Rhena Writes

Tag: life

  • I don’t know about the animals, but I know what made me the worst pet owner.

    Daily writing prompt
    What animals make the best/worst pets?
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    My sophomore year of college, my three roommates and I went in together on getting a pet. It must have been around thirty or forty bucks each that we each contributed to the tank and the items we thought we needed to keep the chosen animal: a snake.

    I’m not sure what kind it was specifically, just that we named it Oscar and kept it in its tank on a table in the room which was meant to be a dining room.

    In retrospect, I was not well suited to roommate living. Perhaps it’s a by-product of having grown up in a large (my American standards) family of five children or perhaps it’s just who I am, but I later on found that I preferred living by myself. In fact, I enjoy being alone.

    Oscar also would have done better under different circumstances. So much better, that at some point, Oscar took off to be on his own. Was that Oscar 1 or Oscar 2? My memory betrays him. I’m getting ahead of myself.

    At some point, a snake named Oscar grew large enough that he managed to push open the lid of his tank and slither out.

    Where did he go? We had no idea. Even though he was strong enough to push open the lid, he was still quite a small snake. Although, who wants to find a snake, of any size, in their bed? Not me.

    Fortunately, it wasn’t my bed where I found him, some time later. It was under the garbage can when I picked it up to empty it. I screamed. There he was curled up. “Pick him up!” my roommate screamed back at me. Nope. Wasn’t going to be me. This was one of many signs that I was not cracked up to be a keeper of snakes. We learned enough at that point to put a rock on the lid of the cage.

    But now that I’m thinking about it, that must have been Oscar 2 because clearly he had gotten big enough to escape. Oscar 1 (only retroactively named such) didn’t make it to such a size.

    Oscar 1 (and Oscar 2) ate baby mice, called pinkies, which we kept in our freezer. They only at maybe once or twice a week, but part of the appeal (to some of the denizens of our house anyway) of having a snake was watching it unhinge its jaw and then swallow the little pink rodents whole. It was something from a nature program right in our very own living room.

    We kept a heated rock in his tank and it was on this rock where we’d let the frozen mice slowly defrost. The rock was also supposed to provide warmth for this cold blooded animal there in our rental house in frigid Wisconsin. Turns out: one heated surface is not enough for a snake. One day, one of us found in him in his tank, curling himself into an actual knot. We had no idea what to do. It seemed he was sick. Very, very sick. By morning, Oscar was done writhing. He was dead.

    The pet store employee seemed to think that he wasn’t warm enough to properly digest his pinkie, which meant that it rotted inside him.

    So maybe this question, to me, isn’t so much about what makes a good or bad pet, but what makes a good or a bad pet owner.

    I wasn’t a good roommate and this made me a bad snake keeper. I was a go along to get along person, unwilling to say “no” to other people. More importantly, unable to say, “yes” to myself. I would have been much happier living by myself, but I hadn’t yet given myself the self awareness to know that at the time. I was also too worried about being the “weirdo” who lived by herself. And maybe I was also too worried about being the uncool one who said “no” to chipping in to buy a house snake. And then a second. And for that, I’m sorry, Oscar 1.

  • What Olympic sports do you enjoy watching the most and why is it women’s gymnastics?

    Daily writing prompt
    What Olympic sports do you enjoy watching the most?
    View all responses

    Last summer, I took a much needed week-long holiday to the beach with my family. The trip was right at the end of an eight week stretch of two types of chemotherapy (administered every other week) and right before I was going to start three months of a second type of treatment (administered weekly). The only thing I really had energy for was a few hours on the beach in the morning. I’d then go to the couch for the hottest parts of the day. Fortunately, the couch had a TV in front of it. Fortunately, this was the week of the 2025 Summer Olympics in Paris. Fortunately, the TV could have four different stations playing simultaneously.

