Rhena Writes

Author: Rhena

  • The Doctrine of Chai

    “Time catches up with kingdoms and crushes them, gets its teeth into doctrines and rends them; time reveals the foundation on which any kingdom rests, and eats at those foundations, and it destroys doctrines by proving them to be untrue.” –James Baldwin from The Fire Next Time

    Most of my mornings begin with making a cup of chai. Actually, it’s more like four cups: two for me and one for each of my two daughters. My son has yet to show any interest in having his own and my husband has never been a warm beverage drinker. (Yes, that includes coffee. Cast aspersions as you will. He’ll never know.)

    Here is where I explain the process of making chai. And perhaps a little bit of the history. But this isn’t really that type of essay. What type of essay is this? Let’s find out. 

    First, I pour about two cups of water into the pot and set it to boil. I pull out my round, lidded chai box packed tightly with smaller also round containers each holding a different component, which varies only based on what has been available at the Asian market (where spices are cheaper than at the “regular” grocery store). Cinnamon sticks, fennel seeds, rose petals, cardamom pods, star anise, candied ginger, whole cloves and, of course, black tea leaves. I’d like to say that I choose what to add based on some sort of higher sense of what my kids and I need that day. Extra rose petals for love. Cinnamon for protection and boundaries. Star anise for good luck (especially if I find a rare nine-pointed one). But the truth is that I mostly do it by rote: scooping small amounts of whatever is available. This is with the exception of fresh ginger, which I will pull from the fridge, slice thin, and toss in the pot if any of us has a cough or cold. This makes me feel like an apothecary. Or a witch. 

    My daughters have helped me on occasion. One such time, my older daughter commented, “This is what I think potion-making is like.” The other daughter recalled when they were younger playing in the yard, they would mix up batches of something that seemed, in their imaginations, to be both nourishing and magical. Our morning chai feels a bit like that with the added benefit of being also drinkable. 

    While the tea and spices steep on medium heat, I can step away from the stove to feed the dog or take my medicine, cut up an orange or make the bed. The next step requires my full concentration. I pour the two cups of oatmilk into the pot and watch the white whirl into the dark brown (“clouds in my cha-ai, clouds in my cha-ai.”). The liquid starts to bubble. It reminds me of the edge of the ocean where the surf breaks and kicks up sand. It’s a similar sandy color and, at least for this moment, similarly unappetizing. But then just when I start to think, “am I really going to drink this?” the roiling becomes suddenly light and almost airy. Just the right amount of foam. This is point when I have to watch carefully as the liquid climbs the sides of the pot. I keep one hand on the handle of the burner and the other holds my measuring cup which I use to scoop and pour the chai, thus aerating it further. I want the drink to bubble up as high and for as long as possible without it spilling over. I have no idea whether this is the goal or whether this is good chai making technique. I’ve found I just kind of enjoy the challenge. 

    On more than one occasion, I have let the pot boil over, not only wasting the precious tea, but creating a sticky mess that needs to be cleaned. Once or twice, this happened when I let myself get called away from the stove during this crucial stage. Shockingly, it’s also happened when I’ve been right in front of the stove, hand on the burner knob, eyes on the pot. How is it possible that my body can be in the right position, my eyes laser focused on the pot, and yet still it boils over? There are times when allowing my mind to wander, perhaps to even dissociate from my body was perhaps something of a gift. But dissociating is not the doctrine of chai. 

    One day, after I’ve been practicing this for years, will I be able to space out? Will I be able to let my mind wander and still be able to keep track of the tea and the pot and the foam and the heat? Do I want that day and moment to arrive? I do not. Dissociating is no longer a gift. Embodiment is. 

    Ritual is routine made holy and some call the product of this particular chai ritual “liquid gold.”

