with the way I’ve been straight housing peaches lately, you’d think I have pregnancy-induced cravings.

I’m a peach-seeking missile. When I see ‘em at the market, I cannot resist. I got four just this morning after my workout. “Weigh your… pEEchez” the automated self-checkout commands me. I obey. If she could wink she could. Is the self-checkout flirting with me? She doesn’t talk about the other fruits this way.

My peaches come out to about $5. That’s too cheap for this sweet, buttery luxury that will only be in season for a few more weeks. I douse one with the water from my Nalgene and sloppily rinse off the soft fuzzy treasure before consuming it in the parking lot.

Dripping be damned, I’m not waiting to enjoy this perfect fruit.

August. Evening. 1999. Evergreen, Colorado. When we lived in the house that looked like a red barn. The living room. Big leather chair. After dinner. Late enough the lamps are lit. I am given a bowl of my own (this itself is new, after all, I’m three).

Inside the bowl: sliced peaches, cream, and sugar. Enough sugar that I can see the granules slowly dissolving. A silver spoon. The peaches, the cream, the bowl, cold in my hand and mouth.

I am in love.

When I was three, I was given a small stuffed black cat in a dress.

Things I can tell you about this toy cat: His name is Peaches. He is a boy cat. He is not especially soft or large. He was (and is) my favorite. He is very ugly. Some would say cursed.

If you scroll down, you will be confronted with his disfigured face. Two years into owning him, a family dog ate his face off. Chimpanzee-style. My mom insisted the good women (volunteers) at our church’s “Teddy Bear Fair” would be able to repair him. They did their best, God bless them. Post-op Peaches is, to mince words, fucked-up looking. If I turn his head all the way to the right, somehow you can still see both eyes.

Like a flounder.

Or a flattened piece of roadkill.

His “good side” is the back of his head. But if I position him to face, I don’t know, a wall, he looks even more ominous.

He looks like the kind of stuffed animal you see in a museum. The plaque says: “A child’s toy. Whitechapel, London. 1880’s.” You try to convince yourself it’s sweet. But you stare a little too long into its beady eyes and you think to yourself, “did this cat somehow influence Jack the Ripper?”

He is a Horcrux.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you:

I’m sorry if he shows up in your dreams tonight. He means no harm.

Heyyyyyy maybe if I get enough subscribers, I can take him to get some work done in Beverly Hills.

Subscribe now

Peaches was and always will be my favorite. Not in spite of his haunted visage, but because of it. He is a Horcrux of stages in my life and places I’ve lived. His namesake comes from one of my earliest memories. It seems impossible that I am the same little girl who tasted peaches and cream one evening in August, my third August ever, and was so inspired that I named my favorite stuffed animal after the experience.

Peaches and Cream is a long, aimless walk at dusk, when the heat of the day is finally giving up the ghost.

Peaches and Cream is the unhurried speech of one who has just woken from an afternoon nap.

It’s the smell of my mother’s perfume and my father’s aftershave on our way to church. Warm leather seats. My sun-tanned skin, veiled by golden hair.

I spent a few weeks with my 4-year-old nephew recently.

Things I can tell you about my nephew: He likes when we drive through tunnels. He prefers getting his own juice from the fridge. He loves a sweet treat.

The decision to offer a child that young their own bowl of dessert after dinner is an act of sacrificial love. You risk a sugar high, pre-bedtime emotional meltdown, and drippy fingers all over furniture and clothing and face. Even the best kids can’t possibly keep the party inside the bowl.

You are giving the child two very coveted prizes: autonomy (their own bowl) and sugar (…dessert). To give a small child their own bowl of dessert is grace.

And grace - if I may be so bold - is every stone fruit. Soft, sweet, bruisable, pliant flesh that covers a stone-strong love that cannot be crushed.

Sometimes peaches are not good. They must be protected from needless battering. And they have a precious window of ripeness that, if you aren’t paying attention, will leave you with an unsavory, mealy mess that used to be fruit. But this is also part of their magic. Like grace, like dusk, if you don’t pay attention, you may miss it entirely.

