With Sighted Eyes and Feeling Heart, Among the Sunflowers
Art, community, and grounding during Disaster Summer
We each thought someone else had planted them.
By May, it was clear they were sunflowers, and by early June, that they were no dwarf variety.
By the solstice, we had learned that no human — at least none of us here at Oceanspray — was responsible for the fact that we now lived in a sunflower forest. There was speculation about nearby bird feeders, mention of the omnipresent crows in the neighborhood.
If the crows were the cause, they mostly followed a specific and limited flight path. The sunflowers largely grow on the south side of the building, in a line running east to west.
The tallest already reaches past the second floor, but only one — the one right outside my living room window — has begun to bloom, one big radiating blossom that has gradually opened throughout this week, with another little orbiting light beginning to peak out right next to it. Many other tightly clustered heads are in the wings, ready for their moment to burst forth.
I left town for a week mid-June, and was stunned upon arriving home to find that the sunflowers had seemingly doubled in height. But by then, feeling stunned was coming to be a bit normalized.
Only a few weeks ago, I put forth some of my own projections for what I dubbed “disaster summer.” I thought, at that time, that I had a handle on both the scope and timeline, the overall pace, at which forthcoming troubles would unfold. More or less, I expected that we had another month before everything began escalating all at once.
Then, the day after, ICE made its big play in Los Angeles. Before most of you had probably even read the “Disaster Summer” post, Trump was overstepping his authority yet again, sending in the National Guard.
A few days later, I found myself texting friends in the Columbia River Gorge, where I-84 had been shut down by fire. “Are you safe?” I messaged (and thankfully they were, far enough away from the blaze not to be under evacuation orders).
One day more, and Israel had attacked Iran, and people were using the words “nuclear” and “war” together in sentences all too frequently.
Meanwhile, the High Sierra peaks became barren of snow and my stand-in visual tool for thinking about baseline conditions for drought and fire potential this year dropped past the “not good” zone to the “worst it can get.”
“The situation heading into this summer is giving off some real 2020 vibes,” is what I wrote — again, only three weeks ago — thinking about the intersection of intense wildfire risk, mutating COVID strains, and political instability. Now? If June is any indication, 2025 may outdo 2020 in ways for which I lay no claim to be able to predict.
How do we hold on in such times? How do we ground ourselves, keep steady, in a moment that can feel marked by battles on a thousand fronts?
For me, the flower forest is one such way. I have held great gratitude for these sunny surprises, for the unexpected garden growing where I’ve had little time to tend a garden myself.
The sunflowers remind me that we humans are not the only gardeners, not the only agents of beauty. In a mixed-up world with daily doses of human-inflicted terror — masked men kidnapping others in the streets, unmasked men bombing others around the globe — we need this reminder that the world gets made by more than human hands. It’s not all us. Sometimes the squawking descendants of carnivorous dinosaurs can be responsible for a sudden sprouting of behemothic splendor.
But honestly, the flowers might not have been enough to make it through this month feeling intact. I think I also needed to witness some other humans pushing back against the forces of war and corruption. And, as it happens, the humans have been showing up: be it people pushing against ICE in Los Angeles or New York, or record numbers at No Kings marches around the country, there is movement, and hope. This is underscored even more if you zoom out to a global view: worldwide protests against war in Iran, and major actions against other autocratic leaders, including, just this weekend, a massive “you can’t ban us” protest and Pride party hundreds of thousands strong in Budapest.
I’ve also had the privilege these last few weeks to gather in community with thoughtful and talented folks, who have no intention of giving up the challenge of making and re-making our society and culture for the better, no matter the attempts from D.C. to eviscerate any form of diversity or dissent in the arts or the justices excluding whole swaths of the public from representation in public education.
This includes my time at the Storyboard Residency, where dozens of writers gathered under the motto “Truth, Beauty, Work” and talked through not only specifics of craft and reporting strategies but questions of ethics and representation, and methods for pursuing stories that have been or are being erased. It didn’t hurt that we had someone working at the intersection of culture and nuclear policy to help us process as news about Israel, Iran, and U.S. military action began rolling out. But it was more than that: being around others dedicated to telling important, difficult stories even in challenging circumstances deepened my own commitment to doing the same.
And then I came home and was asked to cover two arts events for our local paper, which means I was able to interview artists and community members who understand how important it is that we keep using the tools of language and culture in the fight for the world we want. Folks who are stepping up and making sure the community’s commitment to honor Black folks is literally written into the streets, and painters finding new ways to explore everything from war propaganda to personal loss.
And this morning, I had the chance to report on a joyful little action, trailing behind a crew of folks putting up a surprise display of Pride flags through the center of town — something which hadn’t been done here before. There was a twinge of sadness underlying the work, the event only shared last-minute to prevent any tampering or interference, the display planned only for a day to avoid vandalism or theft. But there was at the same time high spirits and playfulness and a fierce insistence on being visible, and on love for oneself and one’s community. Everything an observation of Pride month ought to be.
I’m often fairly critical of events that might register as merely symbolic. We’ve seen the results of empty symbolism in these same realms — the major corporations that withdrew from Pride festivals around the country, businesses that folded their DEI programs without being told to the minute the political winds changed. And I’ve likewise been critical of the ability of many forms of art to really counter the power and material forces at work in the world.
But this month, I’ve been reminded of the potential of art and writing that is grounded in community and purpose to hold us together through difficult times, the way it can let us witness one another and let us feel witnessed, the way it can help us experience through all our varied senses the possibility of transformation.
That is especially true when it is intersecting with mass movements and direct resistance — be it against ICE or against autocrats — and intersecting as well with mutual aid and support.
If you are feeling isolated and struggling with the bombardment of hard news, if the thought of action in recent months has felt impossible: maybe go hang out with the artists and makers and writers who care, who go on making even as the world seems hellbent on destruction, whose work seeks to alchemize all the pain and hurt that come our way into something transformative, something new.
Go watch or read or listen or sit with them, and I hope that you come out knowing, like I have this month, that it’s all of us together — us humans in community, together with the crows and the sunflowers and the ten thousand beings that flit unnoticed through our days — all of us together — standing tall and declaring ourselves and refusing to let the terms of our existence be set for us by those who strive to prevent or limit any genuine and spontaneous showing of care, or of unexpected and difficult truths, or of wild human love — it’s all of us together that will get us through what comes next, through tomorrow’s disaster, and the one after that, and the one after that.
As always, thanks for reading Unsettling.
Comment section on this post is open to everyone (not just paid subscribers, as is the norm). Share the art, the acts of nature, the movement moments that helped you through this month and that you’re taking with you into what comes ahead.
Until next time,
Meg
P.S. — If you’re wondering about the title for this post, make sure to read all the photo captions to catch the reference.