"Well the road rolls out like a welcome mat..."
Introducing Meaningful Mud's Monthly Mu
Hey there,
Around a year ago I took to Instagram to share a small segment of my cherished archived, dog-eared paged literary rubble that I eclectically collected over the years. In borrowing biologist Lynn Margulis’ insightful observation, I will euphemistically say that “everything is equally evolved” (a stretch of a metaphor I know).
Following this “I am here for a good time not a long time” Instagram dabble, I am excited to share with you all a new offering - Meaningful Mud’s Monthly Mu newsletter.
It was in reading Robert Pirsig’s ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’ that I first encountered the concept of mu. A Japanese word meaning ‘no thing,’ mu is used when a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer does not sufficiently address the question asked. Transcending dualistic logic, responding with mu signifies that the posed question is too small and does not make enough space for the enormity of the answer, in the process encouraging and pushing us to ask a better question or just sit with and grow with and learn from and ponder all the messiness and magic that is being an alive, thinking, breathing, flawed human being.
Over the past years, putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) has been a cathartic release for me and deepened my exploration of the mus of life. Rather than solely seeking out a literary home or temporary residence for these humble ruminations as I have done up until now, I have decided to build one, albeit one in need of renovations and repairs. In the spirit of mu, this little monthly newsletter (which will appear in your inbox at the beginning of each month starting April 1st 2024), is envisaged as a space for some of these longer anecdotal reflections, alongside delightful and depressing dollops of poetry, possible collaborations, some music and reading recommendations, nourishing recipes, other sharings, and hell, maybe even a haiku or two that have accompanied me on this human ride.
I will preface the above by saying that perhaps the only coherence in this offering is my incoherence. It has taken me some time to liberate myself from a fateful waiting for a sense of wholeness to emerge and take form and accept that life is just a bunch of broken incomplete bits and it is in our shared brokenness that there exists a wholeness.
Lastly, whilst I have a grand imagining and envisioning of what this monthly newsletter will contain, life being as it is, I am still very much figuring out how this all works. I thank you all in advance for accompanying me on this journey and for your generosity and kindness in allowing me to fly my metaphorical plane whilst building it at the same time.
It is my most fervent hope that Meaningful Mud’s Monthly Mu can be a place to hold even a tiny bit of this (picture someone with hands in the air looking up at the heavens), constituting somewhat of a constructive attempt at a collaborative, reciprocal and interdependent way of being in the world, and perhaps even a teeny weeny human attempt at living lives closer to the ones we want.
If you made it to the end of this written soliloquy, I thank you.
And lastly, please do consider gently subscribing or sharing it with those you both love and don’t love.
And really lastly, from me to you, wherever you may be, may we always be stuck in Meaningful Mud.
Take care.
Tyler
Love this very excited for more