    This winter, I watched by daughter play a lot of basketball. Observe a player take to the free throw line and you will see ritual. It’s not just that the shooter has her own pattern of familiar actions (dribble three times, line up knuckles on the ball, place toes a set distance from the line, breathe), but the crowd also participates. At one of my daughter’s games, every time a player on her team found herself at the line, the cheerleaders would all silently extend their hands and twinkle their fingers in the direction of the shooter. I could almost see the fairy dust flit through the air. When an opposing player was on their line, the cheerleaders were less quiet. “Rebound!” they’d chant while stomping their feet on the stands. These rituals were all familiar to me from my own days in high school, save one thing. The noise the fans used to make when the opposing team was on the line used to be aggressive —  hissing and booing meant to intimidate the shooter. But the “rebound” chant of today’s young people encourages their own team rather than trying to disrupt the opponent. I love this generation. Each time I observe them practicing the power of approaching the world from a place of support rather than tearing down, this Gen Xer is a little more healed. 

     Are you with me here? Do you see the magic in the mundane? Do you see how there is no doctrine of chai? Do you see how the ordinary is not a kingdom? How ritual creates a bubble around us pulling us away from time’s awful teeth?

    At least some of the magic is in the returning, coming back to this pot, this stove at this time each morning. Yes, even coming back to the foul line. Day after day like a miner returning to the depths of the earth, digging a tiny bit each day in search of that seam of gold. Here. This writing is a bit like that too. I’ve returned to this piece day after day first in my little notebook filling up with my sprawling handwriting. Twenty minutes at a time. I set the timer and drew the habit tracker to keep me honest in the moments when my faith in the ritual of return faltered. And here we are because reading is the other side of that. A partnership. 

    Showing up to the stove is not dissimilar from showing up to the pen and paper or keyboard and screen. And it’s not dissimilar from sticking it through to the next paragraph or page. These are acts of devotion. And devotion always transcends doctrine. These commitments to these rituals. We are not kingdoms. Nor are we the foundation. Whenever we choose to return, to focus ourselves to a particular task, to a particular ritual, to a particular moment, we become an ally to time. And together we rend kingdoms. Here. A pause. A slurp of chai. The steam creeps up in front of my screen. I made this pot a few hours ago this morning between my morning stretches and morning writing. I reheated it just now so I could have the creamy comfort here as I venture back down into this particular mineshaft. Liquid gold to fuel my search for that seam of gold somewhere in these folds of my brain. Oh! Here it is. 

    (Drop a tip here. Thanks!)

  • Overheard on the elevator to and from the 7th floor (oncology and hematology) (a poem)

    What floor?

    I like your outfit. 

    Comfortable chic.

    What floor?

    Thank you. Have a good one. 

    I like your earrings.

    What floor?

    Did she just fall down?

    They’re made of wolf fur, sustainably harvested.

    What floor?

    At least I’m not underground. 

    You get what I’m saying?

    Do they just brush the wolf?

    What floor?

    Did you just come from the seventh floor?

    I’ll pray for you.

    What floor?

    What floor?

    Thank you. 

    Seven please. 

    What floor?

    Thank you.

    Seven. 

    What floor?

    Seven.

  • Book Rec: On Thriving by Brandi Sellers Jackson

    Over the past year, I’ve been on a lot of difference medications, more than I think I’ve ever been on at one time in my life. I’ve spend part of three of the last four mornings trying to deal with my latest prescription: getting it filled, getting it paid for (yes, I have private insurance but apparently they don’t cover everything), and getting the instructions for taking it. Turns out, one of the drugs requires an EKG before starting and follow up ones after you’ve been on it for a while so now I’m trying to figure out how to get a copy of my last EKG to the prescribing doctor.

    But Oh Lord! the only thing more painful than trying to untwist the knots that comprise our health care system is writing about it. So I won’t. Instead, I’ll write about the prescriptions that I’ve received from bibliotherapist Emely Rumble (aka Literapy). How grateful I am that her lists of suggested readings don’t require an EKG or hours on the phone trying to get them filled!

