Begin, again. Again, again, again!
Falling over. Starting over. Giving over.
Ripping off the Band-Aid. Beginning before you’re ready. Putting the cart before the horse. Okay that last one isn’t really in the same lane, but I am often a fan of putting 1,000 carts before the horse—the horse(s) will eventually come. For about the past year, 1,000 carts have been impossible. The last year of my life can be summed up by the movie titled Swept Under The Current: A Tale of 1,000 Depressions.
Poetry, music, and this newsletter have been the quietest and truest voices through it all even when I wasn’t writing. To be clear, I wasn’t writing anything. I don’t often write when I’m not well. Wellness and writing are the best of friends in my world. Romanticism of pain for art’s sake never appealed to me and it wasn’t ever something I could indulge in anyway.
Returning to the original commitment I had made in publishing this newsletter twice a month has felt daunting for the above reasons. I care about the commitments I make. And I also really stand behind doing what is right for oneself at any given moment when it comes to mental health. If I begin again, I don’t know what will happen. I may fall into another depression; I may fall in love—poets are notorious for doing both. And both situations could render me useless to any former structure, commitment, or true sense of timing. But I’m standing here, in your inbox, willing to risk that. And maybe more truly, willing to bet on the Tanna who has metaphorically burned at the stake many times only to be left with the single in-tact, unscathed self—the self who writes.
So here I am, again, at your feet offering twice monthly publishings. Instead of scheduling these on a set day or meter, I’m only setting the parameters for twice a month. A lovely writer I’ve enjoyed reading on Substack who I will recommend through the platform—Lord Cowboy—does this format, and I think it’s brilliant. It allows for both: the structure of a deadline and the freedom necessary for my kind of poetry, that being the kind of frivolity, decadence, very few fucks except the right ones, and deepest knowing truth.
Some honorable mentions I’d like to name in the community of souls who have shepherded me through the past year of my life:
My community in Topanga; I have an extreme debt of gratitude to the good kind of weird people who just show up here and love each other, all of whom have encouraged me to write
My best friend/cousin/soul mate, who keeps encouraging me to write
My Mom, who keeps encouraging me to write
My sisters, who keep encouraging me to write
The good strangers and friends in my world, who have always encouraged me to write
Write. Write. Write. It seems the directive—which is so damn hard to come by these days. What, with the extremity of hierarchy and lack of healthy villages that would provide mentors, peers, ceremony, initiation, celebration and guidance among other basic human needs. We all need to have ourselves reflected back to us to know which way to go. Our work, after all, is a service to others, not a means to our own individualism.
Moving forward, I’ll do my best to write my own story here. Not as an expose of self. But as an offering of another way. I’ve clawed my way through the systems we’re living in to create some semblance of a life that does not manipulate, exploit, or undervalue humanity. I don’t do it perfectly, but it’s my small contribution to the kind of world I’d like to be living in. If my own stories can inspire and mobilize you to live into the more loving world you’d like to see, then I’m here at your service. This is my offering.
Beginning with a poem I wrote this evening at the cheerleading of my already-mentioned cousin as we grappled with what it’s like to work a life without living to work and, even more ambitiously, while living to create.
I’ve been on a thought lately: It might be safe to follow our joy.
A Poem for Us
Do not disturb me, please
I am writing poetry
The babies are all still sleeping in their wombs
So blissfully in this moment’s peace
I can hear my own cry
Feel my own wetness looking for soil
No more tears lost to the seeds wandering who had been
Looking for their designated plots
Just me and my hands, throwing dirt, often leaving shit uncovered
Overwatering, underwatering, pulling up dead roots, and sometimes, watering
just right
Like the fly that knows exactly how to annoy your ear
The one you wish dead but without which
the log line for the setting wouldn’t be just so
Honest
Be quiet, I am working!
Just like her hands, arranging produce, and mine, longing for a single sprout
The cups tip over and hot coffee drips down my face onto my chest
I grate cheese over my dog’s head
The roof of my mouth is burnt and yet I lift my head up singing
nursery rhymes and lullabies to my own fits
of waking from nightmares and lusting for dreaming
Do not disturb me, please
I am writing poetry
It is magic and it is serious
This is no frivolous thing