The Wounded Healer

Brethren,

Forgive the delay; I was trying to live! Anyhoops--

I’ve been very nostalgic about music lately. Perhaps not nostalgic; I don’t long for the time really. Don’t miss being 22. But songs like The Wrote and the Writ have new meaning to me now. “Don’t say in a letter what you can in my ear,” Johnny Flynn sings.

I think maybe it’s good that things online are getting faker and faker. It makes real life the last island we can cling to.

Things have changed on Instagram etc. since I stepped away some 9 months ago. It’s not just people filtering their lives and causing impossible comparisons. It’s bot after bot getting better and better at playing life. I’m all set with it.

So I practice being bored. And in my boredom, I remember to write in a slightly longer form than an AI caption. The bunnies aren’t really jumping on the trampoline. But you really are reading this because you like me. A person you know.

I haven’t been feeling well. But I made you this thing anyway.

It’s like this—

Writing: Revision tracking on my novel, Salt Moon, about which some of you might care, but mostly it’s an accountability booster for me; Submissions, to magazines and awards, if I ever do such a thing; and/or new prose or poetry mostly made during my beloved Northampton Literary Society (Litso) writing meet-ups each Thursday.

Teaching: Something I learned once or recently, that I would like to teach you about now. The advice you never asked for, really.

Community: Observations big and small to help increase connection amongst the unending deluge of tragic events we uncover daily.

Shall we?

Writing

I was supposed to host Litso this week, but my body wouldn’t let me. Big ups to my collaborators for taking the helm this Thursday. Much love.

I felt not very generative at all, due to the exploding pollen sickness of most of the week, but I found this poem from April 2020 which seems apropos, so enjoy a dip into the archives. (It once had some cute ee cummings-like formatting but this platform won’t let me retain it).

“Fragile”

In fragile circumstances

strongest plants grow:

crocus & daffodil

stems that penetrate upward

through black, cold, earth.

Flowers like that

love themselves enough

to be destroyed

by life in raw air

& so, bright in their

purpleness, yellowness

cracking greenness

in overcast, in early spring

who weeps down

pours all the tears

says, “I’m fragile” &

“I’m fragile!”

But strongest plants

Wait, and say-up

“I know you are

Honey. Now, let me

drink it all.”

Teaching

Re: the mittful of planets in Aries, and Chiron: the wounded healer.

If you’ve been feeling nuts, or mad at your own behavior or someone else’s, or just off-dot-com, there is some potent astrology you can blame if you’d like. 5 or 6 bodies in Aries, several of which sort of canceling each other out. It’s a spinning of the wheels but also a burning ember of resolve.

This article from Venus Uninterrupted gets into it better than I would. However, I have noticed a resounding thing in myself and others the last ten days or so + Zoom therapy was a doozy this Thursday--as we approached an important truth.

I share it with you now:

From here on out: do it wounded.

I don’t think Healing™ is the goal anymore. We just gotta keep going, and gently.

Community

Simply a photo dump from a Fun AF Bobos’ Day.

Making the Denuo purchase and loving it!

Inside-outside brewery, hell yes: Incandescent

Bricked for Denuo Brick Lips at Hatfield Pub

More to come,

Kay

P.S. Happy Birthday, Mama!