I fish out the last remaining undissolved granules of sugar from the bottom of the bowl. The peaches are gone. Why do I feel like these granules waited for me before dissolving? They let me have an extra sweet last bite. They knew I’d be sad that dessert was over. That summer was over. This is the love I feel for all of August’s kin. It’s why peaches are the best fruit. They are the sugar in the bottom of the bowl. The last fruits. The final bite before summer turns to fall. If, as the saying goes, “August is the Sunday of Summer,” her children are simple, quiet, warm, fading, like this memory I have of the very first time I ate peaches and cream.

A RECIPE

Gang - you can always just snack on fruit. That is perfectly good. This recipe just yassifies that impulse a little bit.

peaches and cream:

Serves: 1

Ingredients: 1 peach (I like white peaches). Cream. Cane sugar.

You Will Need: A pretty bowl (chilled). A silver spoon. A cutting board. A knife.

The peach is ready to eat when it has a sweet, floral aroma, and yields slightly to gentle pressure. Like a poorly packed carry-on, it should feel heavier than it looks.

Chill your peach in the fridge for at least 2 hours.

Slice your peach. I like chunky slices as opposed to thin. Plop it into your pretty bowl.

Pour about 1/3 cup of cream over your peach.

Dust with 1 tbsp cane sugar.

Optional toppings: Flaky salt. For a little crunch, crumble up some shortbread or biscuits. I like Effie’s Homemade Pecan Biscuits. They’re like crack.

Savor it. Watch the sugar dissolve. Drink the cream when the peach is all gone. All of this will taste better if you eat at sunset on a porch after a very warm day.

MAYA ANGELOU & TASTING POETRY

This has nothing to do with peaches but it does have to do with Maya Angelou so sit down and shut up!

Queen Maya was mute from ages 7 to 12. Learning this surprised me, as I’m sure it will surprise many of you, given that she is known not only for her award-winning literary voice, but also her singular speaking voice. She went through this mute period as a little girl as a result of trauma. (She believed, after a great tragedy and the mythic justice that followed it, her words had the power to - literally - kill.) In this silent period of time, Angelou befriended a woman named Mrs.Flowers (perfect) who would drop her off at the library. It was here that young Maya fell in love with poetry. She would spend hours reading, alone, in the library, memorizing poems.

“I would just eat up sound with my eyes,” she says.

After about two years of this, Mrs.Flowers told young Maya that she would never love poetry. “Until I heard it over, felt it across my tongue, through my teeth, across my lips, I would never love poetry.” What helped to break her trauma-induced spell was tasting poetry. Reading it aloud.

You can hear her tell the story in her own words in this interview. I highly recommend watching it.

I loved this anecdote because it reminded me that language is something we can taste, too. Every time I edit my writing, I read it aloud to myself. The written word is a solidification of what began as physical communication. The next time you pick up a book of poetry, treat yourself to reading it aloud. See how that feeds you. If it worked for Dame Maya, chances are it will nourish you, too. And sorry for yelling at you.

More soon,

E

My friend is at a loss for how to understand her…self.

She wants to be free, a feather in the wind, but she feels she must contain and corral her wily side in favor of stability - preserving the love she cherishes so much. I know that plot point. My friend and I, in different timelines, plotted on the same emotional coordinate.

Same dining table, same issue, different women.

I wasn’t much one for math class, but there was something very satisfying about using a graphing calculator - entering a formula into it, an abstraction, and then seeing how that formula translated into a specific spot on the x/y axis.

Between sips and sobs, my friend (and this is why I love her) places her hand on the table, as if prepping me for some salacious gossip, and asks, “have you heard of Toni Wolff’s structural forms of the feminine psyche?”

“Tell me,” I beg.

She then breaks it down, plotting the x and y axis with her hands, sculpting the air and revealing a new framework that both of us can use to make sense of our chaotic inner worlds.

Toni Wolff was Carl Jung’s lifelong collaborator and “second wife” in psychoanalysis. She helped Jung develop the anima, animus, and persona, among other major Jungian concepts. She didn’t publish much on her own, but one essay, Structural Forms of the Feminine Psyche, solidified her contributions to Jungian psychology.

According to Wolff, there are four feminine psychological archetypes: the Mother, the Hetaira/Companion, the Amazon/Athena, and the Medial woman.