    I got to enjoy a lunchtime talk by Emely Rumble in The Sanctuary (just another reminder of all of the amazing benefits of being a member of this virtual community for women of color) last year and her excitement about books and connecting people to just the right reading was infectious (see what I did there?). Emely has her own book titled Bibliotherapy in the Bronx coming out in the spring. I was inspired by her comments about how she had to push for the title of her book. I’ve read that some publishers don’t like to have place names in titles because… well, I think it’s just because publishers are going to have their elitist ideas about a lot of things and assume readers and buyers are the same way. As someone who loves to read about what it’s like to grow up and live in specific neighborhoods and as someone who can relate to a feeling of pride about the place you come from, I’m drawn to her title. I’ll for sure be getting a copy in April. In the meantime, she has loads of resources on her website for people interested in bibliotherapy, including book prescriptions.

    I found my current read On Thriving by Brandi Sellerz-Jackson on one of Emely’s lists. The subtitle is “Harnessing Joy Through Life’s Great Labors.” My first thought when I see the word “labor” is that I want to stay far away from it. I mean, labor is work and, honestly, I’m not looking for more work. Sellers-Jackson’s four great labors are relationship, mental health, grief, and being othered. I realized that these are labors that I’m already going through by the very nature of being human. And who couldn’t use a little guidance on “harnessing joy” through all of that? Certainly not me. And Sellers-Jackson proves to be a gifted guide. Her stories are not only beautifully told, but deeply personal in a way that cracked open my own vulnerabilities as I was reading.

    A couple of quotes that struck me:

    “[Self intimacy] is knowing and deciphering our voice as our own apart from others and those around us, finding it at its youthful genesis and unearthing it even when it is buried deep within the silt.” (P.17.)

    “[We] will find ways to be the most intelligent person in the room, not because we necessarily want to be, but because if we are, we can protect ourselves from those who possess the potential to cause harm.” (23.)

    Phew! These were just two sentences of many dozens that made me pause for a moment to realize, “she just unlocked some truths that I’ve known but never been able to acknowledge or express for myself.”Bibliotherapy indeed!

  • The Next 100 Seconds (A prose poem)

    (after Susie Q. Smith)

    Do not brace yourself. In the bracing, there is hesitation, and in the hesitation, there is doubt. There is no room for doubt here. Begin counting as soon as you’ve turned the handle all the way to cold. You will still have one or two seconds of warm water but this isn’t cheating because it’s not; this is your shower. Turn your back to the stream of water. Cross your arms over your chest, if they aren’t already there. First will come the gooseflesh and then the hitch in your breath (or maybe it’s the other way around; the fine details of sequence have little meaning at this point). Your breath will come in sobs. Allow them: these forceful diaphragm kicks. Your lungs are the seat of your grief, which your breath might want to kick around, shake up, expel every so often.

    Remember to keep counting. Begin to move from side to side, allowing the water to cascade over each shoulder. You can think of this as a warm up if that doesn’t somehow seem like a cruel joke. Gradually increase your movements. Soon you will be rotating your whole body under the stream of water. 

    Keep counting. You’ve been here before. Allow the memories of every other time you’ve been a bad-ass rise. That time you birthed a ten and a half pound baby. That time you said, “no” without explanation. That time you did not fill the awkward silence. That time you asked for help after the other time you asked for help and no one offered. That time you birthed a nine and a half pound baby. That time you said, “I don’t like that.” The time you lied and, in lying, remained true to yourself. That time you didn’t feel like smiling and so didn’t. Those times you smiled anyway and extended yourself grace later. That time you showed up to what everyone else knew was a gunfight and you didn’t even have a knife and you stayed anyway. That time you walked away. 

    Keep counting. You’re almost at the end. You can almost hear your Nordic forbear’s proud backslaps. Perhaps they even nod towards their tropical counterparts, who also value cold water, if not the displays of affirmation. No matter. You are whole. 

    Or skip the cold water. Read a poem instead. Read this poem instead. Keep counting. Look back up the page. How far you’ve come. A whole handswidth. Keep counting. Reach 100. Write a poem. 