    In the thick of chemo/ cancer brain fog, I didn’t have the focus to be able to read much or paint or write or really do many of the things that bring me joy but involve some attention. I was pretty weak and my tastebuds were completely obliterated so that even eating together with my family was not the most enjoyable. The chemotherapy had also made my skin photosensitive so when I was at the beach, I was under the shade when I could be and usually completely covered up when I couldn’t. Oh, and I was also bald so I was sensitive not only to the sun but I felt chilly at the slightest wind or temperature drop.

    But watching the Olympics, indoors? That I could do. The narratives that emerge feel so fundamentally human that I could pick up on them and even enjoy them through my brain fog. When I mentioned women’s gymnastics in my title, I was really just doing that as an attempt at a cheap laugh. The truth is that this past summer, I enjoyed all the sports. I, too, was wondering, “who is this male gymnast in glasses who seems to be meditating but hasn’t competed yet?”. And was stunned when Steve came out to dominate the pommel horse in the last rotation. I was also smiling along with Snoop Dogg as he c-walked holding the Olympic torch. I also occasionally ended up watching hand ball and wondered, “What on earth is this?”

    At the time, I was too foggy to put it all together but now, I can see that part of me, I think, was really grateful to have a week of being constantly reminded over and over of what human beings are capable of and what, specifically, our bodies can do.

    I’m in the radiation portion of my treatment. It’s exhausting. But I’m walking and exercising everyday. I’m sticking to my routines which allows me to have moments of spontaneity and growth. And I can feel myself getting stronger each day. I’m not saying that I’m ever going to be an Olympic athlete. I’m middle aged. Even without cancer, I’m far past my physical prime. But it’s not Olympic gold that I’m working towards here. It’s being able to get back in the ocean, swimming and battling the surf with my kids. It’s being able to walk my son to school. It’s being able to enjoy a few sun salutations. It’s having the energy to be able to say yes when one of the kids wants to dance. Or even when I want to.

    In fact, you know, that one Australian breakdancer’s routine doesn’t seem all that out of reach…

  • How do you improve a community that was someone else’s dream?

    Daily writing prompt
    How would you improve your community?
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    I live next a six lane highway.  I am deeply resentful of it. The county I live in is one of the wealthiest in the country. My neighbors are mostly working and middle class and immigrants. The highway is maintained by the state (of Maryland) but the sidewalks on either side are the responsibility of the county. Except for when it snows, when it’s the responsibility of the individual home owners. Except for the bus stops, which might fall under the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority. Or maybe the county. It’s unclear. 

    I’m an average homeowner and resident but I know more about those inner workings of the roads because living at the intersection of a county road and a state highway necessitates it. When we first moved in here, there was no sidewalk in front of our house in spite of the fact that it’s right next to a bus stop. I spend a lot of time emailing and on the phone with various people trying to get a sidewalk installed. Representatives of the county tried very hard to dissuade me. I kept sending pictures of elderly people walking in the road to get to the bus stop. One of my neighbors was a wheelchair user at the time and I told anyone who would listen about the time that he called for a ride share because the medical building he needed to go to was inaccessible to him in spite of the fact that he can see said facility from his front porch. 

    A man was killed when he was struck by a driver crossing the highway (at a crosswalk) about a mile up the road. The audit of the intersection resulted in removing a small section of fence that stood between the sidewalk and the crosswalk button. 

    A driver ran her car off the road and hit the fence around my property. My children were playing on the other side at the time. Needless to say, a sidewalk with an appropriate curb would have stopped her. 

    Eventually they installed the sidewalk. It was one of my greatest victories. A few more crosswalks were put in where neighbors and I had requested them, mostly near the parks and schools. But not much was done to actually slow drivers on the highway on our surrounding residential streets. 

    But I was still emailing and calling and tweeting (this was back in the days when I was still using that site), trying to get the speed limit lowered on the highway or at least some speed cameras and enforcement. On many nights, I could lie in my bed and all I would hear was cars (many with modified mufflers) drag racing up and down the highway outside my house. I’d call the non emergency police number many nights. Little changed. 

