in the midst

if you are in New York City — you are warmly and enthusiastically invited to What Else? Comedy Toward the Solidarity Economy on August 1st! Please come or tell someone who you think would want to come!

s/o @radiantsomatics for this meme.

I took a break! Then I waltzed back in here with no fanfare, sans acknowledgment of my absence. I didn’t know when I would be back. The miracle of June Jordan’s birth seized me by the collar and pulled me in again. This is my formal announcement, we are so back.

I’m back on Wednesdays this time, writing to you from the midst: the midst of the week, the midst of a life. I’m writing with the belief that enthusiasm emerges in the middle, at inconvenient times, after you’ve already started, before you’ve finished (it’s on).

I am interested in traction, i.e., how to get a hold, how to get a grip.1 In hindsight I put this practice down for a month because I felt myself holding on too tight, I worried for the constriction. (Tara Brach fangirls know the root meaning of ‘worry’ is ‘to strangle’). Maybe you can get a grip by loosening your grip amen (sorry lol).

Moving through some very painful ruptures this season (and inside of a country that is too), I’ve felt myself Trying To Get A Grip. I baked a crumb cake. I got obsessive about walking 10,000 steps a day. I went to church. I bought a sewing machine on craigslist. I’ve been seeing people a lot. I’ve been avoiding people. None of these things are bad in their own right or at all (many of them I’ll continue) but I am learning the signs of grasping. I went to zumba, lol.2

It’s hard to get a grip, hard to hold on. I realize that sometimes it’s hard to hold on because I am holding on too tight, too much energy toward it, too much muscle. And maybe it’s less of a question of what am I holding onto and more a question of what am I being held by? eye roll.

Among other people, forces and things, I am held by this corner of the internet, this record, by your witness. I am held by listening for, by confrontation with enthusiasm each week; how writing asks me to concentrate, the gathering of attention required to make what’s on / how it’s on, legible to me or anyone else.

May we find the right intensity of grip this week. Until next Wednesday!