Entanglements
Taking time to, in order: be creative, treat myself, read again, and explore the stories I want to work with next.
I don’t know what to attribute it to, but my upswing seems to have continued. Is it the vitamin D supplements? The boxing classes I’ve continued to attend? That I’ve been writing more? Meeting new folks? Getting out of the house? All of the above together help, I’m sure. Every week, a few more hours of energy to use. It’s a welcome change.
Shortly after I last wrote, I got to take a workshop from Corporeal Writing called Narrative Entanglements. Lidia Yuknavitch led us through several prompts (or as she and her co-teacher Janice Lee called them, “portals,” which I find a bit silly, but I’ll go with it) and I enjoyed it. I ended up churning out about two pages of words, some of them useable. I’m hoping to attend their next in-person weekend-long workshop at the end of May, a similar one to the one I had to miss in January. (Sidenote, if you’d like to subsidize my taking this workshop, you can get a paid subscription to this here newsletter!)
It was lovely to get to be in community with other writers for a few hours, to hear their work and how their creative processes turned in their heads. It makes me feel emboldened to tell stories and not apologize for them. I churned out a few paragraphs of a piece I’ve wanted to write for a while. I suspect I have a bit more chewing to do before I write much else, but I’m hopeful.
I’ve started generating some ideas for old work too, which feels like a possible on-ramp to writing again. Simply tidy up something partially-formed. Drafting is where I have often gotten tripped up. Candles and commuting took up a lot of time for me pre-pandemic - I was writing maybe an hour a week, if I was lucky. Most of the time, it was fragments on Facebook. I didn’t even want to call it writing.
Here’s another thing undiagnosed mental illness made challenging for me: before, I would write and edit exclusively when manic, maybe a few thousand words at a time. Then when the depression hit, I had little follow-through with the pieces. I’d get embarrassed to re-read them when I didn’t have the energy to fix what was wrong. Because my ideas tend to take so long to generate to begin with, I’d end up with one piece every eighteen months or so.
There’s about five of these essays in my Google Docs - each around ten pages long, nothing to sneeze at - but none have made it past a second draft. How Aaron Sorkin got me back to therapy in my mid-twenties. The story of the trip to Europe I took with my mom, of finding our ancestors by accident. Why I started playing fantasy sports versus why I’m still playing a decade later. The essay about falling in love with my partner, because I’m a sucker for romance. A braided piece about an old emo song, coming out, and my first queer crush.
I am excited to return to these pieces - they all could be good with enough polishing. I’d like to publish something eventually and it feels more possible than it has in years. I’m so thankful that I’ve been able to refocus on this, that my mood has become more stable and allowed me to keep coming back to the blinking cursor regularly now instead of viewing it as a threat.
Last week was wonderful. On Sunday, my partner and I got bagels in the morning and then went to see John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats perform at a venue not far from our home. I wore an exceptionally cute outfit I didn’t get a picture of: my new pink sweater adorned with a giant red heart on the chest and as elbow adornments, an old dusty-pink crushed-velvet skirt, and my new-to-me glitter rainbow Doc Martens. Sometimes I just have to be 100% myself. I got compliments on my style in the line outside the venue.
The Mountain Goats were one of the ways my partner and I originally connected - our friend who introduced us from a distance in 2020 suggested we had our love of them in common. My partner loves them as much as I love, say, Bruce Springsteen: favorite deep cuts and live versions from long ago. I was delighted to get to accompany them, to get to see their reactions to songs they’ve sung along to so many times.
The next day, a friend and I went to Everett House, a spa tucked into a quiet Portland residential neighborhood. We walked up the stairs of the sizable Craftsman house and I tried to shake my nerves. To the surprise of no one, everything went better than I thought it would. After leaving our phones with the front desk staff, we walked into a queer-friendly oasis where I somehow did not feel apprehensive or apologetic about being the largest person in the place.
It was 45 degrees out, so we scampered from the locker room to the gorgeous outdoor hot tub, where we luxuriated for the better part of our hour. I’ve been having trouble with my fingers and toes feeling especially chilly lately, but they defrosted after some time in the warmth. My hips and knees felt less sore after soaking. Some of the tension in my shoulders dissolved. I’ve booked myself a return trip in April in preparation for my twice-yearly massage.
On Wednesday, I hosted a book club at work where we discussed Yellowface by R. F. Kuang. It’s a fascinating story with an unreliable, withholding, and unlikeable narrator. Six coworkers showed up (more than 10% of our staff, which felt like a nice percentage of attendees for it being at the end of the work day.) We talked for an hour about the publishing industry, white privilege, and plagiarism. At the prompting of another book club’s list of questions about the book, we revisited the “bad art friend” story from the NYT. We talked about who owns stories.
I’m thinking a lot about that lately, of what I can tell and what is okay to embellish in nonfiction. I’m coming back to this a lot, turning my first queer crush story over in my hands. My memory is terrible and I can’t recall the words of a ghost. How do I reconstruct the worlds we occupied as teens when I only have dusty, vague details? I remember that her dad lifted weights, I remember her sister plucked my eyebrows. I remember knowing she was smart, I remember talking on the phone for hours after she moved. Flashes here and there. Do I build our houses out of feelings? At what point does it become fabrication? At what point does that not matter?
Friday night, another musical date. This time, tickets to see one of my favorite singer-songwriters solo, Colin Meloy of the Decemberists. After a date night dinner of Thai, we ended up two pews back from the stage at The Old Church. There were seats for maybe 150 people and it was sold out - I don’t know how I lucked into the tickets.
I had a long wish list I hoped to hear him play. The set list was a mix of classics, deep cuts, and new material. Toward the end, he played one of my absolute favorites, a song I can’t believe I got to hear live, “Everything I Try to Do, Nothing Seems to Turn Out Right.” It wasn’t released on an album, just as part of the “Billy Liar” single in 2004. Who knows how I got a hold of it pre-Spotify, but it remains a favorite. I’m delighted to have tickets to get to see him with the Decemberists when I’m in Pittsburgh next, with my best friend of over a decade. This will be the fourth time she and I have seen them together, another one of our friendship-spanning traditions.
These charming days felt like a little treat in many ways. The little treats keep me going until spring proper starts. There are more to come. I have boxing and a nail appointment next weekend, some friends are coming to watch Jesus Christ Superstar on Easter. Spring brings me delight: things starting to bloom, colors coming out from the earth. All of my favorite things, namely, a pleasant amount of sunshine, flowers, metaphors. How can I not grow?