RETURN

SCENE:

Dear you, 

Today is July 18th, 2022. It’s rainy and humid. I’m not wearing pants. I am wearing headphones. A Tortoise album from 1994 is on. I turned it on, I chose it. Not sure why, but it’s right.  Two fancy lamps placed on either side of me form a little halo. I don’t have overhead lighting in my office. Feels symbolic: have to light from within (inspiration glows…did you know that?) and from distinct angles, that I can adjust. But this lighting arrangement also feels less grown up than having an overhead light. Sort of the way box fans sound scrappier than ceiling fans. Dishwashers versus hand-washing. Beds versus futons. Internalized should’s rearing their little expectations, in front of an audience. Go away! I like my style and I’m sticking to it.  

There are un-sticky sticky notes indecisive and curling up on the edges of postcards that I keep meaning to find a place for on my wall. There are rocks in a pile, and one piece of coral and a hunk of rose quartz next to a dusty stapler facing the wall. I wish I remembered where the rocks and coral came from, but I also like that sometimes it’s not about the story of an object, but instead how the object feels in my hand, how the object looks in an arrangement with other objects. There are two stone coasters that I didn’t find, but I bought. I often buy things that look like I pulled them from the earth. 24 years ago I visited a woman named Marilyn in St Croix and she had plants and trees growing inside of her house. Like the line was blurred between nature and her house. Things that help me return to my inner wild are the things that stick. 

It’s 12:02 pm on a Monday, which feels like a subversive time to write. It’s in the middle of the day…I could be doing so many things! Shouldn’t I have started this first thing in the morning or at the end of the day so my creative time is aligned with an edge? Aren’t I disrupting things? Not sure, but this is when I felt it, so here I am.

THANK YOU FOR CARVING OUT THE TIME FOR THESE WORDS, LOVELY YOU.

Writing on a Monday mid-day is also subversive because I’m usually working right now, at a job that I love, at The New York Times. Yes, this serial freelancer is trying a new thing and I’m not even a little bit mad about it, but I am re-oriented by it. Right now I’m on vacation, which at this point in my life, doesn’t just mean going away somewhere (though I did) but it also means making time for returning back to a part of myself and just hanging out there. Taking time off to tune in, turn on, peak in on the tenderest bits falling asleep in the back seat of my mind. Time for ruminating in the dusty ideas spottily watered in my mental grow rooms. Time to gently accelerate a dull pulse with a little attention. Amazing what a little attention does. Like a microphone extended in front of a mouth. An invitation. 

My friend Lily mentioned something in her most recent voice memo, something about how hard it is to return to the constantly shifting ground. Like how do you ground yourself or take root when nothing feels that steady, fixed, supportive. It struck me as the ultimate practice in life: to recognize the chaos and temporarily take root. To open the door, see a tornado forming, and still find your breath. To hop between lily pads, feathery and floating while also rooted below the water. It’s volcanic rock hopscotch over bubbling magma. It’s finding water in the desert. It’s finding your keys in between couch cushions and still making it there on time. It’s feeling hot when you often do not. It’s a plant surprise blooming after years of appearing static. It’s hugging your living kid after reading about another kid dying in yet another senseless shooting. It’s getting your period after Roe is overturned. 

YOU:

How do you return to yourself? (self portraits…writing..recording) Do you go somewhere? Wear something? Eat something? Call someone? Listen to something? Do you feel like you have something to return to inside of yourself or is the place that you want to return to amorphous and always changing? Do you return to something you can visualize or something that you can feel? 

What do you return to the most often? Is there a thing that you return to because of the types of things, feelings, learnings, parts of yourself that you can dependably re-discover there? Does returning feel regressive when there’s so much advancing to do? Is there a connection here to sentimentality? Do you need to return to certain stories, certain practices, certain mantras, certain memories, in order to keep going?

How does returning propel you forward? How does returning inhibit your growth? Do you care about growing? Isn’t it enough to be a mediocre bag of bones with a beating heart waking up another day on planet earth?! How much of your personal or professional evolution is dependent upon not returning? When things are shitty do you return to something fantastic in your mind? When things are fantastic do you puncture it with a shitty thought, a mini invitation to the impending doom? Do you prioritize returning to places in your body and disregard the mind as clutter?

I like returning to this YOU space in my letters because it helps orient them as conversations which feel more progressive than monologuing. I love you for thinking along with me, it helps me return to my curiosity, which is my superpower. 

CRAFT: 

How does returning to an old story with fresh eyes change things for you? Are you someone who needs the distance, needs new experiences to advance the story? Does returning to an old story feel dull or does the story or project appear brand new? Has it lost its power or energy now that you’ve re-distributed your focus in new directions? Is it comforting to return to an old script or session with new skills or are you just re-confronted with what you still haven’t figured out?

When is returning the right thing and when is it better to let it go? Do you keep obsessively working the same edit because there is a gap in your skill set, a gap in your reporting?Do you keep returning to the same style of stories as a listener or as a maker? Do you listen to make a return to a specific part of yourself? Do you return in oder to to continue to crystallize or hone in on your interests or your creative point of view?