    The highway we live on connects outer ring suburbs to downtown Washington, DC where the streets are largely laid out on a grid, except for these wider roads, which shoot out from the center of the city likes spokes on a wheel. The highway I live next to is one of these spokes. The next spoke over would potentially be just as inviting to drag racers, but the residents along that spoke are wealthy enough that they have their own private security force replete with speed cameras. So the drag racers converge on spokes like ours where the residents rely on the county and state for safety and security. 

    A little girl died two blocks from my house in a car crash that was a result of this drag racing. 

    Some time after that, the speed limit was lowered. Some time after that, speed cameras were installed. 

    Too late. 

    Once upon a time, this place might have been the American dream of the suburbs. Single family homes, green lawns all the way from the front door to the street. No need for sidewalks when Dad can just hop into the car and drive into the city for work! Hey! The developers even left out the curbs so that homeowners can decide where exactly to place the driveway! No need to think about the messiness of women and children or oh, I don’t know, poor people? (You know the people who build and care and clean to maintain these beautiful homes and offices and the roads that connect them?)

    My six year old loves nothing more than to punt a ball as hard and as high as he can. (Ok, maybe he loves lego slightly more.) The problem is that the ball often ends up over the fence and in the street. We take him to the park a few blocks away from time to time. It’s just a big open field and a large parking lot. There’s no playground (in spite of promises made by the county that one would be coming). Sometimes there are a few neighborhood kids there  but mostly it seems that people use it as a spot to pull off from the highway. I see people eating or sleeping in there cars there. Sometimes people are working on their cars. Once after a recent snow, three pick up truck drivers used the parking lot to film themselves spinning doughnuts. That was nice (/s). 

    I’m always tense walking there. In spite of the crosswalk, I still worry about drivers coming off the highway too fast. We have strict rules about where the kids can and cannot bounce the ball to minimize them ending up in the middle of one of the more dangerous streets. 

    The other evening, as we approached, we could hear music. Soon, a man sitting at one of the benches playing a saxophone came into view. 

    My son turned to me. “How does he play so good?” he asked. I didn’t know. 

    The sky was moody above us. We could see dark clouds gathering next to the field. And the man kept playing. The wind was picking up a bit. And the kept playing. And my son booted the ball to himself and kept chasing after it. And I tried to pause to listen to the music but also my son kept asking me to play with him, to kick the ball or throw it to him. And so sometimes I did. And the man kept playing his saxophone. And the clouds kept clustering. And the wind kept doing its thing. And it was a maybe a jazzy tune but maybe all saxophone sounds like jazz to me. And my son kept playing. And the wind blew the man’s sheet music about and he got up to collect it and we started to leave. And he shouted something at us. And I couldn’t hear him and maybe he said “Rhena!” But he smiled. So I did too. And the traffic didn’t slow. No one came back to life. The drivers didn’t stop and exit their cars and pick up litter or even stop to listen. And he kept playing even as we walked away and even through the first drops of rain. 

  • Has anything changed?

    Daily writing prompt
    How have you adapted to the changes brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic?
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    A few weeks ago, I had the bizarre experience of being in a very, very bougie place in DC. I’ve mentioned before here that I grew up in DC and many of my life experiences have been shaped by having observed power; by having spent a lot of time in close proximity to the very center of empire but not being a part of it. Being, rather, apart from it. In any case, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve had fewer and fewer occasions to experience that world again. Which is all to say that it had been a while (and definitely since before the pandemic) that I had been in one of these “finer” corners of the DMV. It was very surreal. It was as if the pandemic never happened in that world. At least, it had that veneer. No one was in masks. There were no written signs about safety protocols. No containers of hand sanitizer out. Of course, if I had poked the surface, I’m sure I would have found changes and adaptations. Probably many of the staff lost loved ones or livelihoods or ways of life but they are probably also trained how to maintain appearances as if nothing changed. 

