37. Yes, Beauty

an elliptical, equinoctial postcard

Dearest inbox intimates–

I was sitting at my desk (aka a pillow on my living room floor, laptop on my futon) with my little space heater as close as possible to my body without actually touching my skin. 

Listening to the gentle, driving rain. It’s been cold in Lisbon. Very chilly. With intermittent flooding of Biblical proportions. After a brief run through sun and warmth, dust from the Sahara blew north and covered the skies. Storm systems dripped down from the north. Malaise, ennui, unmarrowed hours. 

The way I experience time is shifting. It’s damp again. Feels like winter but with some more promise. I wanted to send you some notes from inside this strange precipice. 

This rain, in its sudden arrival, unlocked a core memory in me. When I was a child, we had the BBC’s Peter Rabbit and Friends on VHS. In the opening scene, the sequence of which is embedded in me in a way I can’t fully explain, the character of Beatrix Potter, the author of the Peter Rabbit series, is painting a landscape in watercolor. She sits with her easel, eyeing the horizon line. Her border collie yawns close by. 

There is a moment of realization as the weather turns, suddenly.

She rushes to pack up her things as, drop by drop the rain begins to fall and quicken. She runs through the uneven terrain of forest, holding onto her hat as the music swells. The first time we hear Beatrix speak is when she calls her dog: “Come along, Pip!”

When she arrives home, Beatrix tells the ducks to move, acknowledging that, while they may be enjoying this rain, she is not! She enters into her cozy cottage, there’s a fire already going. The exact timing of the rain caught her by surprise, but it seems she had anticipated its arrival.

She makes a cup of tea. Peter (the rabbit) nudges her, a letter in his mouth. She sits down to write. 

The figure of the author, enfleshed. Her simultaneous solitude and enmeshment with all things; her space, her community, her stories. 

I wanted and still want to be her. I wanted to live inside that cabin, and those stories. I wanted to experience the impending storm, the urgency of running home to something warm.

my Peter Rabbit

I’m grateful lately. I feel caught in a web on a somatic level. In that, mutuality is a fact of life. The web shakes elsewhere, and I tremble. I’m generally a hermit, a solitary creature, but I am learning more that this doesn’t preclude solidarity. Empathy and compassion are muscles we can work every day. We can take care of ourselves and look out for one another. My fate is bound up with others’. I won’t make the mistake of forgetting this again.

I’m feeling more expansively. My window of tolerance widens like an aperture. When intensity comes, I tell myself, you can handle this. Yes, beauty, yes.

~

Creative updates:

• I defended my PhD project proposal and passed with minor revisions!! This was the last benchmark before writing my dissertation. For the next 2-3 years, I’ll be reading, researching, writing. Lather, rinse, repeat.

• I’ve been writing some poems again! They aren’t published anywhere, but I thought I’d let you know. They are erotic, sad, and a little Catholic.

• We are having a launch event and reading for The Holy Hour: An Anthology on Sex Work, Magic, and the Divine on April 30th in NYC! Free and you’re invited! <3 You can support our indie press by pre-ordering. Also, if you’re a writer interested in reviewing the anthology, please reach out! I’d love to hear from you.

~

As always, thank you for spending some moments of your precious time here with me! I hope beauty abounds. I hope you find small windows into infinity in the most mundane of moments. I hope you feel. More and more and more than you ever though possible.

Free Palestine. F*ck the you-ess government. Withhold some or all of that federal income tax. Donate to local mutual aid funds that support your community’s most vulnerable people. Support your local independent bookstores and libraries. Lots of love ~ see you next month. x