  • Another Moment

    What emerges from a moment of silence? from stillness? What words need to be written right now?

    These are the questions that I’m asking right now. I know that there is an inner voice, deep inside of me that has been silenced and covered over by chaos. I spent a good portion of the morning on the phone with the pharmacy, my insurance, a pharmaceutical company, trying to get my latest prescription filled without having to fork over $120 each month. I felt like the ball in the old pinball machines slamming between those pop bumpers. By the end of the morning, the “notes” section of my weekly planner was filled with numbers and vague notes, none of which had anything to do with healing. Three or so of those minutes were spent listening to various messages, menus, and selecting options before I realized that I’d mis-dialed (I’d replaced the 888 with 800 because I apparently never left the 80s behind). It wasn’t until after I responded “yes” to the voice asking “can you hear me?” that I realized that the whole thing had been a recording. I’d been primed to talk about medicine and the scammers on the other end were prepared with an offer of a free medical alert device. As I hung up, I inwardly cringed for their real targets: those perhaps slightly older than me who also misdialed.

    So, yes, this is all part of the chaos that I have to dig through to get to some sort of silence. The stillness.

    I’m trying to establish some new habits and routines. This morning was my first time doing some stretches on my kitchen floor. The sun wasn’t up yet and so the lights, dim as I’d kept them, were reflecting off the glass of the windows, so that the pendants hanging from the ceiling seemed to be overlapping with the tree branches outside. I think that this will make me grateful for the next time I look directly at that tree, unhindered by the reflections.

    And that’s a bit of what I mean about the chaos layering over the silence, the stillness. I’d like to be able to hear the trees. But there’s so much noise.

    I set a timer when I stretch. Ten minutes. There’s no preset sequence. I just try to listen to what my body wants and needs. Move where it needs to go. Ten minutes is incredibly long when my body is in charge.

    I decided at some point that this would be a blog entry where I would just sit down, set a timer, and write what’s on my mind. That’s what this is then. I’m trying to …

  • Knitting and Cancer

    “You can sit and knit while receiving your infusion.” The physician’s assistant who conducted my chemotherapy orientation (yes, just like for freshman newly arrived on campus but with fewer ice breakers) made the whole process seem almost pleasant. And I was, in fact, a knitter, the type of knitter abbreviates “works in progress” to WIPs and, at the time, had no less than three WIPs in various, extremely cute project bags and one yarn stash large enough to require a big bin. But it had been months, maybe even a whole year or so since I had knitted. I had let that particular hobby drift to the wayside. I didn’t really think that cancer treatment would be the time that I was going to pick it up again.

    I love knitting. There’s a certain satisfaction of language fluency in reading and successfully following a pattern. And there’s the return to a WIP again and again, the gradual progress.  I love, of course, to finish a piece and then to give it to someone knowing that I already squeezed maximum enjoyment in the making. Any further happiness on the part of the recipient is mere extravagance. There’s also a human connection: not just between me and the person I’m giving it to, but between me and the shepherds, the spinners, and the dyers too. Perhaps most of all there’s the connection to the pattern maker, who spent countless hours converting the image in their head into yarn and then paper words for me to read and then reverse the process. I don’t personally know any pattern makers. But I know pattern makers. Know what I mean?  What a remarkable thing: to be able to spend weeks inside someone else’s head without every having met them. In science fiction, there’s often some sort of machine (in Star Trek it’s a transporter) that dematerializes an object and then rematerializes them somewhere else. Sometimes knitting is like that. 

    A few weeks after my orientation, I was sitting in my oncologist’s office with my husband for a pre-treament check-in with my doctor and his trusty medical transcriber. My eyes were closed and I was rubbing my fingers across my forehead. All I could think was complete darkness. Just blank. It was probably only seconds but it felt like minutes of just… nothing. Somewhere at the back of my brain, I felt there was a word or maybe a question that I was trying to retrieve. I felt the doctor and my husband waiting. The medical transcribers fingers poised on his keyboard. Finally, the doctor’s voice cut through. 

