Fragments, bits, pieces

Notes from life lately

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A song I’m loving:

Top-of-the-hill solitude, 35mm film

Some fragments, updates of sorts:

1. Last week’s letter, adjacent to the edge, was the most responded-to letter I’ve written thus far, and I can’t help but feel grateful for the un-aloneness sparked in choosing to share honestly. Speaking of depression, I got five rolls of 35mm film back this last week and I’ve been looking through the 180 photos, totally buoyed by the beauty, the mundane moments, the grassy fields and wide oceans and mountaintops and kitschy touristy wharf spots and roadside pitstops I’ve found myself standing in the middle of this summer, all while moving through a harder season. Looking through the photos really reoriented me toward the fact that I am never just one thing, even in moments where I assume depression is all that is here. I am not only depressed when I’m experiencing depression: I’m also keenly aware of the subtle and big spots of goodness tucked in between it all. I’m also laughing at breakfast. I’m also really, really angry at the state of our world. I’m also in love and in reverence and in comfortable clothes and in conversation and in grief and in uncertainty and in clichés and in awe. It is never just one thing, is it? It is never just one thing. The relief in that. The dropped shoulders in that.

Sunshine in flora form, 35mm

2. I recently joined two new writerly spaces — a weekly ongoing writing group focused on reading the works of others and sharing our work, facilitated by the incredible Molly Wizenberg, and an upcoming yearlong cohort focused on writing and completing a collection of work, with the incomparable Megan Stielstra. What I feel in joining both of these spaces is my beginner-ness; the discomfort of starting something new; the tender vulnerability of claiming to want something (in this case, to get better at reading and writing; to build skills; to write closer to the edge of myself) and going toward it with deliberate steps that require me to be seen in the fumbling, in the trying, in the not-yet-being-as-good-as-I-want-to-be-but-doing-what-I-can-to-slowly-get-there. What I also feel is the necessity of baring the discomfort, accepting the delicateness of beginning in public, embracing the need for mentorship, and fumbling through the process of learning.

   Doing things alone comes so naturally to me; it always has, including writing. I’ve long tried with all my might to avoid asking for help in various ways, to assume if I just keep at it long and hard enough, I can figure it out on my own instead of facing the potential embarrassment of being witnessed not knowing, or failing, or sucking, or taking too long, or or or. But as Carl Phillips says in his book My Trade Is Mystery, “I didn’t feel alone; what I realized was how lonely I’d sometimes felt but had assumed was just part of how it feels to be me.” Before putting myself in the way of receiving support, community, and help over the last few years, I didn’t even realize I needed it. I know… it’s absurd, but I really thought I could swing it all solo, not realizing it just felt safer to do it that way… not necessarily better. In recent years, as I’ve extended my willingness to receive support and help, I can’t deny the weight it’s removed from my back, the ways it’s enhanced my own capabilities, the web it weaves in my work and myself. And I am eager, open, excited, even, to see how it shapes the writing I’m doing in private — to see how it shapes me.

Colors of an incoming autumn, 35mm

3. On Friday night, I left the toddler bedtime routine to my partner and went to my local bookshop to see a longtime favorite poet of mine, Jane Hirshfield, read from her new book. I was the youngest person in the audience from what I saw, and I was alone, and it felt like freedom being in that room. Old friends greeted one another as they walked in, some seeming to go back decades; Jane spoke her achingly familiar words aloud for an hour before answering questions; a man raised his hand and shared a story of reading Jane’s poems on the beach with his wife 20 years ago, them crying together for the first time. I was struck by the sensation of her voice in the room with people, by what changes when words are heard out loud with others near, rather than read in solitude.

   Jane shared about her surprise in being a public writer, in choosing to read and share her work after writing was such a private event for so long, after she quite literally hid her words as a child, after preferring solitude and alone time as a quiet introvert. What she came to was the sharing as an act of service; even though parts of her prefer keeping things close, she realized it was an act of service to others, to the world, to find some willingness to let her words become something for someone else.

   I felt a resonance with her stance, her experience. After reading the dozens of responses to last week’s letter, I was reminded that yes, writing is an act of service, and yes, choosing to share when we’re able to often allows what we share to extend itself beyond us in ways we might not ever fully understand. I don’t always feel comfortable speaking things out loud; when I don’t, I turn to writing. And I don’t always feel comfortable sharing my writing with others; when I do, I’m grateful I did. I think to the lineage of writers who have bolstered me without even knowing it, and I think of how absolutely awed I am every time I get to share my writing with even one other person because I know the ripple effect it all has. To share parts of ourselves as a way of undoing aloneness, as a method of connection, as a form of putting words to something someone else might not yet have the words for, feels like shining a flashlight on something that would otherwise stay hidden, or as Ocean Vuong said, building fire escapes for each other. Jane has built fire escapes for me by choosing to share her words, and in some ways, I am doing that for myself by choosing to share mine, by pulling myself out of aloneness and putting it in the way of company, of we.

4. I’ll end with a photo that feels like a self-portrait of sorts: this stillness that actually contains movement, this shadow being speckled with incoming light, this in-between two places, this implication of momentum, even as it looks like just one place, like just one moment. It feels like that, in me; and when I see this photo, I feel a little less afraid of it all, a little more steady amid the wobble.

Solitude at the estuary, or a self-portrait, 35mm

Thanks for being here.

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Upcoming offerings:

Reflect, Restore, Replenish: A two-hour experiential writing workshop
Sunday, October 1st from 10am-12pm PST, on Zoom

Learn more here; I hope to see you there.

△ The agonies and glories of losing, from Brandon Taylor

△ This talk between two longtime mentors-from-afar

△ Bad cook, great mom

△ A late summer meditation - stunning

△ Notes For Young Writers, from Annie Dillard

△ These words from Sophie Strand

△ The satisfaction of a new notebook

And here are links to the most recent letters for paid subscribers:
~ Behind the Scenes #1: On less-than-ideal conditions for creating
~ Behind the Scenes #2: Courage over confidence & fraudy feelings
~ Behind the Scenes #3: Money money money
~ Behind the Scenes #4: What gets in the way

With care,
Lisa