Author: Azlan

542: Rode, Abode (Richard Wilbur)

“What is the opposite of road?
I’d say the answer is abode. 
“What’s an abode?” you ask. I’d say
It’s ground that doesn’t lead away—”
-Richard Wilbur, from More Opposites

                I love a bit of playful rhyming. It can be such a wonderful way of asking, “What am I looking at? What else might I be seeing?” And I love a long scramble up a beautiful hill. This morning, climbing up Tetakawi, I passed a squirrel running along—near his home, I thought, though maybe he was ranging around, too. And three lizards went clambering over the rocks as I clambered, too. And that’s just the start. When I go hiking these days I often start thinking about how I’m a guest in other folks’ homes. It makes me careful where I put my feet, of course. And more. I was thinking about that this afternoon on the drive up to grandpa’s house, when our road took us past more birds, more squirrels, a jackrabbit I think, though they were moving fast and so were we. A road’s what leads us away, Wilbur quips. Maybe the opposite is also true: a habit of going away makes the world look full of roads. And meaning to stay helps reveal so many overlapping abodes.

by Azlan

541: “Until You Start Visiting” (Ross Gay)

                “You know, Ross, you forget the stories until you start visiting like this.” Ross Gay, Inciting Joy, p. 45

                I’ve been thinking today about how so much of a story is sharing the time for a story to bloom. Some of my training argues otherwise: I’ve heard lots of people talk about writing as though you have no time, writing as though your reader has no time, writing as though attention is a scarce commodity and at any moment you might decide that I’m not worth yours. Writing hustle. And I understand that. I understand why. But I’m also visiting my family, and after dinner we stepped into the backyard, feeling the wind and noticing the deepening sky. Then we came back inside: dinner to clean up, leftovers to put away. But the thing is, sometimes we don’t come in so quickly. Sometimes we stand there. I feel stories scattering like light through shifting leaves. I feel the kind of visiting that’s timeless, inasmuch as it’s not counting minutes, seconds, words. Opening in that dappled light are memories and misadventures, questions and curiosities, hopes and uncertainties. And so today I’m going to stop writing, here, and ask my family if we want to step back out and visit a bit. Not to make the stories come alive, but to remember they’re alive, and to visit long enough to stop running from them.

by Azlan

540: “What Joy Incites” (Ross Gay)

                “And second, I intend to wonder what the feeling of joy makes us do, or how it makes us be. I will wonder how joy makes us act and feel. That’s to say, I wonder what joy incites.” -Ross Gay, Inciting Joy, p. 9

                I mean, to start with, I love that phrase—intend to wonder. If this is a recipe, then maybe we could intend to wonder until there’s a book, a practice, a community. But maybe instead of a recipe (as I type with my cold fingers) it’s a kind of invitation to recognize how joy moves you. Moves us. Moves us to the stove, this cold day, to make hot tea. Moved me months ago to the backyard to split firewood because this evening may joy move me to the library to sit beside a crackling fire, to send a few text messages to friends, saying, “We’ve lit a fire. It’s dancing. If joy moves you this way.” Because joy moves. Begins. 
                Which is to say that joy moves me back to Ross Gay, turning pages I’ve read and reread, wondering how he gardens joy into work (and seeing, again and again, that he does). Which is to say that when I bundle up to go work on campus it will be determination and responsibility but also joy, joy that moves so much of what I work for. Which is to say: where does joy move you?

by Azlan

539: “A Good Recipe” (Lara Pickle)

                “Oh, I love a good recipe!” -Lara Pickle, I Feel Awful, Thanks, p. 11

                Yesterday my partner and I and another friend were over at Hannah’s apartment, making dinner and chatting, chatting and playing games. Hannah moves in January. At the beginning of the night they gestured at their book shelf. “I won’t have space to take those with me. You all should pick what you want.” We felt sad, I think. A reminder of our friend moving away. Repainting the beautiful pink wall of their livingroom with something more common and driving off to another state. And we felt excited. We love books, carrots were roasting in the oven, and Hannah had already made fruit pie. Later that night Hannah said, “I like how books come into your life like pieces of you, and then you give them to friends. Like pieces of them.” I didn’t know how to say that warms my heart. I took a little stack including Lara Pickle’s I Feel Awful, Thanks. 
                Last night for dinner I made cranberry sauce. It’s the time of year where I make that, washing the cranberries, going through them one by one to pick out the ones that are already brown. So it’s the time of year when I remember that I never remember my mother’s cranberry sauce recipe. Much, much less sugar. Much more red chili flakes, ginger, and orange juice. Maybe I don’t remember the recipe because my mom doesn’t really have a recipe. I always reach out and chat with her. We talk about how we’re doing, and I ask about the sauce, and my mom says you can make it lots of ways. Spices are good. She likes red chili flakes. Fresh ginger. Orange juice. Maybe that’s my favorite kind of recipe. Add a book gifted from a friend. Add a livingroom wall, hand painted and still bright pink. Add friends on a winter evening. Add chatting. Add cranberries. Add time. Heat, sir, and let sit.