    “Are you having trouble recalling words?” he asked. 

    “Ya’ think?!?!” I wanted to reply back, but while the snark was there, the language to convey it was gone. 

    “Yeah,” I said. “I think I had a question, but now I can’t think of it.”

    The doctor reassured me that this is normal and that words would come back. What could I do but believe him?

    As it had been explained to me, chemotherapy targets rapidly dividing cells. Ideally, this means that it wipes out cancerous cells. Realistically, hair follicles, the digestive tract, skin and immune cells can all be collateral damage. In my own way of thinking about it, while on chemotherapy, my brain also wasn’t able to form new neurons. This is how I explained the language loss to myself. Or maybe it was the stress of the whole situation. Or that my known information was being overwritten by new cancer patient vocabulary: HER negative, dexamethasone, neuropathy, taxane, and a dozen other that I realize now I never actually learned. Somewhere along the way, I decided to leave it to the doctors and nurses. My own language became much more rudimentary: sleep, pain, eat, poop. At times, I was an infant once again. I could feel people around me internally cheering when they could illicit a smile or laugh from me, just like they do with babies. 

    I never did bring any knitting projects with me to chemotherapy treatments. Knitting is a relaxing pastime but it is also an act of resistance. It is all the things that modern, western society and capitalism looks down upon: feminine, slow, collective, inherited knowledge, sustainable, creative and nourishing. In our culture, it takes time, energy, and focus to maintain those types of activities. So does cancer treatment. The second months of my chemo involved Benedryl, which would usually make me sleepy, and ice packs on my hands to help prevent nerve damage to my extremities. I couldn’t have knit even if I’d had the energy to open up my WIPs and figure out where I’d left off. Besides, in the midst of all of this, it was impossible to prioritize knitting. All those years of learning and doing and making, I shoved it all to the back corner of my brain. Would I ever return to it? It didn’t matter. 

    But no, there’s more to it than this. I just admitted that my language abilities are greatly diminished. And yet here I am, writing and asking you to trust me that this is all going somewhere in spite of my reduced capacities in the very medium in which we are currently communicating. Am I an unreliable narrator then? Are we all? Here. Let’s go back. I trusted the doctors to know the words necessary to eradicate the cancer. Now, I need to trust myself that I have the words to tell this story. It’s not an easy thing, trust. 

    Spoiler alert: I’m knitting again. This fall, I made a charming green hat for my charming nephew. (I’d drawn his name in our family gift giving.) It’s been a pleasant little surprise each time I’ve picked up my knitting these days. It’s so easy! I remember all of it, each of the little steps from balling the yarn to casting on, checking gauge to reading a pattern. And where I’ve forgotten, there’s someone on-line or a book with the necessary information. How did this happen that I can still do all of this? I was recently doing an Old Norwegian cast on and it felt so natural that I wondered whether my ancestors from there weren’t gently working through my bones. 

    The question that I had in the doctor’s office popped into my head one day. I’d wanted to ask if he thought I needed to start on the antibiotics he was prescribing right away or just have them on hand in case of infection. It turns out that he’d already explained that and my husband was there, paying attention where I could not; his brain forming neural connections while my own cells were otherwise occupied. 

    And here we are, at the end of this post, ready to bind off, having sustained each other’s attention against all the odds and distractions. And still here. 

  • The Gift of Books

    Two weeks ago, I had 57 unread books on my shelves. Here’s what I’ve learned since then: it cost me 60 bucks and two newspapers for my eleven year old wrap them each individually, number them, and create corresponding “tickets” on scraps of paper within a specified time frame.

    I saw this system of randomizing your reading many years ago on Instagram or some other social media. At the time, I probably scoffed at it. “What a waste of paper! Just pick a book and read it!” But the idea hung around somewhere in my brain until I was 57 books behind on a bad book buying habit with an 11 year old eager to earn some cash and with a passion for gift wrapping whilst watching “Only Murders in the Building” with her mom.

