- earth therapy -
dearest stranger-friends of my heart,
my word of the week is ritual, so I'm going to start writing to you -- monday nights -- a little more religiously than I did before, even if I feel like I have nothing to say (like today).
I'm only sending you 3 things this week.
this is from my desk, just two hours ago. pottery is the only thing I have to show you from last week's harvest.
(1) journal post: pottery for winter beauty
perhaps a more accurate name for pottery should be earth therapy -- because that's what it feels like to touch mud, and make forms out of it. earth is the only thing that can hold water.
(2) a recipe: chinese radish cakes recipe
this weekend it didn't stop snowing in berlin. I have't gone outside in two days. when it's cold and dark I miss comfort food -- so I made a cheesecake, and then radish cakes. this is the food I wished my mother would have cooked for me as a child. yes, re-parenting is real.
(3) a poem: conversation by ai
this is a poem about death. I feel like I'm being reminded of death all around me - and sometimes it's a good feeling. like a tonic that makes everything startlingly clear. like a blinding light.
-
Conversation by Ai
For Robert Lowell
We smile at each other
and I lean back against the wicker couch.
How does it feel to be dead? I say.
You touch my knees with your blue fingers.
And when you open your mouth,
a ball of yellow light falls to the floor
and burns a hole through it.
Don’t tell me, I say. I don’t want to hear.
Did you ever, you start,
wear a certain kind of silk dress
and just by accident,
so inconsequential you barely notice it,
your fingers graze that dress
and you heat the sound of a knife cutting paper,
you see it too
and you realize how that image
is simply the extension of another image,
that your own life is a chain
of words
that one day will snap.
Words, you say, young girls in a circle, holding hands
and beginning to rise heavenward
like white, helium balloons
in their confirmation dresses,
the wreaths of flowers on their heads spinning
and above all that,
that’s where I’m floating, Florence,
and that’s what it’s like
only ten times clearer,
ten times more horrible.
Could anyone alive survive it?
. . .
I'm wishing you an ambrosia cloud week,
kening
PS. I changed email platforms (mailchimp to buttondown) so now I actually feel like I'm sixteen years old in 2007, and I am writing you a real EMAIL.
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