twenty-six: upheaval, punctuated by big deals
Barely time to stick head above water, here in the general calumny. I almost went to Quebec and then didn't, because truck occupations. I almost went to New York and then didn't, because COVID numbers. February has been, in all aspects, a remarkably silly place, and a live-fire demonstration of why Rubens didn't paint all that much when armies were invading his city.
(Read downward on that old thread for some fine art-historical observations about how cats are.)
And yet in all the delayed gratification:
things finished
Socks! They go on your feet! Keep yer toes warm! It's sheep, but you wear 'em!
I did an interesting thing with the second sock where I kept an eye out for 1,000 stitches, and then 2,000, and what that looked like. There are a lot of stitches in a sock. Socks are miracles, guys.
Next: sweater. Made of alpacas.
maintenance
At one of the dayjob gigs, I'm digging deep into DE&I work and the incremental ways to right systems that were built thoughtlessly, along lines that don't work. There's a great series of equity talks SKArts has put on -- the last one goes up next month -- and I've dipped into them as part of my general information-gathering (see last issue: even when you know 80% of a thing, worth showing up for the 20% you don't, and I'm definitely not at 80% on this).
The first one's especially good, even if you've had introductions to this stuff. Sharp, fun right turns into Paolo Freire and a whole reading list. Yes, I am finally going to read Pedagogy of the Oppressed, cosmic message received.
things begun again
Even in the midst of all the upheaval, the flame of novel drafting is keeping alive. I spent some long insomniac nights spent working through a lot of prison research articles -- a deep dive into the Marshall Project, a seminar series on abolition run by faith communities in Minneapolis-St. Paul, very accessible inside-prison-produced podcast Ear Hustle (thanks to Sarah Parkinson for that rec; it's really good).
I've also started a poetry course at University of Toronto with Griffin Prize winner Liz Howard, the goal being to pick up a bit of the formal/theoretical knowledge I'm lacking--and want in my pocket. So far, so good: It's a mix of wildly different skill levels, it's technically-focused, and what's more, it's generative. Poemstuff is being made. I hate having to write poems to assignment. That in and of itself--it's information, y'know?
And, a small thing: After two pandemic years, my neighbourhood library branch reopened today. I didn't mind diverting over to the next closest branch; it's on my way to a few regular destinations. But I missed it.
things read
Three library books per weekend has been working out for me lately; here were some of the better ones:
Sarah Pinsker's We Are Satellites, which I really appreciated for taking a view of futures through education. It's not the usual lens, and it was nice to see that perspective centred.
Julietta Singh's The Breaks, which mixes intimate first-person essay and lots of bodily theory and queer theory into a lens for thinking about failure and the obligations of parenting in a fragmenting world, against histories of violence. This sounds very high-register. It's not. It's as intimate as a cat curled on your chest; the comfort zone of thinking "am the only person on earth who hasn't read Pedagogy of the Oppressed yet?" and also the soft whisper of there is another world there is a better world. It makes me want to think about what healing really means, and the cost of compensatory movement, and what of my histories I want to take with me, which serve me, and what to leave behind.
Likewise, Icelandic writer and thinker Andri Snær Magnason's On Time and Water (Marissa, if you haven't already been there, this one's for you) was a great way to feel connected to, as he puts it, deep time. It is ostensibly an attempt to write about climate change from the perspective of emotion, psychology, poetry, myth; it is also charting the ways family, experience, relationship, and narrative help us think about things. It says a lot about glaciers.
But the most important bit, in my mind, is a story about his ten-year-old daughter, his ninety-four-year-old grandmother, and how knowledge is passed, and how that means the span of that knowledge--the span of our connections--is so much wider than we think. The span of our agency, as well. I really relished remeasuring the span of my agency this month.
things to read
This month, we got the surprising good news that one of the Reckoning 5 fiction pieces, Oyedotun Damilola Muees's "All We Have Left is Ourselves," has won a PEN America Robert J. Dau Prize for Emerging Writers.
So, that was a bit of a big deal? Career milestones for all involved, and a huge push for Oyedotun's? It's a fabulous piece, linked for reading above.
The Nick Cave poem, aka "Local Leopards", has gone to print in issue 44 of Qwerty Magazine. It should be available between this letter and the next one.
And one of the most experimental short stories I've written to date (I know, I keep saying that; I am drifting into the seas beyond known Narnia and like it there) has found itself a home. "Sunday in the Park With Hank" is about an afternoon in 1920s Central Park, how we connect, and general oddness, and is basically what happens after I read an entire John Crowley collection at once and tried the thing myself. It's going to appear in The Deadlands sometime this summer.