    Here’s how it works. All the unread books (or at least the ones that aren’t in boxes in the basement) are wrapped up in paper. She then labelled each with a number, which is then also put on a small piece of paper. I keep all the numbered papers in a small box. When I’m ready to start a new book, I pick a number and read the book. This saves me from fussing around when I’m trying to decide which book to read next. And I’m a notorious fusser. Besides, making decisions is exhausting and I’d much rather spend that decision making energy on something more meaningful, like which murder mystery series to watch with my daughter next.

    “But why do you wrap all of them in newspaper?” my husband asked. Maybe you too have the same totally reasonable question.

    Two reasons. One, if the books are just sitting out, unwrapped, make no bones about it, I’m going to get distracted by them. I’ll go to retrieve my randomly chosen book and “Ohhhhh… look at this one with the pretty cover and pages and words….” and before you know it, I’m three chapters in before I realize that this is NOT THE SYSTEM I DEVELOPED! And then I have to go back to the chosen book. A few weeks or months later when pretty cover book is randomly chosen, I will have already read a few chapters and it will be very confusing. The second reason the books are wrapped is so that they can be unwrapped. Who doesn’t like unwrapping a book? It’s like a little gift to myself each time I pick a new one.

    So far I’ve picked two books. The first ended up being The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin. It’s a stunning book. My most measures, I’ve had a varied education in terms of what was “assigned” reading in the different schools I’ve attended. I continue to be shocked and kinda pissed off when I keep finding books that weren’t assigned in school. I mean, I’ve taken at least a few literature classes across various levels and I honestly cannot remember being assigned any James Baldwin. It’s a travesty.

    The second book I picked was volume 124 of the literary magazine Bamboo Ridge. I’m currently about a quarter way through it and it’s lovely. I’m so glad that I ordered it (and another handful of Bamboo Ridge volumes) some months ago in the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep. My present in-need-of-personal-and-local-stories-and-poems self thanks my past insomnia self. For many reasons (although mostly that indigenous Hawaiians have asked tourists not to) I will not be visiting Hawaii any time soon. But the writing in this journal is so much better than visiting a place where I would only ever get to experience it as an outsider, a tourist, someone extracting and not giving. I feel like I’m experiencing real Hawaii (and real life) as I’m reading it.

  • Let it be known (a poem)

                (after Brently Caballero)

    Never, not once ever did I ask, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

    But I always learned your name. Tried at least. 

    Tell my people that my favorite fruit was durian

    unapologetically

    leave it on my altar.

    Tell my people, yes, they will build an altar. 

    “You will dance an altar.

    You will sing an altar.

    Write it. Sculpt it. Grow it. Chisel it. 

    Dream an altar.  

    And to be clear, tell my people the altar will be for me.

    Tell them. Tell them that the picture they place on the altar.

    will highlight my rather nicely shaped head 

    which is a tribute to my nana

    who never set me down alone on my back.

    Tell them not to hide my freckles, the scar on my left cheek

    the one born of vanity 

    (ha! the irony) 

    and the one above my heart

    born of times of trouble we neither

    hide nor talk about. 

    Tell him “she wanted to compliment your glasses but she’d already commented on 

    your hat and how well that shade of orange suited you.” And maybe being less worried about what people thought might have freed her, did free her.  

    Tell them it is only fitting 

    to burn these bones born, 

    as they were, 

    in the year of the fire dragon.

    Tell my people that I was afraid of dying

                until I realized 

    until I saw the truth, stark and bare, 

    of all the people

                I could haunt

                first among them 

    the celebrity so-called chefs

    who hate durian.

    Tell them. Tell them. 

    Tell my people she wrote this poem knowing full well it could be her last

    Tell my people she loathed to be the one to tell you it could also be your last. 

    Tell my people

                her listen long time

                her create long time

                her destroy some time

                her forgive long time

                and her, of course, love you long time. 

