coming in too hot
I love spring, but so far, she’s pissing me off.
Hey y’all. Would love to see you at one (or both🤓 ) of the following events:
👉🏽 THIS WEEKEND 🤸🏽♀️ There are still some spots left in this month’s writing workshop. The theme is “Anticipating Sunrises.” These workshops are designed to be generative, meaning, it’s an opportunity to dive into new work, and is a space for newer and experienced writers alike. A real sweet community is emerging out of these monthly workshops, and I’d love for you to join us.
Register here (Sunday, 3/28, 10am - 12pm PST).
👉🏽 Next Sober from Bullshit Recovery Club :: Storytelling Edition is April 7. Register here.
I light candles for the dead. I buy candles from the botanica, two candles with the same goddess, each with a different one of her names. I buy two candles and one of those long lighters that reach all the way down for once the wick runs low and I light the candles and I let them burn all day. I let them burn all day, even the bright time of day when burning candles seems stupid. Maybe it’s stupid, but I don’t care, because I like lighting them, I imagine that it lights the way for him, even though he was so bright that I know he is already home.
I burn smoke for the dead. I burn smoke for those still here. I light sticks of sweet smelling wood and make circles around my room. I make circles around my room and I hover the smoke over photos of my people. I let smoke drift over the faces of my beloveds, I linger longer over the faces of those who are still here. They need to stay here, so I ask the smoke to envelop them in something that will keep them here, safe. I circle the stick of sweet smelling wood over the crown of my dog’s head until he sneezes. I circle the stick around my sternum, in the empty space behind the door, even over my computer. Let me do good work, I ask the smoke. Let my bones remember all who came before.
I adorn myself in ephemera of the dead. I wear their jewelry: the Cuban link on my wrist, the azabache and the virgin around my neck, dusty old pearls on my earlobes. I shower and douse myself in the only perfume any of us have ever worn. Sometimes, I put on a pair of busted-up bifocals, try to catch a clear glimpse of myself through your eyes one more time, but the prescription is too strong, and everything is a blur.
*
I love spring, but so far, she’s pissing me off.
It’s all moving too fast—the blooming and the greening; the vaccinations (and associated selfies) that should have me excited about, you know, getting back out there; the longer days a personal affront when all I want to do, still, is spend time in bed—and on top of everything, the wind’s been blowing too hard, smacking me around, dizzying up my brain.
I am different, and I want the world to reflect this; instead the reports are of commerce and business and opening up and closing down and hybrid office structures and moving to Austin and living on Mars; instead we’re back to mass shootings and standardized tests and feigning surprise: this isn’t who we are.
I love spring, but so far, she’s pissing me off.
She’s coming in too hot—I’d prefer words of affirmation and physical touch and acts of service and most of all, explicit consent. Maybe I’m not ready to clear out my closet or vacuum under the bed or behind the couch, maybe I like that bag full of giveaway clothes in the corner of my bedroom, the towering stack of critiques from my MFA I know damn well I will never look at again but I think I’m supposed to keep, as if throwing them away is akin to throwing cash into the recycling bin.
I’m not ready for anyone else to leave. I love a good metaphor, and sure, I get off on changing cycles and growth and evolution, blah blah blah, but please, can we all just stay. I say: let’s put a moratorium on death, even for just a few weeks. Let’s give everyone out there just one more summer. Let the sun bake our bones under blue skies and backyard porches, let us sip so much cold brew that our teeth rattle in our skulls, let us blow out candles and dip a finger in the frosting when we think no one is looking. Let’s hang up the guns and lay down the phones and install solar panels on the roofs and throw some seeds into some dark wet dirt. Let’s drive out to the hills or the desert and lay on top of the warm hood of the car under The Milky Way, bury our faces in each other’s necks, breathe in the salty musk of each other one last time.
I love spring, but so far, she’s pissing me off.
Her expectations are unattainable—shaved legs, dewy cheeks, pants with buttons and zippers (I think?), deodorant. Small talk, social skills, first dates, live music, someone else’s sweat. Somehow knowing how to stand, where to place arms and limbs, how to deal with waistbands and eyeliner. Imagination, vision, pulling dreams out of the cloudy murk of winter and down in to the earthy demands of water and wind and mud and skin and salt and spit and life and all that will keep rolling along whether we ever get it or not.
I want to carry this Big Hermit Energy out into the hillsides and sidewalks of my city. I want to listen to the same family stories I’ve heard ten thousand times, the ones that are spells that conjure the dead because I don’t know what to do with the fact that you are dead. I want a new road, I don’t want any of what’s being offered, we’ve been here before. I’m tired of crawling, I’m ready to leap, I’m not afraid of falling, but for now, I’ll stay under this blanket, I’ll keep the candles lit and the smoke in the air, your names in my mouth, your love on the page.
Slow Motion Sober is a newsletter and community for creative types who are sober or curious about sobriety, and all the life-y intersections along the way. It's written by me, Dani, a writer and sobriety advocate in San Francisco, CA.
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I love this
Big Hermit Energy 🙌