Bust out those lanterns, it’s hermit girl autumn

on finding and making your own light

Listen, I love pie spice as much as the next allegedly basic bitch, and I’m usually happy about the shift to autumn after a humid summer. Leaf-peeping! Maple everything! Those brown coats everyone in New York wears once it drops below 50! But this year, I feel more like a school kid who can’t believe summer break is really over.

Maybe it’s because winter is five months long here, and the world physically shrinks when it’s too cold to read on a bench or sit on the grass watching the river. I also don’t love the sun disappearing by 4:30. (Super long nights are the reason why Scandinavian people eat more candy and drink more coffee than almost anyone on earth. We all want that sweet, sweet dopamine, baybee.)

But also this is not fall’s fault. It’s my brain, whose best talent is time travel. In situations ranging from minor discomfort to abject despair, “What if I feel like this for the rest of my life?” looms, useful only when I can do something to change my circumstances.

When I first moved to the city, I got a temp job where I was then coerced (with health insurance and my first-ever sick days and vacation, in a decade of employment) into a Devil Wears Prada EA job doing everything that needed doing and all at the same time, five seconds ago. Every day, this job demanded and exhausted the upper limits of my creativity and intelligence, moving important men from one worldwide location to another and remembering the details of their lives while also managing travel and meetings and miscellaneous tiny dramas for seventy other people. This work never ends; you just give up for the day and hope nobody calls you at home tonight, or at least not very many times. Then you go to sleep and do it again, push that rock up the hill.

Then came the season of Adam Driver. My partner and I got cheap tickets when Burn This was still in previews on Broadway and we watched him thunder across the stage, a surprisingly lovable loose cannon. How can this be anyone’s life? I thought in that theater, the sock-feet of the person behind me pressed against my elbow. I felt jealous, furious, almost, that anyone is allowed time and energy for art, can even make a life from it. That the director, the actors, the playwright were all paid for the service of pulling something ugly-beautiful out of themselves to put it where other people would see it, wanted to see it, could be changed by it maybe. I thought if I had to go through life feeling spent, used up, consumed, exhausted, the effort ought to be in service to something I valued. “What if I feel like this for the rest of my life?”

Later that month, I stayed out until 2:00 am on a work night, this time to see Adam Driver in The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, during one of the few nights it was screened in the U.S. Director Terry Gilliam tried and failed to make this movie for thirty years, with different scripts and casts and budgets. It’s a movie that plays with reality and possibility, the meaning of story, the meaning of making. This time, I didn’t feel furious. I felt lucky to live in a world where beautiful weird things get made, things that delight and mind-alter their viewers, despite improbable misfortunes of timing and fate. In a poem of mine, I reference this evening: “Something unacknowledged glows.” I began to cultivate an allegiance again to my creative energy. The Man Who Killed Don Quixote made me start saving some for myself; I awoke from the shared belief that anyone else was entitled to all of it. I hadn’t known how much I needed a carrot on a stick, a lantern on a hook, to realize or remember that.

Lately I light a candle whenever I work on capital-W Writing, meaning work I do for myself. In ritual or spell work, candles are supposed to “hold the field,” making a container for a specific intention. The candle helps remind me that I respect my own time and effort. (If I want to fall into the black hole of the internet, I have to wait until I’ve put the candle out first, an admission that I’ve given up.) The candle lights my way through the tunnel of the blank page; it doesn’t show me the way out, but it shows me where I am and reminds me to keep moving. In similar ways, that movie was a light for me.

This fall and winter, I’ll be thinking about light: making a point to walk outside while there’s sun, stationing my laptop next to you-promised-yourself candles while doing creative work, and looking for other ways to give myself flickers of companionship, purpose, or delight while I go about my life.

What works of art have helped you back to yourself? In what seasons of your life have you held them in front of you to light your way through something?