1. Mother: a woman “whose primary ego priority is the well-being of her children (or charges).” The Mother nurtures and loves stability.

2. Hetaira: a woman motivated by individual relationships and friendships. She is muse-like, less attached to traditional family ideals, and, at her unhealthiest, a kind of pick-me-girl.

3. Amazon: “a woman ultimately concerned with what she can bring to the world.” The world is her oyster and, if she Jo March(es) hard enough, she’ll buy all the oysters in the establishment.

4. Medial: a woman “whose primary focus is characterized by their basic preoccupation with phenomena related to the collective unconscious.” She is woo beyond woo, reiki certified, living off the land, and probably could tell you everything you need to know about your birth chart.

The Hetaira and Mother are personal/relationship-oriented opposites, while the Medial and Amazon are impersonal/collective-oriented opposites.

I’ve plotted four of the female characters from the Odyssey as an example here for ya. They don’t exactlyyyy match up but it gives you an idea:

Wolff argued that as a woman individuates, she drifts further out onto one of these poles. She may land somewhere on a diagonal, ie, between Amazon and Hetaira, but can never fully be on the opposite side of a given pole. So, if you’re fully girlbossing (the Amazon), you can’t be fully in the spiritual world (the Medial). And if you’ve leaned far into motherhood and queenship, it will be harder and harder to consciously access the Hetaira/Muse archetype.

If you’re anything like me, this categorization makes you uncomfortable. After all, it’s 2026. I don’t want to choose. I want to be Everything Barbie™. When this essay was published in 1951, women had to choose. Wolff, believing herself to be the Hetaira, destroyed all personal correspondence between her and Jung when they “broke up.” I don’t know if I agree you can’t be both, or all, but it may be that different seasons of life call forth different sides of a woman - like an Eras Tour of the psyche.

But back to the dining table:

As my sweet friend explained this, I immediately self-categorized. I put myself on Toni’s little map. In fact, with any personality test or spectrum of identity, most people find it deeply comforting to “land” somewhere - even if we know we are not just one thing.

Humans love personality tests for the same reason I loved my TI-84 graphing calculator. We take the elements of an ever-changing personality and map it onto a neat little plot point. Answering a series of questions for Myers-Briggs (developed by a fellow Jungophile) or, idk, Pottermore, suddenly makes sense of idiosyncracies that feel so chaotic experientially. When I see that my patronus is a gray mare (tru) or that, because of my Kibbe body type I actually CaNnOT wear bandage dresses(!!! don’t make me!!!) I understand myself better.

Personality tests, and, I would argue, “tag yourself” memery, satisfy both ends of an individuality <——> tribalism continuum. By tagging yourself, you get to see where you uniquely land, but still have the reassurance that your “je ne sais quoi” is shared by others.

The moment my friend told me about Wolff’s four structural archetypes, the conversation itself moved to a different coordinate. We jumped from the dark and tangled swamp of personal heartbreak to a two-way symposium on what it is to be a woman, broadly speaking. Pun intended. Like the comfort of a correct diagnosis, Wolff’s structure won’t solve our frustrations, but it gives them a name and a shape. And if something has a name, it must not be new, and if it is not new, there must be a way to plot your course when navigating through it.

ENOUGH CHIT CHAT - SHOW ME SOME CHARTS

Because I love you, here are few charts I found for you to plot yourself on:

This first one is a bit of aesthetic categorization:

I like the x/y of cool-to-warm and soft-to-hard. As another friend of mine pointed out, some of the words on this style chart are totally unhinged but we all know someone who is ETHNIC (WILD) and she’s not gonna stop inviting you to come to Burning Man with her…

Okay now for something a little deep:

Interesting to see that both “approval” and “collaboration” fall into “belonging.” It demonstrates the good and bad parts of a word we usually associate with something just positive. “Nature,” “society” = conscious, but “me,” “human differences” = unconscious? Are artists and politicians diametrically opposed? Much to ponder.

Some classic tag yourselves for those of you feeling a little brain-rotty-otty:

(Me? wafl/curly sue cusp, cheery pie)

Now for some scales:

For those of you creating a show bible (there must be at least one). I like this because, while it applies to mythology, it also helps to see where the twists and turns of your little life are in the flow of an archetypical story:

In your Villain era? Redemption may be on the way!

