. Or I suspect I might have. Or I feel like I’ve changed my mind at some point. All these worries shut me down because I don’t want to feel like I’m lying now, or I was lying then. But of course, that’s bonkers. We are all a million people a day. It’s not untrue to change, it’s not untrue to be complex. My only fidelity is to my sense of truth.
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If you feel like you contradict yourself, I would suggest only this: did it feel honest when you said that thing? Does it feel honest now to say THIS thing? Our sense of truth is so much smarter than our brains. Brains divide, while truth unites. We’re fine, loves. We just contain multitudes is all.
A surprising number of costumes in airport land to A surprising number of costumes in airport land today, but here’s the clear winner. This is Quinn. He’s a wizard. You can’t see his cape in this shot, but it’s as spectacular as his hat. Quinn is also a wizard because he’s a PTSD service dog, and after a couple of minutes playing with him and his lovely human, I came to suspect that he has a great deal of healing magics. My heart exploded all over the departure gate: my contribution to the Halloween spirit. 🎃
Yesterday I got my first American driver’s licen Yesterday I got my first American driver’s license. Added to my Green Card, which arrived last May, I seem to be becoming an increasingly legit immigrant. I love it.

Of course, it’s impossible not to be all too aware that these documents and the privileges they confer are out of reach for so many people with the same basic wishes as me: to live and work and receive medical care and love my family in this beautiful fever dream of a country. (Many much more deserving than me. Many even prepared to learn the rules of NFL football.) I don’t know why America sent for me. It came as a bloody surprise to me, let me tell you. But this is home now, this place that’s mystifying and generous, confusing and exhilarating and sometimes frightening... all indications, after all, that it’s inhabited by human beings.
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I believe so deeply that the symphony is still unfinished. I believe that all the best parts of America, those which I’ve come to love fiercely, will outlive its worst and will prevail again. I have to believe this, and while I’m waiting and working, I’m going to keep listening to the music.
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(Thanks to Lin-Manuel Miranda for this lyric and to the musical Hamilton for giving me permission to fall head over heels with ‘Murka after decades of deep suspicion.)
THIS FILM IS MY LIFE’S WORK. Critics are calling THIS FILM IS MY LIFE’S WORK. Critics are calling it “heartwarming”... “a compelling coming of age tale”... “by turns heartbreaking and devilishly funny”... “a parable for our times.” It is entitled simply: Stay Hydrated.
This is me at 19, clutching a boarding pass from M This is me at 19, clutching a boarding pass from Melbourne to Heathrow, leaving for my first Grand Solo Adventure. It’s me three years later, returning to make a life in an Irish town called Cork, which I would fall in love with and in which I would would fall in love. This is me at 25, off to delicious Italy and exquisite Turkey and glittering Croatia. Off to venture alone through India for three intense, cacophonous, color-drenched, magical months. It’s me at 28, leaving to volunteer for a year in Bangkok; preparing to be FOREIGN in a constant, daily, inescapable way that would change this white girl’s perspective on otherness forever.
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I’ve forced myself to be alone in foreign places since I was a teenager, working crappy jobs between trips to save money and doing the usual waitressing and bartending overseas when I could. I traded security for experience time and time again. It’s not for everyone, I know. But this song reminds me that it is utterly, absolutely, for me.
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And so… these lines are also me in January 2016, a 35-year-old woman who should probably be a settled-down grownup by now, but who instead is in line at a departure gate, clutching a boarding pass that says MEL-LAX. A 35-year-old woman who is embarking on something more enormous than she is yet capable of imagining. About to cross an entirely new horizon.

Solo travel is exhilarating, terrifying and fascinating by turns. It has opened me up to selfless human generosity in a thousand moments. It’s exposed me to secret beauties large and small, always breathtaking. It has given me friends in a dozen countries who cram my heart to this day. It’s taught me a self-reliance that I know I can call on when shit gets real. But travel of any kind is an education, always helping us learn new ways of being human on this odd little planet of ours.
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So, let me never stop abandoning comfort in favor of adventure. Dear GOD, let me never travel without WD40 (and gaffer tape, more crucially). Let me stay forever hell-bent on reinvention, since isn’t that all there is, after all: evolve to evolve to evolve? Keep me always in huge humility. And let me be in it for IT—for it, only.
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