Resource Roundup #63
For the week of January 20th.
Happy Friday Folks,
This time a year ago, it was my third weekend snowed in to my studio apartment, and I remember thinking I was going to go insane. The entire month passed in a blur, time seeming to drag slowly, hardly at all, the month stretching into an oblivion that felt dark and cold, and I just felt distant within it. I spent most of that month walking the trail near my house along the creek, watching the snow fall, melt, and fall again. It was beautiful. It was terrible. It created a stark association in my mind, and when this January rolled around again, I found myself instilled with a sort of new fear, one of the repetition of that isolation, which it felt I had barely crawled my way out of.
Is it normal to be afraid of a month? There are two each year that now roll around this way for me: January and June. Each time they hit, I feel I am pulled back into patterns of who I was long ago, a person it sometimes feels I might never leave behind. Once, that frightened me; lately I think I am growing comfortable with embracing them.
It was strange to me to look at the date today and realize January has almost ended, and that all-encompassing sadness has not returned. My life often feels the same, as if little has changed, when in fact if I look back so little is the same. This year there has been no snow. I have been out in the world more than ever. And still, despite it, I find myself missing the river and the white-coated banks. Is it human nature to always long for the things that hurt us?
Anyways. The weather this week has been warm. I’ve walked through bare forests without a jacket and debated interesting things with interesting people in long hallways, in coffee shops, over Zoom calls at my dining table. The world goes on. Time moves with it. I am looking back and looking forward. I am finding comfort with the between.
In my favorite poem of all time, Richard Siken writes the following. I’ve long said that last line would be my first tattoo, and I found myself repeating it today while moving through the world:
Explaining will get us nowhere. I was away, I don't know where, lying on the floor, pretending I was dead. I wanted to hurt you but the victory is that I could not stomach it. We have swallowed him up, they said. It's beautiful. It really is. I had a dream about you. We were in the gold room where everyone finally gets what they want. You said Tell me about your books, your visions made of flesh and light and I said This is the Moon. This is the Sun. Let me name the stars for you. Let me take you there. The splash of my tongue melting you like a sugar cube... We were in the gold room where everyone finally gets what they want, so I said What do you want, sweetheart? and you said Kiss me. Here I am leaving you clues. I am singing now while Rome burns. We are all just trying to be holy. My applejack, my silent night, just mash your lips against me. We are all going forward. None of us are going back.
I can’t stop thinking about this music video.
Chapel Hill artists! Apply to the Basement residency!
And all artists, but especially Triangle ones— get your art on the JVG walls (and get a rose cardamom latte while you’re at it. Trust me.)
A great article by Bryant Barnes on agricultural histories of the New South.