Another hermit girl autumn: desert hermit edition

forget brat summer; it's #asceticautumn

Hi! I’ve taken a vow of silence and sequestered myself in a Chihuahuan Desert cave to Find Myself.

Just kidding. I’m watching someone’s house for two months in New Mexico, feeding their chickens, petting their cats—and working on a novel. (Putting my own coursework into practice.) And, until yesterday, have been doing as much work, and feeling as much stress, as I usually do. I’ll be damned, but temporarily living somewhere new hasn’t fixed me!!!

But the loomingest deadlines that dominoed into each other at the tail end of Brat Summer have at last been settled, and I no longer feel like I’m in catch-up-panic mode. The past month has been one of the busiest of my life, but now, among mesquite trees and desert sage and a big, quiet sky, my nervous system has unclenched some. Eclipse season, with its transitions, feels like the perfect time to be away, holed up, deciding better ways to be, and having some time and space to experiment with enacting them.

Did anyone else have just an absolutely wild day this past Tuesday, September 17th—day of the lunar eclipse? As Lindsay Mack says:

we don’t tell Eclipses what we want clarified and revealed – they show us, beckoning us forward on a pilgrimage of discovery, awakening, and observation. Our job for the next few weeks is to follow the Eclipses’ lead, surrendering to what gets presented to us. 

What did yours show you?

The eclipse to close out this little limbo period will be a solar one, on October 2nd. Having the fall equinox (that’s this Sunday, the 22nd) between these events really underscores the potential for energies and behaviors passing the baton: summer barreling toward winter, me barreling toward a version of me with better work-life balance, you barreling toward whatever new thing you feel is on the horizon and don’t know if you can quite swing yet.

I like this bartering philosophy the eclipse portal implies: If I finally let go of this, can I have that? Like how, in many novels, a character reaches a point when their only option is to go forward, because the old path is no longer an option. I think of that as the “pivot point” or “inflection point.” Sometimes things change because we want them to, and sometimes it’s because all other options are off the table.

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Hey! What are you up to this coming Monday, September 23rd at 7:00 pm Eastern, 4:00 pm Pacific? Oh, you’ve already RSVP’d for this free virtual reading hosted by Debutiful, featuring three poets and our debut full-length collections? That’s awesome, because this is my first event for Cosmic Tantrum, which will be out early next year.

I’m reading alongside Megan Pinto and Christian J. Collier, whose books—Saints of Little Faith and Greater Ghost—both came out earlier this week! Before even attending, you have some data on this event: the title game is strong.

Here’s Megan’s poem, “Harvest,” featuring obsession as a closed fist, repetitions of rain, and love and longing:

All summer, I prayed
for clarity of sight—light falling
through leaves, a flock of starlings
before rain. . .

Of the psychic, who counseled
repeatedly, that I must become familiar
with love, so as to see its opposite
when it rushed toward me,
those fragments, its song,
linger, rising up, now
and again.

I was to let pain
drain from me like earth,
after rain.

O, obsession, that closed fist.

(Though, here again is mist,
rising off the water just
after dawn…)

Now, Autumn comes early. August leaves
brown in heat. Detritus from the maple
covers the street where
a pearled wasps’ nest glistens
with dew, while wasps drift
hazily in and out.

Like those figures, which cloud the edge
of memory, dissolving each time
in a kind of rain.

How should love feel, when we
receive it?

I think of those late summer walks
through the meadow and the neighboring
meadow, where I
was not longing but the one
who was longed for.

And Christian’s poem, “The Compline,” featuring biggest fears, haints, and petitions to God for more time:

Between us, there are one hundred one
umber haints in our home.

In bed, we discuss
our future, our children woven in myrrh, sitting

in some tomorrow, waiting for us to join & give them our science
so they can live.

I tell her what I fear: I’ll walk into fogged, writhen woods & die
when our babies are too young to carry my baritone with them.

I’ll become
the almost-stranger

they hear their mother’s prayers paint the night sky for.
The Lord giveth & The Lord taketh parents every day.

Love is no shield against His mighty ginger hand or will.

Even language passes away.

Even the bouquet of vowels & syllables collected

each year can be swept from the scaly floor of the tongue.

All stories end in death

if we are honest with ourselves & how the world works.

If I am being honest,

when I, eventually, hear my love sleeping by my side,

I eye the gloom, whisper to God,     ask that He spare me

the escape, the emptying out of the marigold light,

for many years. I ask that, when it finally comes, I not go before

I know all I’ve set my heart upon will live on well without me.

I ask Him to forgive my selfish maw for having the nerve

to call out His name & flood His holy ear with the word    more.

I hope you’ll join us. You can ask us, allegedly, anything.

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Questions/experiments/rituals:

• Do some eclipse-themed journaling. In this season, what would you like to let go of? Or what were you shown it’s time to leave behind? (And was that surprising, or did some part of you know?) What are you calling in or moving toward?

• Enjoy time outdoors while the weather is still decent :)

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Misc:

Rounding out my autumnal Desert Focus, I’m reading (and digging) Melissa Broder’s Death Valley right now. Because I’m a freak who sometimes reads the back matter before the actual text, I saw her suggestion to make a playlist of the songs mentioned in the book, and I am doing that as I go! If you read the book already, or are reading it now, or are just in the mood for an oldies playlist, here it is. I will continue to add to it as I read.

(Disclaimer, it’s an Apple Music playlist, because I am too old for Spotify. If someone wants to recreate it on Spotify for all of your people and drop it in the comments here, that would be surprising/cool.)

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That’s what I have for you this month! Wishing you gentle transformations.

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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 :)