Sweetpink

A soft solstice

The sun where I am set at 8:46 on the longest day of the year. I spent most the day in my garden, tending the real plants as well as various projects. Because a dear friend mailed me an old laptop, so I am now able to make trouble wherever I wish.

My refrigerator and freezer are full of strawberries from a you-pick farm excursion. A sweetpink wave of strawberry greets me each time I open the refrigerator, green berry baskets tightly packed on the shelves, the freezer stashed with flash frozen berries. The variety is jewels. I’m eating them nonstop. Digging up my recipe for angel food cake and whipped cream. Making pancakes with strawberries on top. Slicing berries and bananas. Plotting syrups to craft. Playing with rose water, pink peppercorn, cream...not all together.

The season’s brevity makes it special. The same goes for other sweet heady smells I trace through spring and early summer. Lilac evoking ballet and sensuality and sweat and musk. Honeysuckle ripe with nectar notes. Tangy mock orange that calls to mind night-blooming jasmine. I pause on sidewalks to smell trees in bloom. A face in the window of a house clocks me smelling the trees and I feel mild embarrassment, but also slight rebellion. Keep honking, friendo, I am following Mary Oliver’s advice and letting the soft animal of my body love what she loves. I am living my “one wild and precious life.” I am making gentle mischief. I’m singing Evan Dando’s “Hard Drive” to my dog at the creek as we dip our paws in the water.

One of my favorite gentle mischiefs has been working on the first book Terrazzo is publishing this fall, SL Carroll’s The Art of Conjuring. I ordered a small run of print galleys so SL Carroll and I could each hold the book, feel the paper and cover stock, read through (many more times!) to make sure everything looks just how we want it to look…and also to get early copies out to reviewers. Two years ago, the only thing I’d ever used Adobe anything for was signing documents or filling out downloadable forms. Designing a book interior was semi in the plans when I started Terrazzo. Designing the covers? Not so much. It was a task I took on out of budgetary constraints, something I felt weird about admitting when I began that now is something I’d rather take in stride. At every turn, each limitation or “no” or wall I’ve hit has only further opened up my curiosity and creativity, inspiring me to say, “There’s another way” instead of shutting down. And something I’m interested in is what happens, or what can happen, when more of us working in indie lit decide to share our experiences. Something I’ve thought about quite a bit lately is access—to skills, knowledge, and resources. Who gets to do this? Who gets to make books? The answer I wish more of us owned is: anyone. Because you can truly build it how you want. Ideally, this is in a way that’s sustainable and makes sense beyond the first few years. I’m creeping up on year two, about to file my biennial statement, and I’m thinking about how I probably could have started sooner. I’d rather oodles of indie litmags and presses do what they can on a sustainable level, and hopefully grow and evolve, than for these projects not to exist. I waited until I was able to offer payment, even small, because that was how I wanted to do things. Being able to pay writers more remains a distant dream, but this whole project was once a distant dream. Writers may decide for themselves whether a particular project or space is a fit. And those who are in, those who admire and appreciate the vision and the project, will be down bad to join you for the ride. I used to, and at times still, get quite hung up on doing things right. I don’t even know what that means right now. But at this point, being kind, funneling care and intention into what I’m doing, and reading my eyeballs out are good starting points. Also, snacks and hydration. Also, many, many emails.

To that end, the weekend found me burning through behind-the-scenes Terrazzo things, enjoying and shoehorning in other mischiefs as I could. Seeing friends. Eating strawberries and melon and ice cream. Reading and napping with my dog in the garden.

I recently loved falling into Monika Ostrowska’s debut poetry collection Squirming. These poems orbit desire, womanhood, and finding foothold within the ever-evolving landscape of fantasy. Longing isn’t a monolith. And the direct, sharp clarity that inhabits these poems shifts shape to explore intimacy, as well as self-evolution. One of my favorite poems here is “Sound Bath,” which begins:

“What feels good? you can ask that question of yourself
And you should, really, so you can live better
You need to practice
Being your Authentic self
Realize
Things can be mine.
I can enjoy those things.”

Sound baths heal, soothe, and calm. Or they’re meant to do these things. So often it seems the cures for our wounds or the path to know ourselves are elaborate, excessive, or inaccessible. This poem invites a return to knowing what you want and claiming it, stepping into it, toward a truer self.

More than a few times this spring, I curled up in my dog’s bed with her, right beside one of my stereo speakers and put on a record to listen to all the way through, without doing anything else. I called this “sound bath time,” which is not at all what a sound bath actually is, but it’s our version of it. Not sure if this practice brings either my dog or myself any closer to a true self, but we both find the gesture to be a balm of sorts.

I recently updated my author website with brand-new author self-portraits. (The vision here was, I suppose, a kind of E.T. at the farmers market vibe.) Anyways. I’m offering writing consultations, so get in touch if you’d like to work together on your manuscript, or simply reach out to say “Howdy.”

I hope your summer is off to a sweet start.

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