(Read downward on that old thread for some fine art-historical observations about how cats are.)
And yet in all the delayed gratification:
things finished
Socks! They go on your feet! Keep yer toes warm! It's sheep, but you wear 'em!
I did an interesting thing with the second sock where I kept an eye out for 1,000 stitches, and then 2,000, and what that looked like. There are a lot of stitches in a sock. Socks are miracles, guys.
Next: sweater. Made of alpacas.
maintenance
At one of the dayjob gigs, I'm digging deep into DE&I work and the incremental ways to right systems that were built thoughtlessly, along lines that don't work. There's a great series of equity talks SKArts has put on -- the last one goes up next month -- and I've dipped into them as part of my general information-gathering (see last issue: even when you know 80% of a thing, worth showing up for the 20% you don't, and I'm definitely not at 80% on this).
The first one's especially good, even if you've had introductions to this stuff. Sharp, fun right turns into Paolo Freire and a whole reading list. Yes, I am finally going to read Pedagogy of the Oppressed, cosmic message received.
things begun again
Even in the midst of all the upheaval, the flame of novel drafting is keeping alive. I spent some long insomniac nights spent working through a lot of prison research articles -- a deep dive into the Marshall Project, a seminar series on abolition run by faith communities in Minneapolis-St. Paul, very accessible inside-prison-produced podcast Ear Hustle (thanks to Sarah Parkinson for that rec; it's really good).
I've also started a poetry course at University of Toronto with Griffin Prize winner Liz Howard, the goal being to pick up a bit of the formal/theoretical knowledge I'm lacking--and want in my pocket. So far, so good: It's a mix of wildly different skill levels, it's technically-focused, and what's more, it's generative. Poemstuff is being made. I hate having to write poems to assignment. That in and of itself--it's information, y'know?
And, a small thing: After two pandemic years, my neighbourhood library branch reopened today. I didn't mind diverting over to the next closest branch; it's on my way to a few regular destinations. But I missed it.
things read
Three library books per weekend has been working out for me lately; here were some of the better ones:
Sarah Pinsker's We Are Satellites, which I really appreciated for taking a view of futures through education. It's not the usual lens, and it was nice to see that perspective centred.
Julietta Singh's The Breaks, which mixes intimate first-person essay and lots of bodily theory and queer theory into a lens for thinking about failure and the obligations of parenting in a fragmenting world, against histories of violence. This sounds very high-register. It's not. It's as intimate as a cat curled on your chest; the comfort zone of thinking "am the only person on earth who hasn't read Pedagogy of the Oppressed yet?" and also the soft whisper of there is another world there is a better world. It makes me want to think about what healing really means, and the cost of compensatory movement, and what of my histories I want to take with me, which serve me, and what to leave behind.
Likewise, Icelandic writer and thinker Andri Snær Magnason's On Time and Water (Marissa, if you haven't already been there, this one's for you) was a great way to feel connected to, as he puts it, deep time. It is ostensibly an attempt to write about climate change from the perspective of emotion, psychology, poetry, myth; it is also charting the ways family, experience, relationship, and narrative help us think about things. It says a lot about glaciers.
But the most important bit, in my mind, is a story about his ten-year-old daughter, his ninety-four-year-old grandmother, and how knowledge is passed, and how that means the span of that knowledge--the span of our connections--is so much wider than we think. The span of our agency, as well. I really relished remeasuring the span of my agency this month.
things to read
This month, we got the surprising good news that one of the Reckoning 5 fiction pieces, Oyedotun Damilola Muees's "All We Have Left is Ourselves," has won a PEN America Robert J. Dau Prize for Emerging Writers.
So, that was a bit of a big deal? Career milestones for all involved, and a huge push for Oyedotun's? It's a fabulous piece, linked for reading above.
The Nick Cave poem, aka "Local Leopards", has gone to print in issue 44 of Qwerty Magazine. It should be available between this letter and the next one.
And one of the most experimental short stories I've written to date (I know, I keep saying that; I am drifting into the seas beyond known Narnia and like it there) has found itself a home. "Sunday in the Park With Hank" is about an afternoon in 1920s Central Park, how we connect, and general oddness, and is basically what happens after I read an entire John Crowley collection at once and tried the thing myself. It's going to appear in The Deadlands sometime this summer.
*
Things in this part of the world appear to be melting, both politically and literally; here's hoping for new life next month.
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