the miscellany trainy
(i might still be drugged up)
I’ve been off social media for a few weeks now and, y’all, I’m loving it. I have more time, more creativity, more initiative, and more presence. (It might be recency bias, but I’m noticing other writers saying the same. Molly Ella wrote about it over at
, and my friend Kayla Craig mused similarly at .) I plan to funnel that excess into this Substack, and am currently developing ideas on what that will look like. More on that in the coming weeks!
This week I had a uterine ablation that will hopefully resolve my chronic anemia, and I’ll just go ahead and say it: I freaking love anesthesia. Like yes, put me in the deepest sleep humanly possible. Make it easy to get there, no tossing or turning. Wake me up all slow and gentle. Offer me grape juice with a straw and let me take my ever-loving time opening my mouth for it. I can’t even pretend to hate that, you guys. Never will.
Recovery-wise, this is a simple procedure with just some manageable cramping. I’m on the mend and happily living in my fuzzy onesie pajamas for the foreseeable future.
In the meantime, here are some goodies for you to read:
I am consistently inspired by and the way she fights for aliveness through creative expression, but her words on fear here apply to so much more.
And so my current modus operandi must be this: I have to trust and find ways to delight in the mystery of how things unfold, even if it’s not what I had planned, even if it’s far from ideal. I have to believe it’s possible that facing the thing you fear brings you exactly what you need.
As our world feels a bit closer to apocalyptic, Annie Sand at has words that land just right: Reading Poetry on Election Night
I think we all felt an end coming then. In a heartland known for its rich, dark soil, there hadn’t been rain in weeks. Old streams ran dry. The sun beat down from the cloudless blue, day after day, until the lilacs bloomed in October and cherry blossoms joined red berries on the boughs. Bad omens if ever I’d seem them. Something was coming. We probably weren’t ready for it.
In the past two years since my brush with death, I have felt a magnetic pull toward concertgoing. My friend wrote about what live music has done for her recently, and I ate up every word.
And then, at the shows, I remembered. I was desperate for ritual time. Concerts have a clear beginning and ending, and in the middle, you get to drop out of time. There is nowhere else you need to be. There is nothing else you need to do. Your schedule and your to-do list fade into the background. You don’t have to manage anything or anyone. Time fades away. You get to live in deep time.
“If Adam Picked the Apple” by Danielle Coffyn is the poem I didn’t know I needed.
There would be a parade,
a celebration,
a holiday to commemorate
the day he sought enlightenment.
Could there be a greater honor than U.S. Catholic magazine declaring that The Mystics Would Like a Word “redefines Catholic womanhood”?
We associate their spirituality with a rejection of the physical, since women’s bodies have always been a problem for the church. We may even feel uneasy with these saints and mystics, since female spirituality has often been used to shame women who don’t fit the holy card image. Evans shows us these women as they really were, in their authenticity, complexity, sensuality, and strangeness… Demure defenders of the patriarchy they certainly were not.
With love,
Shannon
And congrats on the recognition for The Mystics…!
That poem is fabulous.