Rambling #20
A different kind of morning pages
August, coming up shortly, is the month of many things.
For Seattle, it’s markedly known for the aftermath of wildfires, smoke filling our air and leaving us disheveled and unable to leave our homes for weeks at a time. Absurd heat tends to grow alongside these conditions, with past summers growing as high as the 110s. I know this isn’t insane, now, for many parts of the world (43C), but Seattle is a coastal port supposed to be kept relatively temperature stable through its proximity to the Pacific Ocean. The city doesn’t have infrastructure to protect from heat, and often desperate summer heats often leave an aftermath with dozens of our more vulnerable neighbors dead.
August is also a month for the popular poetry reading endeavor the Sealey challenge, started from Nicole Sealey, with her noteworthy books Ordinary Beast and The Ferguson Report: An Erasure. The challenge is simple: read a book (or chapbook) of poetry every day for the month of August.
It’s a good form of community building for people who make a life of engaging with and reading such a relatively niche media full of individuals who tend to lean more into the shy or quiet spectrum and don’t easily find representations or outlets to talk about their reading styles or habits. It feels odd, to me, to describe this so externally. Partly because I (as many of you hope know) have little difficulty in trying to blend poetry and real life whenever I can (even if it’s awkward or forced). Partly because I work and volunteer with so many different poetry-in-celebration platforms and communities that I find it more accessible than most (I’m sure) to be able to simply discuss poetry on a daily or at least frequent basis.
Yet the Sealey challenge is certainly something I try most years, even if I don’t publicize it or finish it. I mean, let’s be honest, some books are too good and hold you for days. I don’t like the habit of feeling obligated to rush through things for the sake of some unnecessary deadline. And! 31 books is hard, especially for folks who don’t find themselves obsessively reading all the time.
So I’ll be posting a lot of poetry for August. A lot even by my standards. More readings, some planned book discussions, some reading recommendations, what have you. But, if you’ve any interest in reading alongside, please just shoot me a line. Libraries (especially with the Libby app!) tend to have a far vaster catalogue of online books than you’d anticipate, and even if you don’t have ‘buy 31 books of poetry’ money right now, I would absolutely adore any and all of you to take out a few from your library and entrance/enrich yourselves (however, if you do have buy 31 books of poetry money and you demand your capitalistic glee to spend it I can always recommend Open Books! For instance, this curated selection with money going to Workshops4Gaza).
Speaking of odd phenomenon. Coincidences. Delights. If you read my previous installment of laughter you’d know I spent a day complaining about everything and anything. One of the things I was bemoaning was that I thought a dear, dear friend of mine hated me. You know how it is, lack of communication or absence and an insecurity or inability to trust in one’s lastingness regardless of circumstances. Everything is so intangible. Nothing is without ending. And so I’d just thought that part of me’d been ended. How many centuries worth of sand are in a desert? And how many centuries worth of sand have been eroded further yet, or picked up in the wind, or transformed into yet something else entirely, their lives no longer a part of the desert despite its billions and trillions of parts of community?
Well, I received a letter from this friend literally the day after this feeling. And six pages too! Not to say any length of hand-written letter is more or less valid than another, but more to say that clearly they thought of me. So, here we are. Glowing a little at the friendships I’ve struck through.
Please, let me know if you’d ever like to be pen pals. I enjoy writing letters, though am infrequent with it. Just trust in me like you’d trust in the water that eventually they will arrive. And perhaps they might even touch you.
Yours in language —