what's nourishing you?
Dear readers,
February has been a whirlwind so far. I kicked off the month by leading a weekend retreat, and then almost immediately hopped on a plane to Kansas City for the AWP conference and five nonstop days of socializing. It was a little bit of spiritual whiplash going from spending the weekend with 12 people to spending a week with 12,000—from contemplative walks around the labyrinth at Mariandale and candlelit evening meditations to standing for hours at a time in a florescent-lit convention center and emceeing a reading and raffle at a glittering drag bag. Both were life-giving in totally different ways, but oh my god, I am TIRED!
Perhaps in response to this, I’m thinking a lot about nourishment this month, in both the literal and abstract senses. What fills me up, and what depletes me? How do I find the balance when some things, like all this socializing, often do both?
The first of February’s snail mail letters centers on food as creative practice. So much shifted in my life when I stopped viewing my body and its needs as an obstacle to all the important goals and workings of my brain, but as an integral part of my process. Preparing and eating food has become reverent, playful, and connective, just another arm of my creative spirit. How different life is when we stop fighting ourselves, when everything is sacred and seeded with meaning.
Snail mail club, you’ll catch the rest of these musings on paper later this week. I’m offering 15% off subscriptions through the next month, so if you’ve been hesitant but curious, now’s as good a time as ever to sign up! Join 20 of the coolest people on earth on this mailing list 😎
I’m eyeing getting a PO Box so you all can write letters back to me if you’d like (let’s go pen pals!!!), so beyond stamps and stickers and sealing wax, that’s what your subscription is going towards. 📬
EVENTS
Wine & Pine (Feb 19 at 7:00pm)
My friend & coworker Rachel runs this excellent reading series all about desire. What better way to keep the v-day love going than coming through for readings and conversation with romance writers, plus drink specials and homemade baked goods?? I will certainly be in the audience. Come find me.
The Weird Sister Collection at McNally Jackson (Feb 20 at 6:30pm)
I’ll be moderating this launch event for The Weird Sister Collection: Writing at the Intersections of Feminism, Literature, and Pop Culture at McNally Jackson’s beautiful Seaport location on February 20th. Come see me in conversation with Marisa Crawford, Cathy de la Cruz, Naomi Extra and Megan Milks. After-party to follow in the wine bar downstairs!
Weird Sister 90’s Throwback Dance Party (Mar 6 at 7:00pm)
It’s a book launch! It’s a dance party! It’s a cool fun time with kick-ass feminist writers and a DJ set of 90’s and 00’s throwback hits by That’s So Raben! You can find me running around making sure all the t’s are crossed and i’s are dotted, and probably announcing the raffle winner at the end of the night. Tickets are cheaper when you get them in advance, so don’t wait :~)
Our country is funding a genocide right now. There’s no other way to put it, and we cannot look away. 1.5 million civilians are currently cornered in Rafah, where they were directed to evacuate and told it would be a safe zone, and where Israel is currently dropping bombs and launching ground invasions. The city is now the most densely populated place on earth. Food and clean drinking water are scarce, journalists and emergency medical teams have been targeted and killed, and of the estimated 25,000+ people killed in Gaza since October 7, 10,000 of them are estimated to be children. This is a human rights crisis.
I believe that we all have our own place in anti-war movements and struggles for liberation. Some people will mobilize in the streets, in sit-ins and die-ins, taking direct disruptive action. Others may have resources and time to donate to jail support for protesters, or donate to relief funds attempting to deliver aid to Gaza. Others may use their platforms to raise awareness and disseminate information, or to call for protections around freedom of speech and stand against censorship. There is so much atrocity in the world that our protective instincts are often to numb against it, but I’ve been considering what my place in this movement is, how best to take meaningful actions but resist despair-spiraling over the news cycle, how to be in solidarity. I hope you feel moved to do the same.If you’re looking for a love poem this week, I often find myself coming back to “Song of the Anti-Sisyphus” by Chen Chen. Read it here or in his book When I Grow Up I Want To Be a List of Further Possibilities.
I want to be
like the kids with their plastic sleds, gliding down,
all the way down the hill, then trudgingtheir sleds & snow-suited bodies all the way
back to the top. I want to be how they do this, for hours,
till sunset, till some sensible someone hasto come drag them away from the snow, the slope,
the 3… 2… 1!
of joy. I want to be the Anti-Sisyphus, in lovewith repetition, in love, in love.
@fennuala on instagram I keep seeing photos and tutorials online for these Victorian puzzle purses, and I’m really obsessed. Everyone I know is about to be inundated with decorative little notes.
That Kristen Stewart Rolling Stone photoshoot… enough said.
That’s it for me this week. See you in the real world ✨
🌱 Nadine