Questions/experiments/rituals:

On this, the autumnal equinox, day and night are equal, high-fiving as they swap proportions. In the spirit of things being equal—and if you’re not someone who freaks out when you have to count your breaths—try four-fold breathing (otherwise known as box breathing) to shift your awareness before creative work or if you find yourself stressing out. Inhale for four counts, hold for four counts, exhale for four counts, and hold for four counts. Do this a few times in a row, maybe thirty seconds to a minute, and see you how feel.

Alternatively, you can try this other pranayama yoga breathing technique a therapist taught me. It’s called alternate nostril breathing and requires no counting! Cover your left nostril and breathe in fully through your right nostril. Then cover your right nostril and exhale through your left. Inhale through your left, then cover it and exhale through your right. Repeat the cycle. I find that this really helps to calm me down when I need it, and I’m also supposed to tell you not to do it while driving a car.

And, of course, try ritualizing your creative practice by lighting a particular, dedicated candle every time you work. I didn’t make this up. Cooler writers than me (Alex Chee? R.O. Kwon?) have tweeted about ritualizing their writing time with candles, or certain pens, maybe even a scent that you like, or a fancy garment worn only during the creative time. Does this help shift the experience into something that feels Important, even indulgent?

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Reading/watching/listening

Theater: Mr. Burns, A Post-Electric Play

“What would happen to a pop culture narrative pushed past the fall of civilization?” was playwright Anne Washburn’s curiosity when she wrote this, about a small band of survivors in the not-so-distant future bonding over re-telling episodes of The Simpsons, and the relationship of storytelling to human survival. I was excited to see this at the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival this summer and it did not disappoint. Funny, heartbreaking, foreboding, and somehow also comforting.

Film: Nope

All I knew going into this was “Jordan Peele,” “horses,” “wacky waving inflatable arm guys,” and “upsetting mystery element.” This is a monster movie that kept me guessing, and made super interesting connections about the entertainment industry, exploitation, and the belief that one could have a shared understanding with a wild thing. Stunning visuals. And Daniel Kaluuya on a horse looks cool as hell.

Music: A Giant Dog

My friend Bailey took me to see this punk band I hadn’t heard of before. During the first song, I was blown away by lead singer Sabrina Ellis, whose (yep I’m gonna say it) high-octane stage presence is the best possible combination of Mick Jagger, Sally O’Malley (who likes to kiiiick, streeeetch, and kiiiick), and Mad TV’s Stuart.

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Publications/projects

• Best Debut Short Stories 2022: The PEN America Dau Prize hit stores yesterday. The prizewinning stories in this year’s anthology were selected by Sabrina Orah Mark, Emily Nemens, and Deesha Philyaw. The intro that I co-wrote with Yuka Igarashi was published yesterday at Hobart; read for a little preview of each story in the collection.

• Elisa Gabbert’s poetry collection, Normal Distance, that I helped shepherd while editor Sarah Jean Grimm was on leave, was published on 9/13. You can catch Elisa virtually in conversation with Aria Aber via Third Place Books on 9/23 (details here) or on 9/29 via Thank You Books at 7 pm Central on IG Live.

• Emma Bolden’s debut memoir, The Tiger and the Cage: A Memoir of a Body in Crisis—on endometriosis, being gaslit by doctors, and pushing against the expected narrative of dating and marriage and children—will be out on 10/18, before my next newsletter dispatch! If you’re in or near Birmingham, Alabama, you can catch the in-person launch at Thank You Books at 7 pm on 10/18. There are also two upcoming virtual events: 10/24 via Books & Books, in conversation with Chantel Acevedo, and 11/1 via Greenlight Books, in conversation with absolute gem Angela Chen!

• Also, it’s not up yet, but… Hobart accepted a new poem of mine and it should be up before the end of the month :)

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Misc.

Yesterday was National Voter Registration Day! Are you registered? You can check at vote.gov. ID requirements by state are listed here.

In the wake of Hurricane Fiona, Puerto Rico needs help. NPR put together a list of organizations where donations will help with recovery and rebuilding.

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Annnd that’s what I’ve got for you this month. Merry Mabon!

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