    I remember in the thick of the pandemic and lock-downs, watching movies or TV shows from before the pandemic and having to take a moment to remember, “Oh, yeah, we didn’t always wear masks everywhere, we didn’t always not shake hands.” I remember just watching old footage of crowded places made me feel a little uneasy. I read recently that even today, studios follow strict protocols to keep the actors from getting sick. So while they are presenting worlds and stories where the characters show no signs of there ever having been a pandemic, the key grips and food services and hair and makeup are still masked up. 

    Being in high-end DC had that feeling. I was being presented a world in which everything was care-free and easy. But behind the scenes, the people creating this world were not enjoying its ease. 

    It was head spinning when the next day, I went to take my girls to get their hair cut. I cut their hair (and my son’s and my husband’s and my parent’s) for the first year or so of the pandemic. It’s not easy work. So I was grateful when I was able to bring them back to the woman who’d been cutting their hair before the pandemic. She has her own salon attached to her house just outside the beltway in a largely immigrant community. It’s very small and worn down a bit, but we like it. During their haircuts, she was masked the whole time and when I checked in with her at the beginning, she mentioned how business hasn’t been good. It seemed to never have picked up to what it was like before the pandemic. 

    This is why I say that it feels like nothing has changed and everything has changed. Many have had no choice but to adapt in order to maintain an illusion so that others don’t have to adapt at all. 

  • The first hour of my day.

    Daily writing prompt
    What are your morning rituals? What does the first hour of your day look like?
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    My alarm goes off at 6 am. I should probably move that back to 5:55 to give myself five minutes of lazing and stretching. The soles of my feet and heels always ache and burn when I place them on the floor and take my first few steps. I’m trying to figure out what stretches or movements I can do before getting out of bed so that there’s less pain. Or else maybe just to give myself a few more moments of being awake and not suffering. I know. I know. All life is suffering. I cannot delay these moments.

    I change from my shorts into pants and then use the bathroom, clean my night guard, scrape my tongue, and brush my teeth. I check my phone to see how many hours I slept the night before. I realize now, typing this that this is a silly habit, born of a distrust of myself and my own body. I know, for example, that I did not sleep well for one long stretch last night. Yes, my watch confirmed it, but so did my body and my memory. Does the idea of my watch monitoring me in my sleep in fact disrupt my sleep? Would my sleeplessness bother me less if my phone hadn’t confirmed it? Is the technology helping or hindering me in my quest for rest? Do I need more data to answer these questions? Or do I need to trust myself more?

    I retrieve my glass of water from my nightstand and my yoga mat from the closet. I roll out the mat on whichever floor space near windows is available and set the timer for ten minutes for some meditation, light stretching, and sun salutations. I am unnecessarily attached to the idea of doing this part of my routine near the windows where I can peer out at the trees and, on some mornings, see the moon. It seems so picturesque, like something from IG accounts that I have scrolled. But the truth is that all of that is a distraction from my attempts to use this time to listen to my body and to give it what it needs. As for the moon? I do not think she cares one way or the other whether I am near a window to greet her, to admire her beauty. She is there, somewhere. And that is enough.

    I roll up my mat and set my tea to steep before I: take my medicine (trying to remember to be grateful that my morning dose is one tiny pill these days), let the dog out (and check to make sure the older children are awake and getting reading for school at the same time), and return my mat to its place in the closet. I finish making the tea (you can see my more in-depth take on this central morning ritual at this blog post: The Doctrine of Chai) and settle into my morning spot on the couch. I’ll alternate between writing and chatting with the kids and my husband and seeing them all off for the day. I’ll feed the dog at some point in there, but otherwise I’ll use that time to sip my tea and water and, most importantly, to write.

  • Damn, WordPress, you really got me deep into self reflection today, don’t you?

    Daily writing prompt
    When you were five, what did you want to be when you grew up?
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    When I was five, I wanted to be an artist when I grew up.

    My parents owned a restaurant in those days and I didn’t go to preschool. I spent a lot of time in the offices on the second floor of their business where my mom would be handling paperwork as the manager. Even once I was in Kindergarten, I usually spent parts of my summer days there.