Or does returning keep you in a loop? Same podcasts in your feed…same perspectives…dependable structure…same style of fade…same instrumentation in the scoring? Does the dependability of returning to that sweet spot comfort or madden you? It can be both! Next time you make something or listen to something…think about the scaffolding that supports the thing you’re consuming or creating..hone in on your patterns. See if by paying attention, new ones emerge. Relish in your returns or take flight.

10 glimpses:

1. During yoga, Adrienne said “try to avoid being stuck in the shape” and I felt everything in me pivot slightly

2. Bit into cherry tomatoes on cream cheese toast and the juice and globby seeds exploded into a splotchy lasso across the kitchen table

3. Got caught up witnessing a rectangle of light on the tips of tall grass

4. Realizing that when a child is in the room, catching up with an old friend isn’t actually up, it’s catching pieces and then trying to put them together in your head as you fall asleep at night

5. Shifting to rural life from city life is having anxiety over being the last one at the dump versus the last one at a restaurant before the kitchen closes

6. E telling me: “ My brain tries remembering things so that I can talk about them with you” 

1. Erica Heilman winning a Peabody Award for the best piece of audio I’ve heard all year and maybe ever:  Finn and the Bell

2. Driving through Ohio we passed by a truck with a bumper sticker that said hooterville inc at the same time that we passed Fangboner road

3. Fireworks and oysters and tacos and beet dip while barefoot in a field with new friends that felt like old friends

4. Being outside at night in the heat, in the rain, with the fireflies, with a bonfire, with the doors open, with the music on, with the connection valves receptive

Recommendations:

Helena de Groot is an exceptional interviewer who also happens to be a dear friend. She got in touch with me before interviewing the brilliant poet Niina Pollari about her new book of poetry called Path of Totality. She got in touch with me because the book is about the kind of loss that I know intimately. Helena wanted to find a respectful way into the conversation. She wanted to get it right… and she did. This episode of Poetry off the Shelf is breathtaking. Listen and read Niina’s book. It also happens to feel so good in your hands

I’ve mentioned Zak Rosen’s podcast The Best Advice Show before, but these gems from Sarah Polley were so lovely and fit right into this theme of returning. I’ve loved her films, but now I need to check out her book!

I grew up spending chunks of my summer on Cape Cod with my family. I loved our Provincetown adventures but never quite got a grip on what the real culture of the place was. The always brilliant Mitra Kaboli spent the summer in P-Town hanging out with locals and made a podcast about them and her experiences. I’m loving the audio verite vibes, the music, and Mitra’s style of reporting in this series

Return to a place that you spent a critical part of your life and check in with the people, places and spaces that shaped you

Make space for space. Not just for something specific to happen or something on the list to get done, but for space to feel spacious!

Stay up late catching fireflies, looking at the moon, listening to the city, the woods, whatever. Be outside during the times of the day or night that you’re usually inside. See what wakes up

Read a book of poetry if you usually read novels. Read non-fiction if you usually read fiction. Read a screenplay if you usually read the newspaper

Direct your anger into your art or into a howl or into an email. Find direction for big feelings, they will simmer down, or settle in

Talk to someone that’s not in your field about the thing that you do, find a new way in to clarifying what you do and why you do it

Return here again soon! I like being in this space with you, whoever you are. Come back.

PS. Here are two of your faces. One of them I haven’t seen in person in over twenty years. I love that you read my words, R. We used to go to raves together. Are you at a rave in this picture? I can still smell your lip gloss and remember how you drove a car. Fast. I can still picture how your hair moved when you danced.

Lily Rose, hope to see you IN PERSON soon. 

“Reading during my lunch break on election day (aaaaaahhhhhhh) while lounging, shoes off on the sofa in the common space where my office is, 3 stories above the sounds of Mission Street. I tried to capture a Muni bus for you in the background. The sounds are really present for me right now, I think in part because I'm always listening to the ambient noise and in part because reading your newsletter really supports that inclination. I'm feeling full from my lunch that I couldn't even finish but I'm excited that I get to have some potato salad as a snack later. I got teary thinking of you holding E on the day of the shooting and grateful I don't have a child yet to feel those feelings on quite that level and also sad I couldn't hold a little one that day. Thank you for telling me about Not Lost and Irma Thomas and for all the other wonderful things and feelings and reflections you've brought into my life.”

P.P.S. Send me something about returning. Maybe it’s a photo of a place you keep returning to…maybe it’s a photo of someone you haven’t seen in a long time, maybe it’s a podcast that you keep returning to, or an idea or an obstacle? Send me your returns, and with your permission, I’ll share the various forms in my next letter: themomentmagnet@gmail.com 

Wherever this finds you, may you feel safe and held and loved in whatever you’re going through. May you listen to more stories, to more people, to the deep wild within yourself.

xx,

Sara