“on earth / I did not know how to touch it it was all so raw”
“on earth / I did not know how to touch it it was all so raw”
on big and little griefs during a celebratory time, grace, and letting people be
June. It’s light out until almost 9 p.m. and the month has been a blur of graduations, performances, recitals, Pride celebrations, fireflies, out-of-town guests. This is usually a favorite time of year for me. But today, I’m thinking of something that my tarot mentor once said about The Sun card, that sometimes so much light can feel bad. Too bright, too hot.
For me, the past month has felt mentally and emotionally dissonant. Beyond the relentless violence that hovers over daily life, I’ve been carrying my own personal grief. Forgetting to eat. Moving slowly. Letting a feeling take over and exit my body. And between that, so many June celebrations. Carnival music for an elegy.
Work continues, because of course. Routines and obligations feel arbitrary and often absurd, the same stones rolled uphill ad infinitum. I think about all of us walking around with our big and little griefs, moving forward, showing up. And I wish us all more grace. To extend to ourselves and others.
When I feel like a homesick alien, I look to poetry. I love this Mary Ruefle poem, about the sun and the end of the world, and how “on earth / I did not know how to touch it it was all so raw”:
My fourteen-year-old Siamese cat left this earthly realm on Memorial Day. It probably seems silly to carry on like this about a cat, but she felt like a high priestess and a soul mate. She radiated the purest, most rapturous love. And she seemed so charmed by my simple presence.
Have you experienced that gift? Of being beheld and appreciated exactly as you are?
That pure gesture and its steadiness counteracted so much: countless times my opinions have been “corrected” and all the unsolicited advice I’ve received about how to “improve” myself. Usually by being more like the advice-givers. As though I am different from them only for lack of knowledge. I don’t know why people don’t understand how profoundly unloving it is to tell someone, essentially, “I can always find things for you to change about yourself because I never like what I see.”
Tinkerbell loved what she saw. I don’t know how to describe to you how it felt for a magnificent little creature to sprint to greet you at the door, to nudge your face with her face, to beam at you from across a room, to sniff every inch of you when you’ve come back from a trip because she can’t believe you’re here, you’re you, you’re really you. It was that Mr. Rogers magic: “I like you as you are. Exactly and precisely.”
I want to share that energy. That’s my goal when I edit: to respect and uphold the vision of the unique human being who trusted me with their work. But it’s also my goal in my everyday interactions, taking people as they are. Maybe I’ll find I’m not compatible with who someone really is, and that’s fine. It’s not everyone else’s job to be what I prefer, and it’s not my job to be what someone else prefers. I wish we all knew how to hold each other without squeezing, to hold with open hands.
Questions/experiments/rituals:
Love on the ones you love.
Notice when the urge to criticize or “improve” another person rises in you. Be honest. Have they actually transgressed, or do you simply wish they were more like you? Who’s to say that would work for them? Lindsay Mack uses this expression I like a lot: “Eyes on your own paper.”
Change your lock screen to something joyous and life-affirming.
My poetry collection, Cosmic Tantrum, is now available at Bookshop!
I don’t have any other writing/editing news to share yet, but . . . I am cooking up a group class I’ll be ready to announce soon, so stay tuned 👀
Katherine D. Morgan, a writer and bookseller who has worked for years at Powell’s Books and Bookshop.org, has created her own (romance!) bookstore, Grand Gesture Books. She’s currently fundraising to open a brick-and-mortar version in Portland, Oregon.
Gazans are still suffering from starvation and medical emergencies, and organizations like Anera and Middle East Children’s Alliance are supporting displaced families and providing hot meals and medical care with the help of donations from everyday people like you and me.
That’s what I have for you this month! Wishing you grace.
If you’re looking for feedback on a completed book-length manuscript, stuck-in-the-middle book-length manuscript, or individual story or essay—or you’re looking for accountability and feedback while drafting your book-length manuscript—I’d love to work with you. You can fill out my contact form here, or just reply to this newsletter if you received it by email :)
This made me cry