And finally, we cannot forget a-birth-month-to-flower/gem/pizza breakdown. I admit I hate it when my birth month/star sign gives me something I hate but maybe that’s my shadow speaking.

PERSONAL COORDINATES

Many of you recently subscribed because of some essays I’ve been posting to my Instagram. Thank you!!! I read the comments and you’ve given me the push I needed to write here more.

The impetus for both the video essays and this Substack began from a quiet plot point within myself: the need to not ONLY perform the work of other writers (acting,) but to write and express of my own volition.

When I act, I find great pleasure in conforming and discovering myself within another writer’s vision. When I write, I hunch over my keyboard like a feral warrior picking apart the raw flesh of a nutritious and bloody carcass. I eat my own heart and mind, steal from so many other great thinkers/believers, presenting to you a cornucopia of sustenance to chew on. I hope it nourishes your spirit and gives us the curiosity we need for just one more hunt. These two plot points (performer/creator) feel discrete at times. But the endless trek from one to the other has become a kind of dance. Mary Oliver put it best:

THREE THINGS TO REMEMBER

“As long as you’re dancing, you can

break the rules.

Sometimes breaking the rules is just

extending the rules.

Sometimes there are no rules.”

What plot points are you dancing between?

More soon,

E

At any rate, faded. Fated.
My confidential document folded up in elegance,
as your hands.
Composing themselves at all times
to simply be understood.

With any luck this year
I can look at you.
See you as you were:
clean black ink, fresh crisp paper.
A snowdrift over real life.
Your words, eloquent, studied
and bursting with the music of the language
you taught me.

Whether the weather be cold,
I have, this letter, this sheet music, this proof
buried under forms, bills, more snow.
Muffled song from an instrument I forgot
you knew how to play.

We'll be together whatever the weather,
whether we like it or not.
I'll go home alone this year.
We never got a tree, there's that.
Maybe you kept writing.
I hope so.

Merry Christmas and many blessings to you all. xo EE

Where I grew up, in the foothills west of Denver, we could walk out the front door and hike the forest behind our backyard for hours. My mom would often take the dogs (and me, her third pup) to walk with her. As a short diversion from the steep uphill trudge, we would stray from the path to “walk the labyrinth.”

Someone, at some point, had placed small stones to make a circular spiral maze on the dirt about 30 feet in diameter. Like stone piles and trees carved up with initials, you’ll occasionally run into DIY labyrinths on hikes. No matter the season, our little labyrinth maintained its shape - whether this was by the curation of a dedicated individual or some conscientious hiker hive-mind, I have no idea.

Many have argued that spirals are so common in biology because it is “the most efficient way for something to grow.” Maintaining a consistent shape at every turn allows an organism to grow quickly and without much energy. Go on your own walk outside and I bet you’ll see a few spirals on the path. A shell, the eye of a sunflower, a school of fish, the flush of a toilet, even the fingerprint on your pointer finger all spiral out. Or in. Depending on the kind of day you’re having.

The growth I feel these days certainly does not feel efficient. It looks more like the photo of this jaggedy staircase my mom sent me a few days ago when I was ensconced to my bed because of a lovely back spasm.

My current position (today, May 3rd, 1:27 PM) on that staircase feels like it’s somewhere above the “G” in “GOES.” Not quite at the bottom but certainly feeling the climb. Then I’m reminded that I’ve been here before.

The first time I walked our labyrinth I was probably seven years old. It frustrated me. Many times, I was tempted to step over the arbitrary line of rocks to reach the center faster. The sooner we finished walking the labyrinth, the sooner the hike itself would be over. (Racing to the finish is a vice it seems I’ve always been trying to quit.)

As I got older, I’d memorized the dead ends and sudden twists and could walk it quickly, getting to the center within a minute. And there my mom would be, still somewhere on the outer circumference, taking her time pacing over the dry red Colorado dirt, eventually meeting me at the center. At which point I would probably chastise her for taking her sweet time and ask if we still had pickles in the fridge.

