True stories, queer sex scenes, and the kindness necessary to leave.
This Is What I Know To Be For Me True Right Now (a journal of my real life—and all that I love).
i.
I woke up naturally before sunrise. I love waking up when it is still dark out, sinking into the liminal in-between. Today I woke to the sound of rain, which never feels anything less than a miracle in this desert home of mine.
I grew up on the East Coast of Canada, never more than a short walk to the ocean. Rain was a constant. It never once felt like a miracle, but rather something that thwarted plans and killed enjoyment.
Isn’t it incredible, I think to myself, still cozied in bed under both weighted blanket and down duvet, how what we name miracle may just be a measure of what we cannot easily reach.
ii.
just announced a live two-part workshop to help you write your way out of the year that has passed and into the year yet to come. You can check it out here. I would love to have you join me to reflect on the wisdom of all you’ve created in 2022 and to chart a course for creative sovereignty in 2023.
iii.
A text I sent this week.
I’m not sure I’ve ever written anything more true. And I think I will have a lot more to write about this as I continue.
iv.
I spent a lot of time in the past year trying to work out the trick of writing a true story about love.
I think I may have been coming at the whole thing a little sideways.
You see, it’s awfully hard to live a true love story when you’re focusing your attention on the love story you want to write.
v.
The steadfast practice of being with what is real is one of the truest ways I have come to understand the nature of reverence.
vi.
Magic isn’t about make-believe, after all. It’s just about suspending your own disbelief sufficiently to see the magic that exists inside each and every moment of reality.
vii.
In case you would like to read me fumbling my way to writing my own understanding, here are a few of my posts from ON LOVE.
viii.
"I belong to myself. I belong to the whim of my every desire.
I am here to be wanted. No, not wanted, thirsted for. It’s close to torture. The very centre of your being demands me. Good. I accept no less. Not a drop of me for anyone who won’t savour the taste. Swill me around the mouth like wine and let me bring the heat out in you. Let me threaten any semblance of composure.
I give you my flesh to feast on. Sate yourself. Suck clean the bones. Let nothing go to waste. I am not here to be devoured halfway. Eat me to my ankles. Touch me ‘til you grasp at air.”
ix.
I repeat the lines of this poem over and over, like a litany of remembrance.
I recall these words from months ago.
“No more showing up for breadcrumbs”, she said, “when you’re worthy of a whole damn feast.”
x.
Another random text I sent this week
xi.
Pretty sure I need this jacket as much as I’ve ever needed anything.
xii.
I just finished Abandon Me by Melissa Febos who writes
I’ve known of Melissa’s work forever, and somehow had never picked up one of her books. I will now be reading them all, and everything else she ever writes.
To be perfectly clear, some of the lines in this book hit like the line between pleasure and pain, when you are naked and revealed and fully surrender to being opened and surrendered and raw with truth.
Some books, some writers, open up doors of possibility for me as a writer. They break down what I know of form and composition and the rules of telling true stories and reassemble them into something novel and unfamiliar before handing them back to me to say “here, you can also do it like this”.
Abandon Me is the first book in a very long time to do this for me. And I am entirely undone with gratitude.
xiii.
I sometimes wonder if straight people have any idea that getting to read books with queer sex scenes isn’t just erotic. It’s life-giving.
xiv.
I read a lot of memoir.
In books, even books born of lived experience, people stay all the time where we—the reader—know they should not.
Even more, they stay where THEY know they should not. Against reason. At the risk of their bodies. At the risk of their sovereignty. At the risk of their heart.
We humans are nothing if not tenaciously obtuse in the face of a story that wants to end itself.
xv.
Staying, when you know you need to leave, is not a kindness to anyone. Least of all yourself.
But leaving, when everything in you wants to find a reason to stay, requires more kindness than you can possibly imagine.
We think we need strength and bravery to leave. I wonder if what we need is more softness.
If you need to leave, dig deep for every ounce of grace and mercy you have to muster. You’re going to need it.
xvi.
A few random things:
- on the secret to relational success on Instagram
This Episode of
(my god the voice of , amiright?)Watching at least one dance video a day makes me a better person
- writes the words my heart needs to exhale.
I love it more than anything when women write love songs for other women.
Next up: I am reading “ Alone With You In The Ether: A Love Story” by Olivia Blake. Join me for an unofficial chat-based book club?
xvii.
a note on the body by Danez Smith
your body still your body your arms still wing your mouth still a gun you tragic, misfiring bird you have all you need to be a hero don’t save the world, save yourself you worship too much & you worship too much when prayer doesn’t work: dance, fly, fire this is your hardest scene when you think the whole sad thing might end but you live oh, you live everyday you wake you raise the dead everything you do is a miracle
xix.
I’ll choose a hard truth over a gentle lie.
Every single time.
xx.
My gentleness was claimed in the most devastatingly brutal of ways.
I am equally fierce in its protection.
You’d be well served not to forget that.
This Is What I Know To Be For Me Right Now is both one of my foundational writing prompts and a way to record a list of random things I’m musing on, listening to, watching, pondering, & loving. It’s a love list of the things that are most alive for me & in me right now.
I’d love to see you create your own list. What is alive and true for you? What are you reading? Loving? What has you awake at night? Share in comments or in the chat.
What is alive and true for me?
I’m straddling the line between faith and fear, hopping from one side to the other and sometimes just standing with one foot in each pond. Faith is more sustainable. Fear eats away at my ability to feel gratitude for the beautifully simple things in my life, like the sun peeking through the blanket of branches above me as I stand in my front yard, waiting for Watson to do his business.