Hi! Welcome to this month-long series of tiny daily essays shaking out to be little explorations the ins and outs of growing up in a cult, and other daily adventures.
Hi all,
It’s been a long time since (December?) since I did a Download post. So, I’m interrupting my tiny essays to give you ten things I’ve been up to. I figured we could all use a break——30 days of tiny essays is a lot!
One. Watched St. Elmo’s Fire for the first time ever last week. Those women were putting up with some shit. All the boyfriends cheating and then insanely self-righteous (Judd Nelson’s character, in particular) when they are caught. Rob Lowe’s character sexually assaults Demi Moore’s character to no consequence whatsoever——they are friends after all——and then at the end of the movie tells her personal turmoil is all made up. Was this the 80s? This movie does not hold up well.
Two. Binged Season 3 of The Bear over the weekend. It’s some of the best TV I’ve ever seen and simultaneously gives me a panic attack (all that yelling). Jamie Lee Curtis, in particular, is unbelievable in her portrayal of a very fucked up mom. The birth episode, “Ice Chips,” is a come-to-jesus between Nat and Donna that will rip your heart out.
Three. Thinking about practicing mortality. Over at Letters from Love, Elizabeth Gilbert asks guests to write in the persona of Love on different topics each week. This from Andrea Gibson (read the whole thing, it’s worth it) on death:
“So. Here’s what we’re going to do, Tiny Heartbeat. We’re going to practice mortality together, you and I. A lot of it. A little bit each day, we’re going to practice getting used to the idea of letting go, which is the same thing as death.”
Four. I’m also thinking about being a vampire. It’s the living forever part that I’m into.
Five. In Barnes & Noble, a man wearing a T-shirt that says Proud father of a few dumbass kids.
Six. I can’t find my copy of Barthes’ The Pleasure of the Text. Which is a problem, because one of the early poems in my upcoming book, Agatha, takes the last few words of a certain amount of pages THAT I CANNOT REMEMBER as each line of my poem.
Anyway, I’m in the final stages of editing Agatha! The editor I’ve been working with gave me some very fine notes, and I’ve been running with them. So fun to see a thing come together.
A line from the poem with the stolen lines:
Those doors of fools of all
conjugal sense, fires of language.
Those doors of fools, those fires of language. Ah, the pleasure of the text.
Seven. Bright yellow oleander aphids (introduced to the US with the oleander shrub) have infested the milkweeds out front. I guess this is normal. I’m reading a lot about them. Some say they won’t hurt the milkweed. Others say they suck the plants dry. I’ve made a solution of various household things (soap, alcohol, neem), but I don’t want to hurt any monarch butterfly eggs that might be nestled under the leaves. Monarch butterflies only lay eggs on milkweed and monarch caterpillars only feed on milkweed leaves (National Park Service). Moving forward, I will just hose them down.
This feels like a systems issue. If my ecosystem were working properly, infestations wouldn’t happen as much. At least this is what my permaculture brain tells me. And, listen, my ecosystem is a mess right now. But it’s a work in progress...next year things will look different.
Eight. Below is a draft of my weekly homework for herbal school (I do anywhere between five and ten drafts). We are practicing a formulation method called a triune, developed by William LeSassier and expanded by his student and my teacher, David Winston. Each triangle engages a different body system with herbs appropriate to that system.
The more I create these triunes (based on real case histories), the more elegant I find them to be. We are taught to look at the whole person with complex issues and histories. We create formulas that speak to that. This is just a draft, something I tried that didn’t end up working, so I changed the systems around and tried again.
Nine. Healing ways as evidence of evil. Witches. I picked up these short essays the other day. A mixture of personal essay and history of witches. I’m only on the second essay——because I am in the middle of a really scary horror novel——but so far I’m liking it. Structurally, it’s how I’ve been thinking about my next book of essays, not so much about witches but maybe witch adjacent.
Ten. During the Ol’ Bard Poetry Club the other day, I started thinking about Jezebel. Yes, the one from the bible. Did you know Yahwism, a religion of ancient Isreal and Judah, was polytheistic with Yahweh at the head of a pantheon of gods? But I digress. As far as I can tell, Jezebel was just another woman demonized and scapegoated. Excited to read this book about her.
And have a watch at some Jezebel pop culture circa 1951:
Here’s the poem that came out of that session (for newbies, we each throw out a word, use it, and it goes on like this for an hour. Those words are in bold). The poem has very little to do with Jezebel at this point. This draft was all about the sound for me:
Okay, Jezebel Another mound, another dollar. Another head- land, taken over. The sleeping dog, the wandering cantor (call & response of the devil’s daughter). All stars bank to the left, all moons bellyflop toward death. The shallow grave grows fingers & toes, a funeral service for ants & crickets in microscopic coffins. All of this to say, I’m asking you for twice your spirit, twice the darkest arts, by which the spells you cast are loud.
Happy day, dear ones. Thanks, as always, for reading.
lex