When I was in grad school, I lived a few blocks away from Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. Grace Cathedral has two beautiful labyrinths, one inside the cathedral, and one in its front courtyard, open to the public day or night. Next time you’re in the Bay, check it out.

In the history of contemplative practice, labyrinths weren’t about speed but rather spending time with God. The twists and turns were not built to flummox the contemplative walker, but to guide her journey.

Grace Cathedral’s website suggests 3 approaches to walking a labyrinth:

1. Purgation: Releasing of the details of your life. Shedding the thoughts and distractions, you use the time to open your heart and mind.

2. Illumination: When you reach center, stay there as long as you like in meditation or prayer. Receive what is there for you to receive.

3. Union: As you leave the center, retracing the same path you walked coming in, return to God, your Higher Power, the healing forces at work in the world. “Every time you walk the labyrinth you become more empowered to find and do the work for which you feel your soul is reaching.”

   

Damn. Pretty far from the pickles I was thinking about at age ten.

I didn’t realize these hikes with the dogs were a precious time of day my mother was inviting me to join in on. The older I get, the more I see that walking the paths behind our home was the one part of the day my mom could let go of all her other familial obligations. She was inviting snotty preteen me into the most precious part of her day. A daily return to center, even as she and I were growing older.

There are seasons where I feel I’ve been “walking the labyrinth” as my ten-year-old self and acing it, finishing it faster than anyone else on the hike, and smugly standing in the middle. Right now I feel seven again. Seeing the dead end I thought would lead me to center, and then having to return and retrace my steps to try the other path.

The only difference is that now I love walking. No matter the mood that has settled over me, within half an hour I feel markedly better than when I first began. And, enough turns around the ~labyrinth of life~ have taught me that where I’m going doesn’t matter much, so long as I’m walking, I’ll feel better and develop a new perspective.

I’d like to say I no longer believe in the upward climb toward some beautiful mountain lookout (that job, that relationship, that income). The truth is that the upward climb still calls to me. No matter how many times I’ve reached a peak and realized that by reaching the peak it’s all over, how sad, what the heck do I do now?! My wisest self knows every peak is just the base of a new mountain. My wisest self would rather be walking the labyrinth.

The beauty of spirals (when compared to other growth models) is that we can look across the spiral at any other point in time and see where we once were. In the spiral of life, we can even “step over” into another time, like stepping over the stones in the labyrinth. Returning to an old stomping ground of mine always gives me this feeling. “Last time I was here, I was so worried about this or that, and look, younger Evangeline, we made it through!”

We are never only the age that’s reflected on the driver’s license; we are every age we’ve ever been.

No matter how far you’ve come from the start, you can always look back to center and see your most essential self standing there: still, imperfect, shaking in her boots, bravely about to embark.

Looking for a local labyrinth to walk? Check this out.

That’s all for now,

ee

constantly like this

you set the fluid in motion

a steady flow doesn’t mix

the milk chases the tea

it actually mixes better if you go a bit crazy.

like this!

or this.

The seeker and the sought traverse together.

this one here: “she is my canteen”

that one there: “she is my thirst”

Chipped nailpolish fingers sift ancient dust

She prays with the same hands that clutch, that claw

that play piano in an uneven meter.

“It’s not for you, it’s for me, for you, for me to be better for you, for it to be music to us both, so let me play.”

I dare you to hope.

Let the shadow that flutters past your window

be a memory of the flight.

The world has not stopped spinning and you,

a tiny speck on its broad back,

you are carried even as you fly.

8 PM. Los Feliz. Several weeks ago.

I’m working at my job as a host at a restaurant. Leaning into the stereotype of an actor in LA. It’s lovely. Great people. Good pay.

I’m taking a group of young women who’d gathered for their friend’s birthday to their table. They smell like cherry blossom perfume and lip gloss. Somehow everyone got the memo to wear black with a pop of silver or gold accessories. If Bratz dolls shopped at Reformation, this is how they would look.

They set their wine glasses down and, like vultures descending upon a carcass, take their phones out to document the aesthetics of the table.

I wait patiently before placing the menus, not wanting to lower the tone with clutter. I get it, they’re at a cute restaurant having a cute time with their girls. It’s cute. They want to tell the world about it. I wonder which one of them got the best angle.

