🌊 Summer Bottleship
Caw caw!
(That's "Hi, it's me, Lucy Bellwood," in Hawk.)
The Solstice has come and gone, leaving us awash in the tick-tick-tick of the burner before the gas catches. We're due for our first 90º days at the end of this week after a gloomy May and June. Thankfully I'm back at a family friend's funky house in the East End of Ojai, taking care of two cats, a sheep-shaped dog, and, most importantly, a pool. I'm doing a lot of reflecting on where things were a month, a season, a year ago; how my dad's health continues to decline, how my creative practice is finding shaky legs, how death and creativity both ask us to sit in a space of discomfort for longer than we might like.
It's a good time to write.
First up: I've got another collaboration with poet Tara K. Shepersky and publisher Bored Wolves headed to print this month. Serpentine will be a collection of Tara's lyrical poetry with full-color watercolor illustrations by me. Like our last effort together, Tell the Turning, this book centers around a deep, contemplative relationship with landscape; in this case, a river Tara has been returning to her whole life.
The crowdfunding campaign goes up tomorrow and runs for a scant two weeks, so if you'd like to grab a copy of the book (and maybe some postcard prints of my art), ready your pledging fingers. You can sign up to be notified by email when the launch happens here.
Since it's still Pride Month (woo! 🏳️🌈), it's also a good time to share an essay I got to write for Stone Soup, my friend Sarah Gailey's newsletter. Making a Home of Each Other is a love letter to cohabitation in all its forms, outrageous breakfasts, and the woman I've made a life with over the last eleven years. There's even a recipe at the end (for the breakfast, not the relationship).
I have the good fortune to eat at Gailey's table on a near-weekly basis, so I gotta say: if you can sign up for a paid subscription to Stone Soup, which gets you all kinds of extra recipes and community perks, do so. Gailey is an incredible and generous cook (and a magnificent writer to boot) and I have learned many Kitchen Secrets from them in our time together.
Finally, there's a new pre-recorded prompt up at The Right Number, the tender voicemail confessional I launched during the Pandemic. I've loved keeping this thing open on an inexact schedule, and listening to voices from near and far is a huge treat. To all of you who have called, thanks for trusting me.
Things have been pretty quiet on the blogging front the last two months, but I'll be sending out a Scuttlebutt dispatch at the start of July to catch folks up on the rest of the bits and bobs from Patreon and my blog. (Thanks to those of you who wrote to say the format was working for you! I'm enjoying it, too.)
Until then, thank you all for being here. I'm wishing you Big Moonie Energy for the week to come:
<3,
Lucy