    There wasn’t much for a kid to do at the restaurant but there was a stack of thick beige paper that my parents used to print menus and flyers on. And somehow, there usually were markers or crayons around. I went through an abstract phase: drawing long looping lines and then coloring in the shapes that emerged as the lines crossed each other. This phase could have been an entire summer or it might have lasted a few hours. Time and memory. You know how these things mix up, and especially in the mind of an abstract artist five year old.

    I do remember announcing that I wanted to be an artist when I grew up. In spite of the fact that I spent so much time in my family’s place of business, I still had a five year old’s understanding of things like jobs and careers. What did I know of galleries and studios and monetization and starving? All of that was even more abstract than my looping lines.

    At times, I told my dad that I wanted to be a doctor. I planned on attending Harvard Medical School. Or so I said. I was mostly saying this type of thing to please the adults. And while “doctor” might have been closer to making grown-ups happy, “artist” was closer to making me happy. This is why what I really think I was getting at when I claimed that I wanted to be an artist is that I wanted to spend my life expressing myself and perhaps that I hoped that as an adult, there would always be space for that.

    Well, I’m not a doctor, so the need to please adults didn’t win out. But has my life otherwise turned out the way that five year old Rhena hoped? Although there have been long stretches where I haven’t, I now paint and draw semi-regularly. And as a five year old, I couldn’t write well enough to picture it as part of my future. But I’m writing now. And while it’s taken me a long time, I’m creating ever more space for self expression.

    In the meantime, my six year old son regularly announces that he IS an artist. There is no future dreaming about it. He is what he is in this moment. And I think I created space in his life for him to express himself now. So, yeah, five year old Rhena is very proud.

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    If you’d like to support this artist in living out her five-year-old dreams for herself, please visit my Ko-Fi page. Thanks! (Also, shares, likes, and poking around the other posts helps too!)

  • You lack discipline!

    Daily writing prompt
    What’s something most people don’t understand?
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    Discipline is something that most people don’t understand. And when I write “most people”, I mean me.

    The word discipline recalls a punishing authoritarianism, an asceticism that leaves little no room for joy. When I got the phrase Kung Fu Life in archaic Chinese tattooed on my arm, I wasn’t really thinking about the discipline aspect of Kung Fu. You see, discipline isn’t the most romantic of notions. At least to my mind. And then there’s the movie/ TV show trope of the Asian elder with a lot of thoughts about discipline (or lack thereof) and who is sometimes the butt of the joke, is always flat and one-dimensional, and who never gets to be heroic.

    But here I am, with this phrase that alludes to discipline in pretty permanent ink in my skin.

    Aside from the Asian elders tropes, my (mis)understanding of discipline where most of my understanding of life was first established: in the halls of elite (and elitist) institutions of higher learning very close to the very center of empire. In other words, I grew up in DC and went to mostly private schools including one Ivy League for graduate school.

    Let me tell you: power does not like discipline. It’s a paradox. You’d think that at the schools where the powerful sent their children, they’d want discipline to be taught. But it isn’t. This is because, in part, much of the power that the elites enjoy was bestowed upon them. It was inherited by their station in life. I know that this is an unpopular idea to have in the United States where a belief in meritocracy runs deep. But you’ll just have to take my word as someone who spent many formative years observing how some of institutions at the center of empire work.

    The paradox continues. Creativity, success, and genius are considered innate in these circles. They are gifts bestowed upon a chosen few. But what discipline does is create a way in which this so-called gifts can actually be cultivated. This is an offense to power. And self discipline also requires saying “no” to certain things (we saw this in the other question of the day about setting goals). Elitism hates being told no. The closer to power one gets, the more one has to say “no” if one wants to maintain a sense of self, a sense of integrity, which is discipline’s bedfellow. Discipline is also self-control. And if it is the self that is in control, then elitism, power, empire has no chance at controlling the individual.