Two days from now, after they’ve posted these pictures, what then? I think of all the tablescape pictures I’ve taken. They’re now collecting digital dust in my camera roll. “Enjoy,” I tell them, “the chocolate cake is not to be missed out on.”

My roommate gets paid to post pictures and videos of places she’s never been. Her boss sends her a picture of a spa she visited that day. She’s tasked with researching the spa and then posting about it as though she’d been there. So that other people will go and take pictures of it. By the time she clocks out and switches to her personal account, she feels as though she’s been around the world and nowhere all at once.

10:30 AM. Griffith Park. Near the Mineral Wells Picnic Area. Last Tuesday.

I’ve come here for a long walk to clear my head. “I’m here as a sort of meditation,” I tell myself. I’m fasting today. “I’m going to find a clearing in the dense forest of my anxiety. I’ve left my air conditioned apartment to get out into nature and return home - like Mary Oliver would. And I need to get 10,000 steps in.”

I come upon a tiny stream, shaded by trees. Water flowing through the cracks of our inferno city! It’s a miracle. A flock of finches dive in and out of the stream. They dip their heads under and come back up, shaking the water over their feathers. Sweet tiny bathing rituals right before my eyes. The sun is their towel. They sing to each other. They are cared for; I must be too.

I’m careful with my footfalls. I don’t want my steps to scare them away. I stand in awe for a few minutes as they play in the water. “I must document this,” something says in me. The impulse comes with its own flock of thoughts.

“I want it, I want this moment, I want to hold it in my hands just a little longer, and send it to my mom so she sees I’m ok. Is this for me or for Instagram? Am I doing this to show *people* how mindful I am? That I’m a nature girl? That I take time to observe the small things? If a bird bathes in the woods and no Mary Oliver’s took their phone out to document it, did it even happen? But they’re so sweet! I want to own this little golden moment in time. Maybe then I can return.”

No sooner had I taken out my phone and pressed record than the finches flew away. The video I have is 1 second of flight and 15 seconds of an empty stream, glittering, giggling at me.

A good portion of my grad school acting training took place on Zoom, thanks to the pandemic. On Zoom there is a button: Hide Self View. It keeps you from seeing yourself despite your camera being turned on. Two years out of Zoom school, I realize the “Hide Self View” button still applies. I don’t want to know what I look like when I’m working.

1 PM. Magnolia Boulevard. Best of Times Antique Store. Yesterday.

I’m redecorating my apartment. Looking for pieces that “spark joy” and feel like me. In a dusty shop on the same boulevard that inspired Paul Thomas Anderson’s frog-raining film epic, I see it. In a large, golden frame, leaning on a walnut cabinet, is a reproduction of Gaugin’s A Vase of Flowers.

I’m struck by the intentionally unspecific saturation of the flowers. The darkness. The blobby shapes. If it were a photo, it would be blurry and shaky.

The National Gallery website writes of the flowers: “They look as though they are slightly past their best, and some blossoms have fallen onto the tabletop. What seems to have interested Gauguin is the pattern of decorative shapes and the delicate interweaving of reds, creams and blues against the gold background rather than the horticultural detail…In 1899, when the dealer Ambroise Vollard asked Gauguin to send him some flower paintings for sale, the artist replied that he had ‘done only a few’ because ‘I do not copy nature – today even less than formerly. With me, everything happens in my exuberant imagination.’ “

A moment, painted over the course of several hours, days, weeks. He began the painting in 1895 and finished it a year later - a century before I was born. A kind of picture taken through the aperture of the human eye, the pupil. The shutter speed a blink of Gaugin’s eyelids, and when too tired, closing for sleep, waking to imagine, to paint with light from without and within.

The shop owner tells me it’s cheaper to pay with cash. I have just enough saved in tip money to pay in cash, right then and there. The flowers now hang on my living room wall, frozen in their wilting. Alive a hundred years later.

My right hand turned the faucet on: a key. The water of life spouted into the slowly draining sink, cold and hard as crystal on my salted cheeks. They flushed in scarlet letters - writing scorn, abandonment, deception from ear to ear.

To look upon the face of God, isn’t that a very dangerous thing to do?

