on writing (again!)
dispatch 22
I’m back, baybeeee! I missed you! It’s been strange to take an extended break and while I very much needed it, I am glad to be finding this touchpoint again in my life. I had a lot of expectations for this break, thinking I’d come back with polished, finished essays to get me through the summer. Instead, I barely wrote at all.
Between a lot of personal things and (gestures broadly at this dumpster fire in which we live), I am grateful to have had this time. I am typing this from my nest of pillows on the couch wearing a flannel robe which is about all the sartorial flare I can muster these days. A gentle reminder to you that you get to save your energy where you can so that you can give it where it’s needed. Wear the same outfit every day! Only eat toast! Turn off notifications! Never make your bed! Ruthlessly prioritize! Do what you need to do to make your life easier where you can. There is absolutely no prize for keeping it all together right now (this is a self-reminder also!). Check on your friends and take the actions that you can in the causes you care about that feel aligned with your values. Put energy into the people and things that can love you back.
Today’s essay is on one of my favorite topics…I can always manage to write about writing, which I think is supposed to be a faux pas but literally, who cares? Not me!
How are you, dear friend? I hope you’re hanging in there.
on writing (again)
One of the strange things about writing as a practice is that you discard much more than you use. I am writing this essay in a document full of forgotten sentences, paragraphs, essays. This collection of fragments is 47 pages long. The finished work of this newsletter for the last year covers 39 single-spaced pages. There is so much I felt the need to write and then forgot all about. My writing is one of the only areas of my life where I do not beat myself up for getting it wrong most of the time. That I spend so much of my creative practice doing things that will never be seen by another person is the point. And I needed that reminder this morning when my brain asked me for the millionth time, “What is the point of writing your little essays when the world is on fire?”.
There are plenty of things that I would rather do than write, but all the same, I have never quit writing for long. I do not write because I love it. I write because I love the world, even now, and because writing is the way that I have been given to express those feelings. It is what I can give in exchange for awe, a meager offering in open palms. I write because I want to understand myself and those around me and because I believe that the act of creating facilitates ideas and change. We can write new futures if we let our minds be free enough to get it wrong more than 50% of the time. I write because not everything that is difficult should be avoided. I write because it reminds me to seek joy amidst so much hardship and pain. We all work with the tools we are given. What tools do you work with?
In times that feel most bleak, to make something is to begin again in the tiniest of ways. It’s a crack of the door toward a more beautiful future. Even my unseen fragments and scribbles hold space for the curation of, and creation from, the sweet moments of a life that are otherwise so easy to brush by. But they are important, especially now. Writing is a practice of attention. And attention is precious when it is so easily stolen. I have been wondering how I might take mine back. I know that it is in moments of creation that I am most successful in this reclaiming. If attention and time are the most precious resources we have, I don’t want to give mine away flippantly. And so I’ve been deleting the little apps that take so much more from me than I consented to. I put my phone away more often, and I notice. I take a walk without knowing how many steps I am taking and notice how badly I want to quantify this moment. I notice that tree, but I do not take a picture of it. I do not turn on a podcast when I am grieving. I become obsessed with the particular color of the chicory flowers, not quite blue, not quite purple, along the creek. I find I have more to write this way, more to say when I am not constantly waterboarding myself with other people’s opinions. When I give the feelings and the moments more space to be honored.
Creativity is a kind of magic. It is a conjuring, a summoning of something out of the ether where nothing was before. It’s focused and attentive. It is necessary, I think, for all of us. I need my own creative practice. But I also need yours. I want to know how you feel, I want to know what you feel. I want to know the rhythm of your heartbeat the very first time you heard that song and knew you’d love it for the rest of your life. I want to know what it feels like to dip your fingertips into cold water, what your grandparent’s kitchen smelled like, and what keeps you up at night. I want to see the story of you in the feeling of the stitches on that pair of jeans you mended, or that meal you made, or the way you organize flowers.
I want to know you, in whatever way you choose to tell your story. I want us to know each other. I want you to understand that your work is important, even if you haven’t figured out what it is yet. Always, and especially now. Because all of those things become hope, a part of the patchwork of something worth saving, something a little truer than before.
Assorted, rad things:
Disassembly Required: A Field Guide to Actually Existing Capitalism by Geoff Mann: For a brief moment in college (the first time around) I was an economics major. It seemed like a system that I could understand, that played by rules and was totally figured out. LOL! This book is a breakdown of capitalist and socialist economic theory and an examination of how those theoretical systems actually work in the realities of the world economy. Bleak but useful knowledge. I learned what securities are!
Different Daughters: A Book by Mothers of Lesbians by Louise Rafkin: This one came from the used book sale in my town, in which Max and I descend on the gay books section and buy as many as we can, for $1 each. Our home is quickly becoming a library of out-of-print books from small lesbian presses, but you are (probably) not here for home decor tips. This one is a collection of essays written in 1987 by mothers with lesbian daughters. They were sweet, honest, complicated…and wow wow wow did they keep calling queerness a “lifestyle choice”. (I have been referring to things as “my gay lifestyle” ever since.) Highly recommend finding a copy.
Radical Grievance with Malkia Devich Cyril on the Emergent Strategy Pod: On collective grief, community grief, individual grief, and how we cope, come together, and move forward towards the futures we want. Their discussion of grief as a radicalizing function was revolutionary to me and much needed in these times.
Thank you for coming back. If you feel moved by today’s essay, hitting the like button or leaving a comment really lets me know. Now please please please, go make something, will you?
sending love,
Lisa
"constantly waterboarding myself with other people’s opinions" My head just exploded.
1) thank you for permission to not make my bed. I mean, I haven’t been making my bed, but I HAVE been making myself feel bad for not making my bed.
2) “That I spend so much of my creative practice doing things that will never be seen by another person is the point.” -- I have been turning this over and over in therapy lately. The inherent value in creating vs. the perceived value/worth assigned by other people when the product of creativity is offered up to capitalism. Aka I still have not taken any embroidery to that shop that wanted to sell my stuff because I’ve convinced myself it isn’t *worth* anything. So thank you for that reminder.