Miscellaneous Wonders #3
another installment with a few sundry updates
Dear Friends,
Would it be weirder to say something or not say anything at all? My politics only lightly touch this newsletter, mainly because they soak into everything else I do. I’m not always sure how to moderate between the light touch and the heavy-handed one. I’ve said before that I am not an activist, but the texts and languages of activism inspire me; they go into the work itself. Which is what this newsletter is about. What it means to be a creative, a working writer, and how everything feeds into that life—that way of being.
This is how I’ve seen myself and how I continue to see myself: as an artist who responds to the world and creates by and through it. Sometimes I am holding a mirror up to the reality I see. Sometimes I am witness. Sometimes I am letting my imagination overtake me. Sometimes I am interpreting better or worse versions of humans and their actions.
I don’t think I have anything pithy to say to summarize all of my feelings at the moment. There are a lot of feelings that go into every election cycle. As someone whose politics are fairly far on the left, I suspect many people would not want to hear what I have to say, because what I have to say holds no kindness for the system or the politicians who uphold it. Yet, I want people to find comfort where they can. Even if I am the type of person who moves, full-throttle, into the blunt edges of the world. This is the best I can do: throw myself into my studies and my work because art-making is how I enter a conversation with these changes—and how I respond to them.
Perhaps this is the ‘once a poet, always a poet’ plight. If you are a poet at heart, you’ll know this one well. You have this antenna growing out of your head, catching every signal, and there’s this irremediable urge to respond to it all. Every calamity of the world buzzed into your brain. You speak and speak and speak. Even when you know you should choose quietude. For now, putting a few words in this newsletter is getting me closer to all that has been swirling inside my head the past week.
Ultimately, the art-making doesn’t erase any of the suffering—but hopefully it can do something with it: transform it, illuminate it, speak to it, speak through it. Something. I am hoping that if you are a person who is worried about their own survival, that you, too, can find some alleviation inside your own art. I hope that you can keep going, too.
This is an especially short newsletter today. I just wanted to highlight a bit of what I’ve been reading recently as well as plug some of my own writing.
What I’ve Been Reading
High Risk: An Anthology of Forbidden Writings edited by Amy Scholder and Ira Silverberg (1991)
Angela Carter and the Fairy Tale edited by Cristina Bacchilega and Danielle M. Roemer (2001)
My Own Writing
A few weeks ago a novelette titled “An Echtra” was published on Short Story, a literary magazine run here on Substack. This is a story about the enduring middles of relationships. It’s also about spite houses and serviceberries and bakeries and pies and cold iron knives and faerie realms and wondering if your lover has been replaced by a doppelgänger. But mostly it’s a love story. The story is behind a paywall (although, who knows, Substack may allow you to view it for free). If a paywall is cost prohibitive for you and you would like to read the story in its entirety—please message me.
A flash fiction piece about a selkie of the city (imagine an entire metropolis shedding its skin instead of a seal) was republished in The Wyrmhole this past week. “The Selkie of the City Tells All” was originally published in a print issue of Fairy Tale Review in 2023.
That’s it!
Until next time,
JD