Meeting my own gaze, worse, it seemed. I avoided my reflection. Heaving sobs and scrubbing at my face I wondered what they would say, the others. What would I say to them, if they knew? I wrote little dialogues in my mind’s eye, as if attending the funeral of my reputation as a guest.

“Such a bright morning star, she gained too much speed. Now she’s a meteor plumetting to earth, crashing through the trees and ripping fertile soil from its happy bed. Pity.”

I’ll live in the crater lake I’ve made. I’ll take my bath there and float like Dead Sea foam. I’ll dive under and look into the eyes of the Leviathan- deep, dim, mourning eyes. I felt her hunger before, heard her bellowing cries. I’ll come up for air and hope she doesn’t eat me alive for my pride. When I berth, I’ll sit on the sand and pray for a clean heart, Dawn-washed, purged, pure.

“Just focus on the next minute, and only the next minute,” my mother told me, “sixty seconds at a time.” I turned off the faucet and my tears slowed. I picked up my towel, ten seconds conquered, clinging to routine as though a life raft. I blotted away the water, wishing to blot out my transgressions, as though I had the power. Twenty more seconds I wouldn’t have to endure again. Against my will, I caught a glance at my reflection.

“You cannot see my face, for no one may see Me and live.”

For five seconds I looked myself in the eye. Five seconds and an eternity. I’d rather see your face. You say the day will come; you’ll write your name on my forehead. Every time I face the mirror then, I’ll try to see what you intended instead. Five seconds and one thought given to hope. A surprise.

One day I might see my name when I look in the mirror, and know it too. That may be too much for this day. 

Until that second, minute, hour, day, I must put my mouth to the dust (there may yet be hope). I must sit alone in silence, lips open, eat my fill of insults, pray you teach me wisdom in my secret heart. Pray that when I look into the eyes of the Leviathan, like sees like and bears the truth with valor.

The hour of my fall from grace, I washed my face.

where, I, 

or the essence,

a woman,

shapeshifted into fire.

when she wasn’t fire, she was a series of nerve endings, 

axons laid end on end, exposed, writhing and lashing nonsense tantrums.

and when she wasn’t strung out,

she was dutifully counting almonds in the afternoon light

with hands that looked like the butterfly bones of her grandmother.

yesterday. 

my father dreamt

of his mother bravely clasping at her pearls 

and stirring Christmas punch

sweat girdling her brow. A piece of flaxen hair 

twisting curiously, rebellious, smoke from the chimney

tracing a bad omen, 

or

a prayer.

the day before yesterday.

my sister dreamt of her slowly growing child 

barefoot on the sands of adolescence

barefoot and buckled on the car ride home 

barefoot in her little bed

blanketed by a barefoot moon.  

tomorrow.

when I dream, and I will,

my sisters, my mother, our grandmothers, Great Grandmothers,  

our daughters, our daughters, 

our ankles nestled in the sand, 

scattered like sand dollars

will be barefaced, reminded, unlacing our bellies with laughter.

But I’d say that what she experienced as my stubborn good cheer was more of an effort on my part to balance out the gloom that felt somehow obligatory beginning in March 2020. As a Libra (ew shut up) and the youngest of three children, balance is to me what cast reunions are to reality television: a necessity. 

But now that we’ve made it to May of 2023, I find myself holding a belief of my own making: a belief cloaked in fear. That’s the thing about fear. You can’t fear something without believing it first. If the boogeyman weren’t maybe even a skosh real, why close the door at night? Right?

The belief I’ve settled into goes like this:

I believe in the unseen world (stay with me here): the forever before we got here and the forever after we leave; tiny infinite signs; impossible wonders; frequency; “as above so below;” ask and ye shall receive; that you go where you’re looking, and where attention flows, energy goes. I’ve dabbled in manifestation; I’ve studied the law of attraction. I’ve brushed my teeth to Abraham Hicks and clipped my toenails to mantra meditations. And while, for the most part, these interconnected spiritual axioms have provided me with an anchor in unstable times, I’ve grown superstitious of negativity. That’s where the fear part comes in. As if, when having a thought that is, as the Silverlake Shamans would call it, “low-vibe,” I’m somehow creating energy that might attract the negativity, and, God-forbid, cause the opposite of what I desire to come true.

