June welcomes you.
June holds the hurt in your heart and the rage in your hands and the pressure behind your eyes. June can do what this world cannot do (if you let her). She will keep you safe. Well, she will try. She will show you dandelions by the thousands and let you marvel at how this everyday magic exists on your lawn specifically. She will let you look at robins collecting fine things for their nests and let you in on the open secret that chicks are nearby. June is green. Green is holy when it is new. Green comes when it looked like the world would only be brown and grey forever. June will greet you will cool mornings and warm afternoons. June wants to see your bare arms. June kisses your goosebumps when you misjudged the temperature and didn’t bring a jacket. June stays light late so you can get home safe.
CW: mass shootings, grief
June is doing her best to hold what happened in May. What happens every single day. As are we all. Holding feels like the wrong word - it’s too soft. Gripping might be a better one. Clenching. Clinging to one another. Bracing against “a culture that worships violence because it is afraid to feel”. Steeling up for another day at the grocery store, the shopping mall, the movie theatre, work. School. Benign, quotidian daily doings made risky by the choice of inaction at every level of government.
I hear it called negligence, but that is too kind. Negligence implies they didn’t know, that this caught them by surprise, that they were looking the other way. Distracted. Misinformed. “Oops.”
“There are more than 393 million civilian-owned firearms in the United States, or enough for every man, woman and child to own one and still have 67 million guns left over.” - The Washington Post
What can you call it but evil when the dangers were known? Are known? Are brought to the table and violently pushed aside, trashed, again and again and again? When we watch this happen every single day? When this only happens, in this way, in one country on earth? Is there a better word for it than evil?
“I don’t know how many different ways I can express how it feels to know that this country will always offer up the violent destruction of our lives to young white men angry at their lack of purpose and power. We will never be safe until white manhood is defined by something other than the quest for domination over others.” - Ijeoma Oluo
There is almost no time to grieve. One devastation after another, scattered across the US. Days apart, hours apart. Our collective consciousness labours under the weight of this grief. We labour together. Our hearts break together for the 10. The 21. Those way-more-than-a-number souls. Those left behind. Those who live in fear.
I write this from Atlantic Canada. While we do not experience the same level of gun violence here, we are certainly not immune to it nor are we immune to white supremacist ideology, the vicious rot at the core of so many of these attacks. We ache for those we love in the US. Our family. Jason’s parents, sister, brother, nieces, nephews, our many friends. We ache, too, for those we do not know - for injustice, terror, and grief do not adhere to the borderline. All beings, everywhere, are deserving of safety, freedom, and peace.
Hold one another close, hold your babies, hold your moms, hold your neighbours, hold yourself when you are alone. (You are not alone in this.) I am holding you in my prayers. And as Jason said this week, “I am praying that those with the power to keep our neighbours safe will do more than pray.”
HOW TO HELP:
Click here for how to help grieving families in Ulvade, TX.
Click here to donate directly to victims and survivors of the violence in Buffalo, NY.
“Every inch of process, every ounce of love, every truly meaningful action from here on out will happen through courage not comfort.” - Prentis Hemphill
Feelings of creativity and fear have a hard time existing simultaneously. The nervous system likes to prioritize one over the other, meaning that if I am feeling unsafe or anxious in any given moment, it is hard for me to access play, joy, mess (because I am too busy looking for threats). I took this past Saturday afternoon to purposefully engage with creativity, not in an effort to undermine feeling unsafe/bothered/on-edge (as these are important, valid messengers) but in an effort to re-engage the parts of me that recognize what is good, what is coexisting alongside the hurt, heartbreak, and fear.
I leafed through old, musty magazines with the sole purpose of making something. I made a birthday card for my soul friend Marília. I made a father’s day card. I made this weird collage with a fish and his clearly impressed on-looker.
Creativity is activism fuel. It allows us to imagine new futures, pathways, possibilities. (I am leaning on the wisdom of Karen Walrond’s The Lightmaker’s Manifesto on how to fight for change without losing your joy - pivotal read.) What would it mean for you to connect to creativity right now? How would you do it? Does it feel possible? Does it come easy?
On said Saturday-afternoon-with-musty-magazines, this poem bubbled to the surface. I so enjoy making found poems - “the literary equivalent of a collage” - taking text written for another purpose and refashioning it into something new. It’s like taking down the living room curtains, cutting them up, sewing them into the hottest dress ever, and wearing it to your ex-girlfriend’s wedding. This poem, here, made me think of Lucy in a Charlie Brown Christmas.
My partner’s parents brought you back to our rented apartment in a damp paper towel. The tiniest sapling, so feather-soft. You could sit in the palm of my hand (we say that about new puppies too), your length just right, from wrist to middle-finger. We kept you on the windowsill there and promised to plant you soon. We almost forgot you while we packed up, but didn’t. You were just the last to go.
When we drove here from Halifax, you hung out in the cup holder - the one between the front seats, with a good view of everyone. We hoped that being out of the ground so long wouldn’t be to your detriment. We said that “he looks hearty! I think he can make it!”.
You did. You made it to our shady backyard with its horrible dirt. We dig a little hole for you with our broken spade and plopped you beside the Mugo Pine (aspirational). We watered you and hoped you would take.
It has been one month now and you have even grown a bit. We crouch down and squint at you. We say things like “it looks like he has even grown a bit!”. We really believe you have. The needles on the end of your branches are a paler, fresher green than the rest, and we take that as a good sign. We put some leftover mulch around you and pulled up a dandelion that was honing in on your territory.
We will be careful not to mow you when if we mow the backyard. Jason struggles to find you sometimes but I always know where you are. “There he is”, I’ll say. And there you’ll be.
Congratulations, gentle sapling. You’re the tree of the month.
PS: What do ya know. Scary Tree grew leaves.
NOW READING:
Intimacies by Katie Kitamura (Just finished, flew through it - lovely, electric)
Flèche by Mary Jean Chan
My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales edited by Kate Bernheimer
SO ENJOYING:
This new music video for Unconditional I (Lookout Kid) by Arcade Fire. My dad sent it to me last week (we exchange music recommendations every Tuesday). I watched it five times in a row and cried like crazy.
No Mow May. We haven’t mowed our lawn all month and neither have most of the folks in our town. The bees are so happy. I may never mow again!
Everything Is A Newsletter - the latest offering from the seemingly bottomless creative well of my dear friend Katia Engell. Thoughtful writing, world-building collage, delightful prints, empathetic human. What more do ya want! Subscribe now!!!
Horror Scoops - this completely amazing and irreverent weekly horoscope Instagram account by Heather Buchanan who “knows nothing (or everything?) about astrology”. It’s Gemini season (aka my season to thrive) (aka I am turning 30 on Sunday) (aka !!!) so here’s a sampling. #boilinghotbogwater
GATORADE MOON RADIO:
Waiting for That Day, George Michael
Light Enough to Travel, The Be Good Tanyas
Runnin’ Back to Saskatoon, The Guess Who
Fuck and Run, Liz Phair
Hot Child In The City, Nick Glider
No Hurry, Terra Lightfoot
Get Together, The Youngbloods
Young Mountain, Tim Finn
Restless One, Loamlands
Stand Tall, Burton Cummings
Before We Were Together, Margaret Glaspy
Unconditional I (Lookout Kid), Arcade Fire
Sending heart and warmth, from here to there. See you next month.
Love,
Joce