    Every day for the past month, before I go to bed, I’ve been writing three moments of joy or gratitude. I learned of this practice from Alex Elle. This is a discipline. I know because even in this, I sometimes phase internal resistance. It feels like one more task. But I’ve been disciplined. I’ve practiced every day and now it’s becoming automatic. It’s not just becoming automatic at the end of the day when I sit down to do the task, but during the day, I’m becoming more alert to moments of joy and gratitude so that I am starting to be able to find both in smaller and smaller things, in darker and darker times. I don’t require winning the lottery (although that would be nice) to feel joy. I can appreciate the buds emerging on the maple outside or someone’s smile or the way the sunlight hits the side of my house (that I have a house for the sunlight to hit!) or the way that Aretha Franklin sings “freeeeedom!” on “Think”.

    And so joy is the reward for that discipline.

    I’ve also been trying to be disciplined in making space and time for creativity. I paint or draw everyday — even if it’s just a little pen sketch on the side of a piece of writing. Lately, it’s been painting in drawings of insects in water color. I used to be very “precious” about this type of thing. I’d pull out all my materials and set it up just so and mix colors and all the rest. And this is also a certain type of discipline. But this production meant I wasn’t doing it as often, so I got some discipline. I promised myself I’d do it every day, even if it was just a single brush stroke. The painting I’ve done has been messy and loose. And it’s beautiful. It’s perfect in its imperfection: I’m painting outside the lines. I’m just letting the colors do their thing and the water too. And what has emerged looks so free and open and natural. It was discipline, a commitment to returning to this practice to painting that allowed me to learn and see the beauty there.

    I’ve also brought discipline to learning guitar. I do it every day for thirty minutes. It’s a struggle at times. I pretty sure that at some point in my childhood, I learned how to read music. But somehow I had to start that process all over again learning guitar. (I suspect that perhaps it has something to do with how things are taught in those institutions of higher learning that I mentioned earlier, but I digress.) But slowly, my brain is making these connections. This morning, I sent a few texts to my daughter asking her about notes and half steps and full steps. We exchanged a few texts back and forth. She knows a lot more about music than I do. And it occurred to me how music is like a whole other language and she told me how not every system of music uses the same twelve notes. This might seem pretty basic to a lot of people, but, to me, this was mind-blowing. And it changed the way I think about playing guitar. In a good way. And I was also struck by how the discipline that I bring to playing and practicing guitar, which I’ve largely experienced as fairly solitary, opened up this whole other aspect to my relationship to my daughter.

    And, of course, I try to bring discipline to my writing and, yes, even blogging. I had a doctor’s appointment today and usually that kind of wears me out for the day. And I extend myself a little grace at these times and don’t always force the writing. But I think because I’ve been disciplined about it on other days, I was actually excited to write a blog post in spite of my fatigue.

    Still, I’ll end this in order to practice discipline in one other area of my life that I’ve committed to: rest.

  • Pen, paper, and the word of Doechii

    Daily writing prompt
    How has technology changed your job?
    View all responses

    I admit that one of my current struggles is taking my writing from pen and paper to the keyboard and screen. The problem is that I love my handwriting. And I love the physical sensation of putting ink on to the page of a notebook and watching the words unfurl. So much of writing is living inside my head with my own thoughts that the physical aspects of the process (the job) become magnified. As does my enjoyment of them. And my discomfort.

    When I do sit at the computer (as I am now) to write, it feels decidedly unnatural. I’m sitting upright in a chair (rather than curled up in a chair when I’m writing by hand). I never really know what to do with my wrists. And do I leave my bracelets and watch on or just kind of tuck them out of the way? Excuse me. I’m going to pause a moment here to change my pants to ones with an elastic waistband as I have suddenly become intensely aware of the stiffness of my jeans.

    Ok. Much better. But see what I mean?

    I have loads of handwritten poems and stories and essays and errant thoughts and musings, but until I can transfer them into my computer and send them out in the world, do they have meaning? I’d argue that, yes, they do have meaning. Very deep meanings. All that work, using seemingly outdated technology of pen and paper, has meant a great deal to me. And I’ve come to the recent realization that my job as a writer being meaningful to me and me alone is enough.