I’ll have the negative thought, (for example: what if my car wheel pops off while I’m on the highway and I veer into oncoming traffic) and then I’ll self-emulate in the inferno of my mind by remembering that “negative energy attracts negative outcomes.” So don’t even DARE give that thought energy. But ironic process theory shows us that telling someone not to think about something is one of the sure ways to get them to think about it and boy oh boy am I in a tizzy!  

In short: this positivity has morphed from an attempt to create necessary balance to a mental knocking-on-wood ritual I perform to keep away the bad luck.

How do I allow the negativity (which is, by the way, so necessary, especially in art) without fearing it? Can even the possibility of failure or disaster be channeled into living the dreams that were planted in my heart at my soul’s emergence? How would Abraham Hicks respond, as I gurgle my mouthwash and avoid the thought of choking?

I don’t have an answer. What I do have is breadcrumbs of hope, scattered by some higher being, to feed the little birds of my dreams.

I recently heard a former priest define prayer as “hanging laundry on the line and trusting the wind to dry it.” Sure, some days I wake up able to connect to my highest self and live in a state of high vibrations that mimics how I might feel one day when all my goals have been met (what a day! Certainly no more desires will crop up!) as the law of attraction would promote. But many other days, gloom lingers, and the baser part of myself has a self-defeating thought, still wanting the best to work out, but knowing there are infinite ways this life could go. And those thoughts, just like those hopes, are human. As unromantic and real as soggy laundry slowly drying in the wind on a summer day.

I have to remember that achieving dreams is sometimes as mundane and smelly as it is glorious and euphoric. It’s okay for a prayer, on gloomy days, to be a simple recognition of all we already have and a petition for ourselves and others. It’s okay for someone who could be characterized as “hellbent on optimism” to feel simply, hellbent. But it’s that person who gets to take the journey in the first place.

Happy May.

More soon,

E

It’s a bit of a junkyard. My Notes app. I won’t lie. We’ve got old grocery lists, workouts, copy/pasted addresses, recipes, thingsIi’ve written in my sleep (I’m not making that up - one note says “Have zzy some hAm x cat”), and dozens of miscellaneous ~ideas~ for ~projects~ I could maybe one day, like, I don’t know, ~do something with.~

But instead of doing something with them right away, I close the app and move on with my day, my week, my month, my year. Leaving these tiny sparks of inspiration waiting patiently like pilot lights in a hearth.

I'm in between things. Between acting jobs, between 20 and 30, between leaving the church and holding God in my heart, between Millennial Pink and Gen-Slay (1996, what a year), graduating with my masters and “never done learning,” calling everywhere and nowhere my home, chasing my dreams and fighting off depression, being married (woohoo!) and married (ohmygod), recovering and having recovered from my eating disorder, grasping at meaning and accepting what is, having so much to say and not being able to find the next word, etcetera etcetera ad infinitum.

Between is uncomfortable. It’s unpredictable and open and there is no step-by-step Ikea manual for it. Between-ness makes me wish that Mommy would come pick me up so I didn’t have to do all the hard things that make life worth living and just be a lil’ fairy named Soot who sleeps on a snowdrop and has tea parties with the local frogs.

If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably been “between” before. Heck you may be in the middle of some precarious unknown right now! And that means we’re together in this. Wanna join my fairy kingdom? Send me your tea order and I’ll prep a toadstool. :)

But as much as I hate not knowing how things will turn out, I’ve lived long enough to see that the answer will come in time. Discomfort and growth are kindred. They just are. And, wait for it, the *universe* is sending little sparks along the way to get me through if only I pay attention. Yeah, I said it. Universe, beeyotch. God. Team of Light. Ase. Divinity. Higher Power. Butter. We all have our names for that arcane watchfulness that is with us every step of the fookin way, whispering little thoughts that distract me from my worries and make me wonder, “what if…?”

Little ideas that get lost in the Notes app of my phone.

So, welcome to forget-me-notes: a sounding board for quotes, toasts, interactions, sound-bites, found nights, and dissatisfaction…moments where I forgot myself, paused, and took note.

More soon.

E

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