by Azlan

538: “Communally Co-Created Ritual” (With and For Latrelle Bright)

“Communally Co-created Ritual

loving, honoring, remembering, nostalgic, bittersweet
we are a village
we tell ghost stories. who/what are our ghosts?
ritual has very prescribed steps
we need to sing old songs / new songs
we need to make spirit houses for our ghosts
costumes, banners, crowns/garlands
cozy

harvest
it’s in the woods”

                -with and for Latrelle Bright

                A friend and dear colleague passed away this semester. Her name is Latrelle. She’s the kind of artist/educator/delight who spent her time co-creating communities, rituals, connections. Lives. She taught theater, and so much else. I can’t begin to say what she taught me. That we can come together, more meaningfully or more gently and more powerfully than we have yet hoped?
                The text above is from a thought map that was pinned up at a celebrations for Latrelle a few days after she passed away. I think it was from her friends and colleagues, co-creating the ritual that I was at when I saw it. The celebrating and remembering rituals that went on to an afternoon in the park with music and movement a few weeks later. Beneath trees, so almost in the woods. It could just as easily be from something Latrelle taught. She taught that way. Grounded in theater, she called it devising: a bringing together of our ideas, a recognizing of where and who we are, and how we’re moving, until we’re moving together. And maybe it’s really both: because like so many others, I speak Latrelle sometimes, or she speaks me, her laughters and reminders on my lips. Maybe I’m writing this because I want to co-create with her again. Maybe because she’s still co-creating me, and us. We tell ghost stories. We need to sing old songs / new songs. Cozy. We harvest. We gather together. We gather ourselves. We gather fruits and breaths and moments from the trees and grass and each other. Gather lives. It’s in the woods.

by Azlan

537: “A Live Fish?!” (Badell, Rebottaro, & Bender)

“Bunker: ‘A live fish?!’
The Wraith: ‘The true crimefighter always carries everything she needs in her utility belt, Tyler.’”
                -Flavor text for The Wraith’s Utility Belt card in Sentinels of the Multiverse by Christopher Badell, Adam Rebottaro, and Paul Bender

                I don’t love this quote just because I love the image. A Batman style utility belt, and inside a live fish—maybe a little dace—of course in water because otherwise it won’t stay alive for long. And I don’t love it just because my friends and I were playing Sentinels of the Multiverse yesterday, and Hannah stopped us, saying: “Wait. This card’s actually pretty funny.” Though maybe in part this post is a you had to be there moment. So much of language is, isn’t it? A connection in a place and time. A hand holding a fish. You had to be there, and it all made sense.
                There’s also something ridiculous about that superhero trope of carrying everything you need. Of somehow being fully independent of context and situation, as though prepared enough could keep you dry in a rainstorm, cool in a heatwave, could help you chat with friends around a board game, cure your cancer, ready you for a loved one’s death or an old friend’s return, or the pipes freezing, or your joints aging, or life, or death. Could be ready for all the endless perhapses and certainties of a changing world. For that you really would need a live fish. Or maybe, instead, you could let the fish go back in the river, where it would rather be. Swimming along. Not helplessly, not mindlessly. Not ready for anything but responding to this. These changing currents of river and world. You had to be there, but luckily, you are.

by Azlan

536: What “I’m Asking” (Tochi Onyebuchi)

“Hell yeah, I’m lost. More lost than I’ve ever been in my damn life.”
“I don’t have the answer you’re looking for.”
“Answer? I don’t even know what question I’m asking anymore.”
“But you’re still asking it. That is the important part. That is always the most important part.”
                -Tochi Onyebuchi, Harmattan Season, p. 178

                I just got back from a walk with my mom. Well, my mom’s some thousands of miles away, actually, so what I had with me as today’s 68 degrees dropped toward tonight’s 36 was my jacket and my phone and her voice, walking along with me. And the blowing leaves. And the shadows of someone else at the park, also talking to someone on their phone. And the trees, the clear skies, the moon. The traffic sounds. The silences in between.
                I’ve lived far away from my family since I was seventeen. For whatever reason, this year’s been especially hard. There are probably several good reasons for that, but instead of trying to lay them out, I’m thinking about the leaves that swirled by with our voices on the evening wind, and the little chill in my fingers, almost pleasant, that’s drifting away now that I’m warming up inside. I think years ago I started wondering what happens if I turn less toward answers. (I know I miss you). I think, these days, I’m also letting go of questions. (What can we say to connect?). Or some of them, at least. There are still the questions that we can’t put into words, and whatever is between and through the questions. The rustling leaves. The wind. Someone else on the phone, talking to their loved one. The branches drawing pictures in the sky. The traffic sounds. The silences in between.

