The Importance of Eruption, the Blue That Might Lead Anywhere, and Making Your Own Life the First Life You Save

What Holds | Issue One: A counterspell to the disintegration—gathered fragments of song, story, and soul that help the center hold.

What Holds is my counterspell to the sense of inevitable disintegration—a gathering of fragments that help my center hold, a poetic practice in steadiness, moment by moment. I believe that the threads that help hold me might also hold you, and the bits of magic that hold you may help hold another. You are invited to join me in this practice by sharing your fragments in the comments, in notes, or in your own published essays. Even when the center cannot hold out there, we hold it here, together.

For background, read the intro essay here:

The Center Cannot Hold. But We Do.

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This week finds me:

i.
Housesitting and dogsitting and excited about going to the gym (I know, I’m as surprised as you are).
ii.
Coming out of my hibernating shell to realize, yet again, that community has shifted and changed and loosened, so I sit with the reality of a new and also ancient sort of loneliness.
iii.
Precariously close to the 35-book limit at the library and trying to figure out how to bring in money during this season of unemployment and fighting feeling adrift without a home to call my own (I really must update you all on the wild, nitty-gritty—the hard of it and the good of it).
iv.
Embracing the power of breathwork, napping during the day (one of those unexpected benefits of not having a job), and trying not to succumb to the worry of a dwindling bank balance.
v.
Learning new things about my own center, how to hold it so that it holds me, what it takes, and what it needs.
vi.
With so much that I want to write about, and that is a miracle and a wonder all its own, one for which I am profoundly grateful.

What Holds

Issue 01 \ 06.11.25

i :: Soundtrack
~The center is held by the explosion itself~

This song, by Angie McMahon

Exploding has been playing on repeat for a week now, ever since my dearheart Morgan shared it with me. It is a deep-under-my-skin anthem, a song for all of us who tend to hold our power inside, to dim or silence or quieten the feral, wild, untamed within. I have been in deep exploration with my anger (or lack thereof) and my difficulty accessing anything approaching the sort of rage that I know lives within. This song inches me toward it, toward my too-muchness, toward the self that knows she is so much bigger than her current reality.

Thank God I erupted
Instructions on people pleasin'
Rained down like a bar fight on the ceilin'
And yes, I did my best to hide that scary, silly mess
'Til I could barely find my silhouette
I hope I am always explodin'
If the alternative is heavy holdin'
I hope that I'm always explodin'

Thank God I erupted, she says. I hope I am always exploding. And when I hear the repetition of that line, I remember my own explosions. How they formed and shaped me. Shook my life from its anchors and birthed me anew. I remember that it’s the fiery lava that renews the ecosystem and fertilizes the earth.

I think about how long I’ve been holding my own fire tight inside, how easy it is for me to NOT feel my power, my hunger, my rage. How there is a kind of holding that is freedom and another kind that is a sort of death. I listen to this song, and I feel myself inching toward eruption, the kind that ignites a life, the kind that ensures my center can hold.

Listen on Spotify:

PS: The whole album is more than worthy of a listen.

~Where do you need to erupt to keep holding?~

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ii :: spell
~The center is held in the spaces we integrate our shadows with our inborn light ~

Light, dark, light again.

Photo by David Werbrouck on Unsplash

This is technically another lyric from a song on Angie McMahon’s album (originating from a whole song of this name from a previous album).

Lyrics from ‘Making It Through’ by Angie McMahon—from the album ‘Light, Dark, Light Again’

But I call spell anything that roots me in power, that speaks of the circular nature of this universe, that connects me to what is resilient and eternal in me, and so a spell this is indeed.

Light, dark, light again reminds me that no state is permanent, all is in flux, spiraling and circling in the shadows before returning to the sun. I find myself whispering it as I wait in traffic. Feel my mouth moving around the four short words as I wake. Speak them out loud as I light a candle of remembrance. In the speaking, I embody both spaces with greater grounding.

It is dark because you are trying too hard, lightly child, lightly ~ Aldous Huxley

I have the words “lightly child, lightly” from a quote by Aldous Huxley tattooed on my arm (one of two matching tattoos I have with

jessamyn sara

). My plan is to collect all these word spells I have saved, and ink them around my arm, like a modern day gauntlet, my own medieval suit of armor. Spells are protective, and one should keep all ones spells close at hand so they are not forgotten when they are needed the most. How much closer could I keep them but marked on my own skin?

