Moby Bytes: A Journal Entry (from Buddhist retreat...)
Letter #5: On shimmering fish & feeling unzipped and zipped up again...
(Where Are You? I’m Christina Rivera, debut author of MY OCEANS: Essays of Water, Whales, and Women and Moby Bytes is my series of notes deep-diving the oceanic kinship of bodies of water and beings. Thanks for signing up for this occasional newsletter!)
Hey friends!
This week I’m on my way to Washington State to read from MY OCEANS at the Orcas Island List Fest. I’m bringing two best girlfriends to laugh and play (and kayak) with me. I’ll be posting those stories to my Instagram feed if you want to find out if I glimpse any real Killer Whales along the way…
As promised, I also want to share a bit on my gear-shifting experience in Buddhist retreat with Deer Park Monastery (a mindfulness community and practice center established by Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh).
I’ve included a paragraph from my journal below, or keep scrolling for some less lyrical reflections on my experience attending a mindfulness retreat, specifically, with a nine-year-old child….
JOURNAL ENTRY, ROCKY MTN NATIONAL PARK, DAY 4 It’s dawn of day four, and the sangha (community) is flowing in "mindful steps" through the fields as the sun hints of ascent in goldening clouds. Today I’m writing instead of walking. Watching instead of walking. The woman below my deck is sipping tea with two hands, lingering in the scented steam of the leaves she’s steeped. And the man with the soft scarf wound twice around his neck, smiling at those now-gleaming clouds, I feel him too. They recall for me the sensation, underwater, of swimming through a school of shimmering fish. The way the school’s collective shape turns with a cascading flash of iridescent bodies. How one fish, unworried, lingers in front of my masked, wide, eyes before resuming his role in the indivisible life of the whole. How the congregation splits for the passage of my foreign body but zips right back up in instinctual alignment. It is such a pleasure to be here with my (sleeping behind me) daughter. To notice how all the Buddhist seeds planted in me in India and Nepal in my 20s—and then entirely neglected through my early motherhood years—somehow still found root. Do early-motherhood and mindfulness have anything to do with each other? That zipper felt not just stuck (despite my yanking), but trash-it broken. For what, the eight years before for my youngest slept through the night? But those were sneaky seeds! They grew behind my back! Feral seeds. Of right livelihood, and ahimsa (non-violence), interbeing (did I write an entire book on that?!), and of the sangha (practicing community) I now finally have the time to water. In my negligent years, I think I renamed the seeds. Or maybe the seeds shifted in the light, like those little fish, flashing different names at different angles. That would, indeed, be very Buddhist. This most unassuming spiritual philosophy that makes you VOW never to impose it on another. And for that very fact, the only tradition I'd ever make myself a student of. Once in my 20s, and now again. This time with a few decades of experience to validate the sense of it all. I don’t need to sing of it. But I do delight. To watch my daughter—born of privileges (and inevitable exposures to suffering) not unlike those of little prince Siddhartha (of whom I'm reading to her)—put her palms together, close her eyes, and whisper, “I’m strong as a mountain. Still as water. Free as space.” Oh, the clouds are white again! The sun too bright for inspection. My sleeping daughter wrestles with the sheets. She sighs. It’s time to begin this last full day of retreat, of mindful bites and mindful words. Back to our school of shimmering bodies we zip in!
And here’s my recent IG post reflecting on attending a Buddhist retreat with a child…
in (shimmery fish) submersion,
Christina
Ps. Stay tuned. My book cover is soon to be revealed!
In MY OCEANS News:
It was such an honor and joy to swap inspired musings for @orion_magazine with @rosanna.xia on our shared love for the ocean as both force and metaphor. There are some excerpts in my Instagram post, but please head over to Orion Magazine for the full conversation!
What I’m Reading & Loving: (Of course) Rosanna Xia’s California Against the Sea; Ursula K. Le Guin’s Words Are My Matter; Aftershocks by Nadia Owusu. (Or visit all my recs & lists on Bookshop.org)
*Note: All recommendations are unsolicited and authentic and books do also have affiliate links.
In (Cool) Ocean Science News:
Researchers explored the “Lost City” complex, a region deep in the Earth’s oceans from which all terrestrial life may have sprung.
A team of oceanographers led by the Schmidt Ocean Institute discovered possibly 20 new ocean-dwelling species near the coasts of Chile.
A 2024 survey identified between 6-8 Vaquita still fighting for existence in the Sea of Cortez.
Creature Feature
Maybe I’m just feeling a little “transparent” having finished the copyedits on a book I will no longer be able to edit and which might *gasp* be actually read by someone other than me, but I’m super loving this Glass Octopus captured (at 651m deep!) in video (for the first time) by the Schmidt Ocean Institute:
Where Are You?
If you’re new to Moby Bytes, I’m Christina Rivera and MY OCEANS: Essays of Water, Whales, and Women is my debut book of sea-linked essays deep-diving the oceanic kinship of bodies of water and beings. MY OCEANS is forthcoming from NUPress/Curbstone Books in the Spring of 2025. Please share Moby Bytes with a friend who might want more pod in their life?
MY OCEANS Book Announcement on Publishers Marketplace
Published Essays from MY OCEANS
Find me on your social platform of choice: Instagram, Threads, Facebook, TikTok, BlueSky, & LinkedIn
New website (also!) forthcoming: www.christinarivera.com
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Nice little catch up (it took me a minute to get here 🙄.)
The retreat sounded really nice. Like you get to sit with you thoughts and write them out - I know you do that a lot, but I have trouble focusing with 4 kids running around.
How old is your daughter again? Did she enjoy the retreat overall? I would love to take my 10 year old sometime. That would be incredible for both of our brains, I think! Can't wait for the My Oceans!!