/now
Winter Solstice 2024
At first it didn’t matter that I didn’t post these on the exact day of the solstices and equinoxes, but then I coincidentally made the timing work on couple of those occasions and so it did start to matter a little bit, and then I spent this winter solstice with COVID and am a couple of days “late.” As if it matters—by the time you read this, we are all inhabiting a different “now” anway.
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To begin with, as I write at this moment, I am a US citizen facing a second Trump term. This time, it’s a different experience for me. In 2016/17, I had a lot of panicky feelings, did a few high-effort/low-reward things, lost focus, and gave up. This time, even though I understand that this term will be objectively far worse, I am focusing on patching energy leaks and being sparse and strategic with the actions I take. It’s likely that the most effective action I can take in most cases is just giving direct cash to people and organizations. I’ve set up a MA/GA (mutual aid/give away) fund in my budget for this purpose.
As a queer person and a union leader, I plan to take up the same amount of public space I did before, perhaps even more. I plan to make more art and writing and distribute it more widely. I am refusing to self-censor or be afraid and I can take that position because I am also a person of great privilege in the context in which I live. In most cases, my head is not on the chopping block and I don’t want to act as if it is.
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The last quarter of the year is generally a time when I get a lot of creative energy. That has been the case this year, especially as I’m assessing how 2024 went regarding my commitment to write more. In 2024, I invested a lot of time, energy, and money into my writing habit. I bought a refurbished laptop and typewriter, a slanted writing board (highly recommended; it makes a huge difference), and notebooks and pens. I built a website, read several books on writing and creativity, and, yes, spent a lot more time writing than I have in years. In some ways, I feel like I’ve spent all of 2024 preparing the runway for my writing, even though I did produce a few finished pieces and parts of many others.
This is a long game. I turn 40 this spring and my intention is to spend my 40s focusing on producing the best writing I can and self-publishing and distributing it. In my 50s, should I be so lucky as to live that long, I will then focus on getting published if I still feel that’s important. I hope to post a piece in the next few weeks about why I am focusing exclusively on self-publishing for a while.
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I had the amazing experience of participating in a live poetry reading on December 8th for the Coolidge-Wagner Anthology of Recorded Poetry. Unlike the other poets at the reading (the brilliant Kyunghee Kim, Sherina Rodriguez Sharpe, and Chace Morris), I did nothing to deserve this honor except write some poems and have the great luck to be friends with the Anthology’s coordinator Chien-An Yuan. It was my first poetry reading since high school (!) but I was told that I was a natural. (I have spent some time on stages and in front of classrooms in the intervening 23 years, so I have had some practice.) I can’t post the video of it, but my studio-recorded poems for the project should be live in a few weeks. It will be great to have professionally recorded versions of some of my poems for the website. As a part of this project, I also somehow improbably gave an interview about the Anthology and poetry in general for PBS Detroit! I have no idea what that will look like in the end, but I will also share it when/if it goes live.
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I have not been posting much on the site recently because I’ve been putting my energy into a physical zine of prayers. Most of these prayers can already be found on the site here, but there are a few I included that are not on the site. Typing and re-typing, editing, cutting out, and imposing them into pamphlet format has been a lot of work. I’m doing it completely analog, actually transferring the text of the prayers to paper from the computer. I plan to do a small print run of these, maybe around 50, and see if I can peddle them or give them away (whether or not I sell them will likely depend on how much money they cost to print.)
My goal is to make several zines this year. I’ve been learning a lot about zines and zine culture over the past few weeks and am starting a small collection of zines as well. I may make a page dedicated to them on this site. I know that I’ll never fit in with mainstream zine culture (it sounds like an oxymoron, but it’s a real thing.) I’m not punk or anarchist enough and have no intention to steal anything in order to make these. I’m really a cred-less individual. But I guess my real qualification for making a zine is that I’m going to put it out there knowing that it won’t find a wide audience, and that’s OK.
I’m also committed to an aesthetic of sincere imperfection. Not going out of my way to make the zines look grungy, but also not trying to make them look like they rolled out of an offset press. Rather, I want my zines to look like they were handmade by someone who really tried to make them nice but couldn’t make them perfect. Because that’s what they are.
Nonetheless, I did discover a delightful little piece of grungy software call The Electric Zine Maker. This thing—which is free, although I recommend donating to the creator—is geared toward small zine formats to be printed on one or two sheets of paper at the most, but it does make banging out the classic single sheet mini-zine super easy and fun.
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Maybe it’s the time of year, or maybe it’s current events, but lately I’ve been feeling the preciousness of life. I don’t take for granted that I am going to live tomorrow, or that I will make my trip to work alive on any given day. It’s not that I’m fearful; I just understand, as I cross the threshold into the second half of life, how amazing my life is, and how little is in my control.
May you and yours be healthy, safe, and happy this winter solstice.
I got the idea of the /now page from Derek Sivers, which I found through 32-Bit Cafe.