by Azlan

535: “This Is How” (Layli Long Soldier)

                “This is how you see me the space in which to place me”
                -Layli Long Soldier, Whereas, p. 8

                Just now I’m loving reading Layli Long Soldier’s poems as instructions. Or maybe, better, as a kind of script or choreography: an invitation to move through the world in certain ways and then see what’s changed. What’s growing. This is how you see me. I’m walking these steps, steps suggested by her words.
                I think this is one of my favorite approaches to language. Well, that’s hard to say. I have so many favorites. (1. The way I called “Jarrett!” to a friend, and she heard me, and then instead of walking apart we were walking together. 2. The way Anya told me “I usually harvest the seedpods and then kind of crinkle them on a cookie tray,” and now we’ve gathered arugula seeds from the garden to plant next spring. 3. The way my partner calls “Hello honey bunches!” and I call back “of oats!” and then maybe one of us invites us out for a walk. And that’s just getting started). I think I mean that I keep hearing language described as communication, the shuttling of information—“gather the seeds this way”—and while I love that, I also love them as a path to walk. I’m not telling you what you’ll see. I’m saying, look at this space you’re in, look at it this way. “This is how you see me the space in which to place me.” What do you see?
                A script. A piece of choreography. An invitation. A reminder. A walk.

by Azlan

534: “Much Together” (D’Arcy McNickle)

                “Even then, it seemed, they said but little to each other, yet nothing went unsaid that needed saying.
                In those days they were much together.”
                -D’Arcy McNickle The Surrounded

                My sibling’s visiting for a week. In the kitchen just now, actually, baking bread. Ten minutes ago we were lounging on the couch together. Earlier today we were walking beneath sycamores. (I love sycamores: the patterned bark, the broad leaves, the nobby branches like fairytale walking sticks or heretale hands waving hello). I think I feel a pressure, when I get to see a loved one again after a long time apart, to try and say everything. To talk it all out: the catching up, the reorienting, the worrying, hoping, planning, sharing. And I really do like talking. I am, I think most of my loved ones would agree, a talker. But I’ve also been sitting—or walking—with the limitations of all that saying. The saying (for me) can be a way of trying to undo the distance we also live in, our lives growing in different places. It works in some ways, and in some ways it doesn’t. More than words, what I want is our connections. And when we also live far apart, when we are together, I want that time together. Here is still a distance, not undone but not all-doing. And here’s our closeness. And here are these walks beneath the sycamores, shared steps, shared stillnesses. We are much together.

by Azlan

533: “Casting About In Bed” (Ross Gay)

                “…neglects the fact that one of life’s true delights is casting about in bed, drifting in and out of dream, as the warm hand of the sun falls through the blinds, moving ever so slowly across your body.” -Ross Gay, in “43. Some Stupid Shit,” The Book of Delights, p. 127

                I think about this two page essayette often, usually because Ross Gay does something a lot like magic in bringing delight and joy and sunbright power to turn and face horror, and this time because today I tried to take a nap. At the time I couldn’t remember the last time I tried to take a nap. I realize, now, that I’m pretty sure it was during my first bout of covid. “Tried to take a nap” is pretty off the mark for what I felt in that exhausted falling apart, but that’s the last time I was asleep at 2 or 3 pm. Lying in bed at 2 or 3 pm, today, “trying to nap,” as I put it, I thought about Gay because I realized that drifting in and out of dream is a kind of thing I could practice. A kind of thing like drifting in a river, a current-thing, pathless and gently gravity-guided, wandering through depths and reflections and shadows known and unknown. A letting go, if I’m otherwise clutching at somethings. Which I was, because in “trying to nap” today my mind kept turning back to my to-do list, the one I was too exhausted to keep at, and to the ways I should do pieces of it better. I’m thinking about Gay because all that is something I practice too, of course. That busy mindedness, that assumption that rush and press is the performance of importance. Which is something I absolutely do not believe is true. I want to go about learning to nap the same way you go about planting a kale patch. Water. Soil. Time. And someday leaves.
                Which is to say: the blankets? Stretched out. The window? Open. The breeze? Mischievous. Tonight’s sleep isn’t napping, it’s sleeping—we could I’m sure discuss the differences—but I mean for this to be a kind of gardening toward future nappings when all I’ll hold if anything is the gentle being held by sunlight and dream.

by Azlan