A fellow Substacker directed me to your work, and I’m so grateful they did! This post expresses so many things that I’ve been holding and sifting and trying to live into - but in words far more beautiful than mine. Thank you!
Also this paragraph put such a smile on my face because the language so closely mirrors a short poem I wrote recently (inspired by the way my chronically ill body resists all of my best laid plans and attempts at artistic deadlines) - “And maybe I write poems not to preserve a self—but to pour one. To ladle something and tip it toward another hand. And trust that what spills out will be enough.”
"there are worse fates / than being / delicious"—yes. There’s something so defiant about meeting the chaos of a resisting body with that kind of grace and appetite. Thank you for sharing your work with me.
I'm right there with you! it’s one thing to swear off panic as a career strategy; it’s another to wake up and realise you have no map once you let go of fear." You've expressed it in such a profound and insightful way. Thank you!!
Thank you so much. Honestly, no one tells you that when there's no familiar pressure to push against, that absence can be disorienting. It’s not collapse, exactly—just a kind of stillness I don’t yet know how to navigate. So glad this resonated and mildly reassured to know I’m not the only one wandering around without GPS. It helps to know others are in that space too, figuring it out without pretending to have it figured out.
Love this post T, been thinking a lot about meanwhile-ness in writing lately, and you’ve added more rivulets to that flow, thank you. Helping my son with a riverine landscape design that is ‘a meanwhile’ site because the area will flood with rising sea levels - what permeable, rottable features can be pleasant for locals and research during its meanwhileness. I’m loving thinking about it with him in material terms but also as a theory of living for our times of crisis. Thanks again. X
This is such a beautiful reflection—thank you for sharing it with me. I love the idea of a meanwhile site, especially one made with care, impermanence, and rot in mind. What a generous metaphor for how we might live, create, and raise each other in the middle of collapse.
What a deeply generous thing to say—thank you. I often write from a place of not-quite-there, so to have this land with someone who knows that terrain too warms my heart. I’m so glad we’re in this conversation together.
A fellow Substacker directed me to your work, and I’m so grateful they did! This post expresses so many things that I’ve been holding and sifting and trying to live into - but in words far more beautiful than mine. Thank you!
Also this paragraph put such a smile on my face because the language so closely mirrors a short poem I wrote recently (inspired by the way my chronically ill body resists all of my best laid plans and attempts at artistic deadlines) - “And maybe I write poems not to preserve a self—but to pour one. To ladle something and tip it toward another hand. And trust that what spills out will be enough.”
Here’s the poem:
Never mind then -
I’ll just pour myself
in the bowl of the earth,
let my heart be ladled about.
There are worse fates
than being
delicious.
"there are worse fates / than being / delicious"—yes. There’s something so defiant about meeting the chaos of a resisting body with that kind of grace and appetite. Thank you for sharing your work with me.
I'm right there with you! it’s one thing to swear off panic as a career strategy; it’s another to wake up and realise you have no map once you let go of fear." You've expressed it in such a profound and insightful way. Thank you!!
Thank you so much. Honestly, no one tells you that when there's no familiar pressure to push against, that absence can be disorienting. It’s not collapse, exactly—just a kind of stillness I don’t yet know how to navigate. So glad this resonated and mildly reassured to know I’m not the only one wandering around without GPS. It helps to know others are in that space too, figuring it out without pretending to have it figured out.
Love this post T, been thinking a lot about meanwhile-ness in writing lately, and you’ve added more rivulets to that flow, thank you. Helping my son with a riverine landscape design that is ‘a meanwhile’ site because the area will flood with rising sea levels - what permeable, rottable features can be pleasant for locals and research during its meanwhileness. I’m loving thinking about it with him in material terms but also as a theory of living for our times of crisis. Thanks again. X
This is such a beautiful reflection—thank you for sharing it with me. I love the idea of a meanwhile site, especially one made with care, impermanence, and rot in mind. What a generous metaphor for how we might live, create, and raise each other in the middle of collapse.
Sweet goddess of all things good and holy I am so very glad you are alive and writing. My soul needed this. Every word.
I am glad this found you. Thank you so much.
unspeakably beautiful, I'm so glad I found this! thank you 🩷
Thank you kindly! I appreciate you being here.
I'm so glad I read this - it resonated so much.
Thank you for reading and for being here.
Loved this read, as a fellow citizen of the liminal, living in the and. Oracles lived in the threshold. You are a beautiful seer.
What a deeply generous thing to say—thank you. I often write from a place of not-quite-there, so to have this land with someone who knows that terrain too warms my heart. I’m so glad we’re in this conversation together.
I’m so grateful for how deeply you listened, for how you caught the thread and let it fray alongside mine. Thank you for reading.