    I’m going to stop writing for a moment and think about that (in my awkward upright chair that I don’t really know how to sit in). All of those notebooks and scratchings? They reveal something. And it think it’s a life lived. Thoughts. Dare I say: a soul? It’s the cumulation of thoughts and moments and lessons and exchanges and interactions of a life and mind. But I could burn them all tomorrow, or today, and all of that would still exist. In fact, I’ve thrown out a good deal of my writing. Sometimes I’ve even burnt my writing ritualistically in moments of attempting to let go of something and perhaps to have a better understanding of the transient nature of life. Other times, I’ve just tossed out entire journals in a move or housecleaning. We can’t take it all with us.

    And servers can also go up in flames. Computers crash all the time. Even our technology cannot save us from impermanence.

    So the obvious question is why am I even writing on this computer, posting to this blog? Why use this technology that makes me physically uncomfortable when pen and paper bring me so much joy? And it’s an excellent question, one that I ask myself pretty much every day.

    The other day, I mentioned to someone that I’m a writer and she said offhandedly something along the lines of, “I guess with AI, there’s not really a need for writers anymore.” I wasn’t offended. This is the reality that writers, everybody with jobs that involve creating are up against right now. If we choose to be. The woman who was speaking is herself a visual artist and we all know that one of the first things that people did with AI when it became commonly available was to use it to render visual art and images.

    The easy answer would be that this blog, me posting to the internet regularly is a last stand against AI. But I’m not really a last-stand kind of person aside from the fact that I don’t think this is really a last-stand narrative that we’re in the middle of here. AI is just the most recent of many tools that have, in the wrong hands, been wielded against the better angels of humanity.

    When I write by hand, I am very much aware of what my body is doing and what my body is capable of. In other words, I feel very human in those moments. And when I say human, I mean all of it, the messy and the creative. I feel as though I am wading into the rivers of my source. Listen to Doechii’s track, “God”, on her album Oh The Places You’ll Go if you want more insight into what that’s like. She talks about her realization that her source is infinite and then the complementary thought that that means everyone’s source is infinite. Each person’s creativity is already limitless. Including mine. Including yours.

    And that is what pulls me out of the just “enough for me” existence. My job as a writer is to, yes, tend to my own humanity first and foremost but it’s also to tell the stories, to share the thoughts and connections, to announce, “I’m still alive and I’m a human” to whoever needs to hear it, and also and maybe even primarily to spread the word of Doechii.

  • My Secret Skill: A Prose Poem

    Daily writing prompt
    What’s a secret skill or ability you have or wish you had?
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    A secret skill or ability I wish I had is to be able to just chill the eff out. No. That’s not it. I wish I could conjure joy on command. No. That’s not it either. I wish I could make a decision. Decisiveness. That’s it.

    No. I wish I could write spells. I wish I had been cataloguing spells with a feather quill in a massive leather-bound book with deckle edged paper in elegant script so that I could open the pages and recite one appropriate to any occasion. No that’s not it either.

    I wish I could fly. No. I’m afraid of heights. I’d like to be able to teleport. Fade into pixels and reappear somewhere else. Maybe even someone else. No. I love myself too much for that.

    I wish I could cure disease. Yes. That’s the one.

    Or that flowers bloomed in my footprints: forsythia and bluebells and hyacinths and all the ones, like plumeria, that I cannot name but remind me earth is my home.

    Spout fire from my mouth and hands. Eyes too. Laser beams.

    I wish for super strength so that I could bend the arc of history more quickly towards justice.

    I would like the ability to style my outfit everyday for both comfort and looks. So that I could walk down the street to a chorus of, “Who’s that?” and “damn!”

    I would like to be able to keep a neat and tidy email account, brew the perfect cup of coffee but just for the smell, extend an invitation.

