Week 9

WHERE is the sun?

Hello friends, another shorter one this week. If we go back to the original point of this newsletter, which was to record the vitalities and delights of each week, then what does it mean if I want to rush through writing it, if I have trouble conjuring up what to write about? For super personal stuff like this, sometimes the mood of the writer is just as important as what the writer writes. I’ve been dreaming a lot about the sun and the ocean and simply waking up with nothing to do except to go outside with a book and a cup of coffee and a ginseng cigarette. I’m looking forward to the summer—I just gotta get through the next few months—my friend W reassured me through a care package recently that the only way out is through, a phrase I’ve been repeating to myself—it’s been cold and gray and busy for too long. My friend J likes to say she’s solar-powered and even though I’ve insisted for my entire life that I prefer the rain, perhaps it’s time for me to evolve into a being of the sunshine. But I swear it feels better to be a trash bag of the gloom! 

I bought many books at the annual Park Slope Book Sale, my favorite time of the year, with my friend E, who also has a bad (good?) habit of buying too many books, and our heart-to-heart afterwards over tea & coffee made me feel better, as did a heart-to-heart with my friend A, because we’re both overwhelmed and sad and it’s easier to sit on a couch and smoke on a weekend night than it is to attend a party (although I did bring a bottle of champagne for us for no reason other than to celebrate that we stayed alive another week.) My writing group reconvened for the first time after our winter break and reminded me that writing is actually not just writing, it’s actually not just publishing—sometimes it’s just chatting through stories with your writing family. And I watched several movies this week, like Return to Seoul at Angelika with C, who is a relatively new friend but someone I immediately feel kinship with, perhaps because he too was a child of AO3 (it always comes out with new connections whether they perused my favorite site or not, and the ones in fandoms are always the ones I connect with most, ha.) In it, Freddie, the main character, has unfathomable, unsolvable sadness, and after letting the film sit with me for a few days, I like it more and more, perhaps because of its subconsciously self-destructive yet powerful main character and its neon techno lights. I need to return to the dance floor soon. See you there?

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I have a new short story out in The Missouri Review! It’s called “I Have Eight Stripes and One Mother” and is speculative and experimental-ish, about tigers & mothers & daughters & danger & legacy & myth-making & fierce protection & love. If you read it, I hope you like it!