CYB #65: Holding Space for Each Other, Survival Tactics, and Dept. of (Good)WTF
There are now literally new emotional meanings for this Dry January, like WTF?
(Image: Gonna need a lot more hikes in 2025!)
How’s It Going?
This past week, I noticed how many people I work with said things in their emails, such as “How are you doing, given all that is going on?” and “Hold the people you care for at this difficult time.” In my little bubble or series of bubbles, people are dismayed, scared, depressed, traumatized, and trying to figure out personal and political ways forward.
So, what are some of the things I am doing to cope?
Literally, get stronger: Others have echoed my meme of turning to exercise and health as a way to resist. The Cut has a fun story about Coping with Endorphins that I related to. Tressie McPhd is mentioned with a great Insta post with a similar vibe:
(And she deadlifts what looks like 100 lbs. in the third frame, a good lift!)! And The Guardian jumps in with a story that basically says Women who lift heavy pee when they do it, but who cares?
Rediscover Diane DiPrima, a brilliant artist from the past: When I was a 19-year-old college student, writing poetry and smoking unfiltered Camels, I idolized the poets Diane Wakoski and Diane DiPrima. Diane DiPrima was old enough to kind of have been a Beat; she wrote an amazing book called Kerhonkson Journal about living off the land in a small Catskills town not far from my college, she wrote the brilliant Revolutionary Letters, and she was a badass who went on to write Loba, one of the most brilliant poetry books of the time.
My plan for this year is to soak my weary bones in every drop of DiPrima I have stashed on my bookshelves and then some. I will reread her two memoirs, Memoirs of a Beatnik and Recollections of My Life as a Woman, and sink into these days when the Government was the enemy and the establishment were Pigs.
Read Younger Writers: Essays and Nonfiction posts by B.D. MClay, Emily Witt, Tembe Denton-Hurst, and Brandon Taylor are blowing me away– fricking rockstars whose ways of seeing are fresh, personal, and illuminating.
Notebook by BDM–B.D.McClay–is free-ranging and casual, and their insights are excellent. This newsletter has quickly become a favorite. What a great voice.
Tembe Denton-Hurst is such a strong critic; Extracurricular is a must-read. Another favorite.
Likewise, I first knew Brandon Taylor as a fiction writer and have come to appreciate him as an essayist and critic. .
Also, Girl Insides, and Pleasure Seeking by Camille Sojit Pejcha.
My new find is Emily Witt.I have not dug into her newsletter yet, but I am inhaled Health and Safety: A Breakdown, an incredibly well-written and evocative book about New York City, being in your mid to late thirties, the club scene, the first Trump regime, and so much more. I will write more about this book (and buy a paper copy to pore over). It is so good.
Department of (Good) WTF
Yes, to AOC, who said, “This is the United States of America…We hate Nazis.”
And this:
What are you doing to get through that you want to talk about? Please share.
Until next time, take care of yourself and those around you.
Warmly,
Susan