These ink-spells? They live across my body—collarbone, ribs, wrist. They pull me back to my center when my pieces get scattered. They become a physical touchstone, a talisman on skin, a scar of my own choosing, a mark of the way the body heels and holds what once hurt, transmuting it into power.

Light, dark, light again, dearhearts, this is indeed the way of things.

~What is one short phrase that lives as a spell to you, to your center, that helps you hold?~

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iii :: story
~The center is held when we pay reverent homage to the connections that sustain us~

This essay by Patti Smith, an ode to her friendship with Sam Shepard, a friendship that ran deep and wide across decades and continents.

”He would call me late in the night from somewhere on the road, a ghost town in Texas, a rest stop near Pittsburgh, or from Santa Fe, where he was parked in the desert, listening to the coyotes howling. But most often he would call from his place in Kentucky, on a cold, still night, where one could hear the stars breathing. Just a late-night phone-call, out of a blue as startling as a canvas by Yves Klein; a blue to get lost in, a blue that might lead anywhere.”

First, I good god, can Patti Smith weave a sentence. I can’t read lines like the ones in this essay and not feel my center knit together. It is, all by itself, a small masterclass on writing, on the nature of enduring connection, and on how words can come alive when gifted presence, emotion, and detail. But more than that, it’s the love and care and deep reverence with which she writes of Sam, and of their relationship, that provides scaffolding to the center of me.

“Going over a passage describing the western landscape he suddenly looked up and said, I’m sorry I can’t take you there. I just smiled, for some-how, he had already done just that. Without a word, eyes closed, we tramped through the American desert that rolled out a carpet of many colors- saffron dust, then russet, even the color of green glass, golden greens, and then, suddenly, an almost inhuman blue. Blue sand, I said, filled with wonder. Blue everything, he said, and the songs we sung had a color of their own.”

Reading this, I felt like I crawled inside of their bond, was grateful that they existed for each other, that each offered the other something simple and vital, and honestly, I was ready to follow them both into the blue that might lead anywhere, just to see what might happen next.

I feel that same reverence for the souls in this world that provide that sort of touchstone for me, the ones that are a part of my own holding. I mentioned earlier I am dwelling in a new sort of lonleiness right now, unique to me and wholly universal and familar, and this essay felt like a homecoming of sorts, an echo of what is longed for, a reminder of its existence. This essay, it held me well.

My Buddy

Sam and Patti at the Chelsea Hotel by David Gahr - from her Substack

~Do you know of a blue that might lead you anywhere? Where or what or who is it and how does this help your center hold?~

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iv :: stanza
~The center is held by kneeling in a place that is holy and saying the name of the wild, forgotten things~

One of my favorite time wasters (that is not wasting time at all) is treasure hunting for beautiful words on the internet. Google. Tumblr. Pinterest. Here on Substack. I dive down-down-down the rabbit hole of words that lead to more words in an unbroken chain. I am a hoarder of language, a collector of verse, with an inextinguishable appetite for lines that don’t just hold my center, but reduce me to it, as if it was all I ever was or will be.

Hours can be lost this way (except one can argue that hours spent in search of language are, in fact, hours found) until I feel my shoulders fall away from my ears, my breath deepen, my spirit settle in my bones.

I had selected another poem for today, but then this morning this one by

Joseph Fasano

appeared and I thought of nothing that could speak to how we hold the center more than these words (if there ever were a theme poem for this series, this might be it).

”Yes, you can give it chips and whiskey
but from time to time let it kneel
in a place that is holy
like the simple cathedral of willows.
All it wants is to live, to keep becoming.”

The way this poem speaks to what can happen when we do not care for our souls (the center, in fact, cannot hold) and the reminder that it is not too late, that the way back is to say the names of the wild, forgotten things. Reminding us that we cannot save the world (nor hold that out there center) but we can do small kind things, and yes—more than anything—we can make our own lives the first that we save.

You can find more of Joesph’s work on IG here.

~What wild, forgotten things would you name to reawaken your soul?~

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And now that I have shared the bits and pieces of what is holding me this week, what I want to know more than anything, is what is holding you, and what is helping you hold?

Together we can create a collective of places to turn when the foundation starts shaking, a list of elements and threads and ingredients that might allow us to hold each other, across time and space and disintegration, tethering one to the other, holding the center, the line, the world.

~Where do you need to erupt to keep holding?~

~What is one short phrase that lives as a spell to you, to your center, that helps you hold?~

~Do you know of a blue that might lead you anywhere? Where or what or who is it and how does this help your center hold?~

~What wild, forgotten things would you name to reawaken your soul?~