Verve and chocolate

An ode to coping

Writing has been on the back burner for some time now. Not the back burner of the stove in my house… more like the back burner at the beach house no one has used since September.

How long has it been now? A few months? Time feels unhinged.

Upon reflection and review of the captain’s log of my Google calendar, I see that the past few months in fact number 12, which is the literary line in the sand where we are supposed to swap from decimal to font, as this much time is in fact chewy & requires a chomp or two before swallowing, even if you’re in a hurry.

I have been hurried and rushed, my fuse and temper short. A week before Christmas I lashed out at Santa because it was cold and he was in my way. My arms were full and the wind was biting, and I was engaged in a conversation on the border between English and Spanish which was consuming my very last brain sugar. He approached me to ask why he hadn’t gotten a letter from me in the past few years despite my notoriously poor poker face offering a very clear “do not approach or feed the wildlife” vibe.

He approached. I bit. I’m sorry. It was not the highlight of my December, but does facilitate the time tracking and anchor my fragile mood in that month.

December was five months ago.

It was in the before of many things and the after others, a bit like churning sea that lacks rhythm and direction, because the tide is coming in and boat is coming across and the wind cannot choose an angle. That was December.

On Tuesday around 8pm I submitted my final for Ochem, and then worked a few days before it became Saturday again.

How am I never prepared for Saturday? Why does she always catch me off guard?! This day of potential rest has become a day for triage, bailing water through exhaustion during a downpour.

I sat down this morning, somewhere between my third and fourth cups of coffee to take inventory. On most days I use the evacuation mantra from the Red Cross to prioritize my unscheduled time: people, pets, pills, papers, and I’m happy to report that through all of it, the fault line has remained between pills and papers. We have all the meds we need for the moment, even though I accidentally sent an order of vitamins to our before address, but the papers? They have multiplied in the dark corners.

When was the last time I had some real time off?

(When was the last time you did?)

Not too long? A few months. Right?

Maybe your life is different. Maybe you’re Sabbath people, or beach vacation with trashy novels people, or one thing at a time people. Perhaps your life has been a straight shot where things unfold as expected on the Hallmark channel, punctuated by events with corresponding greeting cards.

Maybe that’s why you’re reading?

(I didn’t think so).

Aside - if you are here because you think this is a newsletter about coffee, it is not**

I can’t guess why you’re here. Maybe we crossed paths, or maybe the internet dropped you here, or maybe just maybe you feel the profound out-of-sortsness you can’t name. The sort that motivated you to keep going and asks you regularly what the keeping going is all for or about.

I do not have answers.

When asked what was keeping me going through the slog of organic chemistry II, which I elected in a time I should not have been making big life choices, I responded ‘verve and chocolate,’ which is wild and true. I made it through.

I still do not have advice.

But here are some some pebbles I’ve collected from the cyber net in the past month which might help you find your footing if you’re in a life-raft chapter or proving to yourself that you’re on dry land.

They’ve helped me find mine.

• See Her Out - this is a song I found while watching “Nobody Wants This,” season 1 episode 2. If you haven’t seen it, I strongly recommend you invest the hour because I think it’s a nearly perfect cinematic moment and soundtrack. Also don’t look into the lyrics or creation to deeply as they might steal the magic.

• The Goal Is Not to Miss You Less - Andrea Gibson - this poet laureate of Colorado died of ovarian cancer in July, and used they/them pronouns, and shared 86% of a name with my brother who then died a few months later. Reading Andrea’s widow Megan’s words often makes me think that the “they” refers to the both of them, and they are cavorting in the everywhen together. I hate that they are both dead, and I have the bizarre hope that they are in it together.
  

  The Goal Is Not to Miss You Less

• Psychopomp of Clutter - This piece by Hanne Blank Boyd, whose upbringing is different in many ways from mine, but whose words struck me as she described the art and honor of true space holding.

  Psychopomp of Clutter

• The Anthropocene Reviewed - as my person was more thither off in the work world and I was lost in the torrent of electron withdrawing groups and carbanions* this book of essays read aloud kept me company on dog walks and commutes, and yes, in quiet moments in the house. I implore you to read/listen through the Polish soccer goalie. The writing is exquisite and poignant and real and hilarious and devastating, and if you keep going to the end it’s all so wonderful. Please buy it and everything from John and his brother.**

• This bitty clip about hospice (it’s on IG and I’m sorry) - the best for last, essential watching of a short clip from Dying for Sex (Episode 8) which is Emmy level even with no context. Kleenex, for sure.

• And this, the world’s most perfect blossom from my sunset dog walk sometime in the last month.

  

Thanks for reading,

K

*in my bathtub thumb typing draft this autocorrected to carnations which are indeed the carbanions of the flower world.

**Hank Green offers free teachings on all manner of science on the internet, and does some hilarious standup about that one time He had leukemia (lol!), and both of them together now sell socks and tea and soap and coffee and then do excellent things with the money. Also nod to his (John’s) more recent book _Everything is Tuberculosis_, which is a heavier handed dose of C’MON KIDS GET IT TOGETHER for those of us in the affluent corners of the world who think of TB as essentially over, because for us it is, but also, oh wow, how it is not. Did I mention they sell coffee? Go get some. Good.store

Also: we gardened. Proof of life beyond the paperwork.

PS: the bookshop link is an affiliate link, which means that if you dig through it and purchase anything I may someday get a few pennies back.