A Newsletter About Art, Writing, & Running Away

Today’s Newsletter will be in several parts. Not because they go together but because I just needed to send SOMETHING out tonight and too many topics have been building up.

Part 1: On Art and In Defense of Sundays

me @9:13 am: wanna come over for lunch?? miss you

meg @9:20 am: I’m seeing a solo movie at 1:30 pm, you’re welcome to join if you’d like…movie is cmon cmon

between 9:30 and 12:30: I ride a kind of emotional rollercoaster during this time. Feeling great—I have plans! Then feeling agitated, then feeling sad, then feeling angry that my rent is due before my direct deposit hits, then feeling ashamed that I feel anything but happy, and then realizing that I’m actually just hungry. In this moment I know I needed to shower, eat something and leave my apartment or I will let my bad mood ruin my day and cancel my plans. Once I do all of these things and listen to Dido’s entire 1999 album “No Angel” as I cross the Bay Bridge, I am Honestly Ok. (any Dido fan will appreciate that clever pun there).

1:45 pm: I meet Meg @ Kabuki 20 minutes late and 5 minute before the show starts.

CMON CMON WAS THE BEST MOVIE I HAVE SEEN IN A VERY LONG TIME. 

I found myself writing down quotes as it screened. Will definitely see again. I’m not going to tell you anything about it, other than it is a well-curated and un-manicured masterpiece. The whole cast’s performance was incredible, but Joaquin Phoenix amazed me.

Leaving the city, I received messages from another teacher-friend who was feeling the back-to-school dread I experienced on my roller coaster this morning (before my egg&cheese). Staring at the Monday-back-from-break isn’t for the faint of heart, but I think we’d all be happier if we just looked away? At least that’s what I told her. I haven’t planned a lesson for tomorrow yet. Instead, I went to see a great movie, had a lovely evening with a friend, took an edible and sent out this newsletter.

SUNDAYS NEED ART is all I’m saying. Go to a museum. See a movie. Go to a garage sale or skate around some graffittied concrete and get an idea. Go do human things. Read. Bake. Write. WHATEVER. but do it. or your sundays will suck for the rest of your life.

Part 2: On Writing

Today (Tuesday, November 23rd) I did my first writer’s sprint. 15 minutes of uninterrupted writing, pen never leaves the paper, no re-reading or editing until the timer goes off.

Prior to this I had read (re-read, though it had been years) the first few chapters of Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones. My sister had given me a copy way back in the way when, and I remember knowing it was a special book but feeling I was not a special enough person to make use of it. I stopped reading it. I also stopped writing. Yesterday, in addition to finding the bones, I also picked up a copy of Stephen King’s On Writing after watching for the 67th time, the film “Stuck in Love” and feeling like I actually could, if I practice and carve space in my day, write a book that I would enjoy reading.

Flannery O’Connor slays with writing advice. Behold this gem of a quote:

“I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say.” Uhm…boom.

I’m sorry but none of us actually know what we are doing when it comes to art and expression. There is no recipe. There are toxic ingredients to avoid, of course, and a rudimentary understanding of how a stove works, but this thing doesn’t work like a how-to manual. Writing is not a science. It is a felt sense of truth and a deep understanding that truth can change and that there is often more than several. So just trust yourself and your voice, okay? Oh, and figure out what paper texture and ink consistency frees your thoughts best. I am a 99 cent comp book and pilot v5 precise bxtch but am also partial to the office depot brand felt tips. they write and dry surprisingly quickly, which is a god-send for a lefthanded writer.

Part 3: On Escape, As a Concept (written in October, 2021 without courage to finish or share until November, 2021)

There is a high wind advisory in effect in the Bay today and if KQED’s trafficandweathertogether warnings didn’t tell me, the cute zig-zag my Subarau performed on the Bay Bridge while palm trees did side stretches to the right certainly kept me updated. Low humidity, high temps, high wind. Every Californian knows what that means: check your N95 drawer, charge your electronics, fill your gas tank up at least half way, and make sure you have some sort of air filtration device and bottles of water in case of wildfire or rolling blackouts. Fire season isn’t even close to over. *Let it be known I do exactly zero of these things but know I *should* in order to make for swifter, less stressful evacuation.

I have been thinking about escape recently, as a concept. What it means to pack up what you can, and flee with what you have left. I’ve been a big escape fan my whole life. The escape button on a keyboard is my favorite one to push. It lets you just get the fuck out, quickly and without trace. All these tabs are overwhleming? Great! Let’s just ~not~? Escape is alluring because it promises to erase all the mess that use to be, but escape is like salt — sometimes it is necessary to prevent rot and preserve nutrients, but too much of it can threaten life in the long run. Let it be known: I’m really good at escape. (Also known as dissociation when you do it right in front of your family when no actual danger presents itself).

As a teenager, when everything just felt like too much, I would climb into my grandma’s old, cherry red Honda Civic and drive into the mountains. I’d head down highway 9 and up to Skyline or I’d meander Kennedy and take the turns a little faster than I knew was safe, until I passed the telephone wire with the shoes slung over and pull off to the side and park. I had a story about how they got up there. I added a bit to it every time. It was pretty much the plot of “The Sandlot” but with more drugs. My windows were rolled down and Angus and Julia Stone would blast from my casette-to-aux radio situation that Gen-Z knows nothing about, and I would drive until I felt alone and empty because, well, most days I felt too observed and too full to think. I would drive until I had escaped, Hermoine Grangering my way around depression, dipping in an out of time to carve out a place where I could be alone and get consumed.

Even when I left my hometown, even when I lived on the other side of the country, even when I didn’t own a car, I was still looking for the exits. Once I learned how to escape, I never stopped doing it. I never lived in an apartment for longer than eleven months and rarely stayed in the same city. I never learned to trust that where I am will keep me and read every new neighborhood, partner, or job in the past tense. Worst comes to worst, I could always split and start over… until COVID made escape impossible. Staying still and locking down was the first time I couldn’t flip the chess-board and run. So, I actually had to address what makes me look for the exits. (plot twist: it’s trauma and toxic patterns learned in childhood quel surprise). Anyone else’s therapy bills and long-distance-calls to just-as-mentally-unwell-friends skyrocket since 2020?

Anyways, January 1 will mark 1 full year of me living in the same apartment since I was 17. And for the first time in ten years, I don’t feel like fleeing. I just feel like waking up and having a cup of coffee on January 2nd in the same living room I’m sitting in now.

Texts Referenced In This Newsletter

-Cmon Cmon: film (2021)

-Stuck in Love: film (2013)

-Writing Down the Bones: book (1986)

-On Writing: book (2000)

-No Angel: album (1999)