  • My young self …

    …loved the yesterday that I made. I woke close to 7am and baked banana bread. The children had a late opening to school so this meant the bread was ready before they had to leave. My young self was proud that the timing had worked out. My old self felt I should have had it done even earlier so that there had been more time for it to cool before cutting it. Fortunately, my young self is louder than my old self and loves to watch the steam float from between the slices.

    My young self enjoyed the extra time with my kids in the morning. My old self lambasted the ice and cold even as my young self successfully stoked the fire. My morning involves a “create before you consume” ritual. Usually I write, but my young self counted building up the flames in the woodstove and baking banana bread as creating. My old self does not think I should think of these activities as “creating”. My young self thinks my old self can be a bit of a puritanical asshole. She’s not wrong.

    I had errands to run that took me near to a Michael’s craft store which my old self thinks is an uninspiring chain warehouse full of plastic and trendy crap. My young self’s heart leapt when I granted her permission to buy some beautiful sets of markers which we have the money to afford. Sometimes both of them are right.

    My young self marveled that I could make the choice to practice guitar for thirty minutes in the middle of the day just because I could and at the improvement I made even in that short a time. My old self reminded us, “loosen up!” when my shoulder ached from holding it in one awkward position for an unnecessarily long time.

    When I realized our family had overbooked, I did the grocery store trip, driving one child to and from various basketball practices, and started dinner (beef stew!) prep. My young self was very impressed by my adaptability, but it was my old self who had the sense to ask my husband to finish making the dinner when I knew I needed rest. It was all three of us who let out a long, hopeful sigh as we sat down next to the fire.

  • This Moment

    I spend a lot of time thinking about writing. I also spend a lot of time actually writing: it’s often one of the first things I do in the morning. I have pages and pages and notebooks and notebooks and digital docs full of words in the specific combinations that I’ve come up with. And, yet, relatively few of them have made it into this blog. What’s up with that?

    I’m writing on my iPad in my living room on the couch next to our woodstove which is lit (by which I mean there’s an actual wood fire in there; not like “this party is lit”). It’s somewhere around 17 degrees (farenheit) outside right now and our furnace went out a few weeks ago. Fortunately, we actually have two furnaces and we got the broken one fixed right away but in the process of getting it fixed, we discovered some larger electrical problems which have made us skittish about using the furnace. Our woodstove was expensive and, honestly, it’s kind of fantastic to be using it for more than aesthetic reasons. And by “fantastic” I think I mean all that expense feels very justified. Plus, fire is a beautiful thing to be able to stare into.

    I have various notebooks and journals, one of which is dedicated to this blog. I like to write longhand, in cursive. This probably has something to do with how I learned to write in school and my age and the history of technology and my specific brain development, but I won’t bore you with trying to piece together the timeline. I also used to be an English/ Language Arts Teacher so this step-by-step process of writing (brainstorm, outline, draft, revise, edit, etc…) is pretty deeply engrained me. But I’m not doing this blog post that way. I think the young people these days would say I’m “raw dogging” it which is a term which I’m assuming comes from something sexual and which my kids would cringe to see me using. So what I really mean to say is that I just sat down and started writing this post — no brainstorming or notes or even an idea much less drafts.

    Who the hell gave me permission to do that?

    Well, I did. This is my blog.

    This is revolutionary thinking for someone like me who has spent much of her life feeling like she has to get permission or approval for, well, pretty much everything and specifically for writing. And yet writing is one thing that I’ve been doing a lot of. I’ve been overly precious about writing though. It only counts if it’s in certain publications. It only counts if I’m getting paid. It only counts if I’ve gone through a certain number of drafts and covered the whole thing in blood, sweat, and tears (my own, of course). It only counts if it’s beautiful and perfect and inspired.

    Ugh. How insufferable is that inner monotonous voice counting every bean and bob, jot and tittle?

    Every word I put down here is shouting over that annoying inner voice. Every time I click the “publish” button, I’m punching those gatekeepers. Each time I write here, I’m reaching out.

    I’m here. Welcome.