Trying again
When "good enough" feels insurmountable
Hi heathens,
I haven’t written in a while. I could say I’ve been busy with life and personal projects (which is true), but what’s more accurate is that there are multiple genocides happening and the U.S. is under authoritarian rule and every draft I start seems so pathetically small by comparison. (If I can’t fix it all, what’s the point?)
But of course, I’m being a hypocrite. Other people’s perfectly-imperfect art and writing is what keeps me going. It’s what inspires me every day to work toward a better world.
So, I’ll keep writing this newsletter — I enjoy it, and I want to — though the structure might morph from one to the next. Today I’ll simply list…
A few unimportant things that belong in the Better World:
Bottoms (2023)
Cole Escola’s sartorial tribute to Bernadette Peters at the Tony’s, and her vocal support of them after.
Margery Kempe memes
Fairy tale logic. Specifically, a passage in the little book of Celtic Fairy Tales1 I bought last month for a quarter, in which a fairy woman calls her cattle back to the sea and the black calf obeys, even though “it had just been slaughtered, and [is] hanging on the meat hook.”
Sauteed pea greens
Sharing veggies from the garden with friends and neighbors
The way my kid processes every new piece of information by play-acting it. (“I’m Mr. Tin! Would you like a hug, Mr. Copper? … Ope!2 We turned into bronze!”)
The fact that I can now identify so many trees by their leaves — a skill I dreamed of having while growing up as a suburban “indoor” kid.
Willow weaving
Thank you all for sticking around. Please know — your small actions matter. The five seconds you spent locking eyes with a squirrel on your lunch break count as a pagan practice.
I hope you’re safe and well and making good trouble. <3
Lee
Jacobs, Joseph, and Thea Kliros, eds. Favorite Celtic Fairy Tales. Dover Children’s Thrift Classics. New York: Dover Publications, 1994.
They’ve never lived in the Midwest. I’m so proud they have “ope” in their lexicon.