    I wish I could crochet a blanket or two. Wrap you, perfect stranger, up in its softness on days like these cold and rainy ones.

    I would like my secret ability to be trust. Or maybe trustworthiness.

    I’d like to win the attention of elves so that I can lay my tools and materials out before going to bed and in the morning, a perfect pair of shoes appear in their place.

    I would like to be able to quiet the voices, to slay the dragons, to hold and keep faith, to have the right words.

    I would like to be present to each moment. And mostly to this one. Yes. That’s it. That’s the one.

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  • More of this: a practice.

    Daily writing prompt
    What do you wish you could do more every day?
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    The sun, the wind, the tree outside my window are working in concert to create a moving shadow on my computer monitor base and desktop. It’s a performance, directed by Mother Nature. On the other side of the window, blades of grass shimmy and shake to the beat of the breeze. It beckons a memory from before language: light and dark, movement, rhythm. I wish I could show you more of this every day so that together, we might feel the same raw, timeless innocence.

    A few months ago, I started to take guitar lessons. I’m going to not equivocate or judge my abilities. This isn’t about that. I try to practice every day and I enjoy it, immensely. Every so often, I am able to enter that coveted flow state with guitar where I am able to focus on that one singular task, moment, note, chord, song, skill for a moment or two. Maybe even a few minutes. I enjoy the routine of the daily practice: stretch, meditate, scales, work on the assigned piece, and maybe learning a few new notes or a cord. I enjoy that each day I can see a little bit of my progress and a deepening understanding.

    I recently figured out that the tempo I play a given piece is only as fast as my slowest transition. The same way a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Rather than try to speed up the transitions that I most struggle with, I slow everything else down. This has allowed me to actually enjoy both the “easier” parts as well as the trickier ones. I can luxuriate in each note and cord, letting the easy, open notes ring a little longer. Inside those notes is where I find grace. This is where I learn that slow, fast. One is not better than the other. They just are.

    But I do not wish I could play more guitar everyday. In fact, each day, I set a timer and put down the guitar when it goes off. I do not obsessively try to “fix” whatever I’m working on. My goal is not to extend my practice to the length of the timer. My goal is to limit the time. And in doing so, I trust that there is always tomorrow’s practice. I trust my own faithfulness to the practice. I do wish that I could bring more of that trust throughout other parts of my day. Every day.

    I’m also finding time for exercise and movement each day. I do stretching and a few sun salutations when I wake up. (The moon was particularly beautiful from my kitchen window next to where I roll out my yoga mat this morning.) My dog and I enjoy a walk or two through the day. And this past month, I’ve started to integrate some Barre Empowered routines into my week. When I think about exercise, it’s something I kind of dread even though moving my body is something that I quite enjoy. And so I look for the moments of grace when I exercise too. Can I take it a little easier on myself today if I’m low on energy? Yes. Sure! I’m grateful for Maya, the founder of Barre Empowered, whose messaging is more supportive and, well, empowering than most exercise videos I’ve tried in the past.

    I don’t wish I could do more exercise everyday, but I do wish I could extend more gratitude to my body.

    I write, too, everyday. And I read, because otherwise my writing would just be a monologue rather than a conversation. Last year I read The Word: Black Writers Talk About the Transformative Power of Reading and Writing (edited by Marita Golden). In his chapter, Nathan McCall said, “Yeah, I had a notebook. You could buy little things from the canteen, and I bought a notebook and started writing down what I was feeling. Prison ain’t exactly the best place to be telling somebody your deepest feelings, talking about your pain. So I was writing stuff down. And I realized that it made me feel better, whatever I said, whether it was a paragraph, whether it was a page. Sometimes I would just write and it would be disjointed and everything, but it would make me feel better, So the more it made me feel better, the more I did it. Then the more I did it, the better I became at it. Then I began to see it become a challenge to get my feelings down with the depth and preciseness that I felt.”

    My wish is that everyday I believe in the value of my words, my feelings, my stories and my writing that emerges.

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