Dear Somebody: The only book worth writing.

Favorite warning (London, 2025)

A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:

MONDAY 

After our usual English breakfast, we start a long, leisurely walk to Bishop’s Park along the river. I’m meeting V, a fellow writer (and editor), for the first time. We first entered each other’s orbit nearly a decade ago, when she commented on an Instagram post of one of my books. I was honored then, as I am now, to have my work read by someone I so deeply admire. 

I drag the kids along, half-pulling N, half-carrying F. We left plenty of time to walk, but the children pause to kiss every dog and wave at every gull and before I know it, I’m already late, nowhere near the park.  Go on ahead, T tells me, and I do, half-walking and half-running, now pulling myself along faster than my feet prepared for. 

Gulls congregating along River Thames (2025)

When I finally arrive, we get drinks and move over to a bench facing the river. After the initial few moments, we fall into conversation quickly and easily. I am so comfortable with this stranger, in fact, that although it gushes a mere few feet away, I never look away from V and back towards the river. Not once. 

I am reminded, once again, about how expansive life becomes when I allow others in—how, no matter how small or routine my life may feel at any particular moment, opening myself up to the right person will immediately buoy it. The right person reminds me of my own possibility, my own effervescence, my own value. The right person reminds me that the right people are worth the effort: the hundreds of lackluster coffees and playdates and one-sided creative collaborations that led me, eventually, to this moment in Bishop’s Park. 

For two hours, I am engulfed in conversation with another creative, another mother, another writer who I don’t have to explain myself to—because she already knows. For two hours, my brain buzzes with interest, with joy. I am invigorated in a way only possible when sharing meaningful conversation: when the conversation itself is the meal, the food and drink and river all forgotten. All this from a chance meeting with a stranger? All this from a comment on an Instagram post many moons ago? All this from a text message, a kind word, a hello? All this. 

T and the kids arrive to collect me. I sign books for V’s friends and daughter, I place the gift she’s brought me—a prescription bottle of poetry, labeled A Room of One’s Own, in my bag. Hugs are exchanged, letters are promised, and I walk away satiated, wondering if this the beginning of a new friendship.

It’s now been four weeks since our time together in the park; I think of V often. At this age, there is so much space and strangeness between me and anybody else, lifetimes of moments and memories that we’ll never share. How do new friendships begin? How do they sustain when so much life has already been lived? V lives in london, I live in Saint Louis. Her daughter began college this fall; mine beg me to ensure no monsters take them away. Our day-to-day lives? Different. Our faces and brains and cultures? Different. Our upbringings? Our thoughts and fears and desires? Different, different, different. Life is a series of unfinished roads, dozens of bricks piled up and forgotten. 

A gift from V: A prescription from The Poetry Pharmacy (2025)

A month to the day I placed the bottle of poems inside my bag, I finally open it. The pill I shake out is indigo, my favorite color. It’s a quote by Hélène Cixous, that reads: The only book that is worth writing is the one we don’t have the courage or strength to write. The book that hurts us (we who are writing), that makes us tremble, redden, bleed.”

Poetry prescription from my bottle of medicine (2025)

I know this is true of my work and I want it to be true of my life. After all, what’s the difference between writing a book and writing a friendship? Both require a little bit of vulnerability. Both require a knock. Both require you to stand at the door, asking to be let in. I’m afraid of many things, but I know that fear is a costume that courage wears often—so I pick up my pencil and begin to write.

TUESDAY

I’ve recently seen the cyanometer, an instrument for measuring blueness, make its rounds on the internet. It was invented by Horace Benedict de Saussure, a Swiss physicist and mountain climber in 1789. 

I was reminded of Sophie Blackall’s recent creations of her own four cyanometers, which she used to measure the blueness of the sea. I don’t know what to call it, but I’d like to make a meter to measure the color of clouds. 

WEDNESDAY

My Start Where You Are 2026 weekly planners and wall calendars (2025)

For those of you who haven’t seen, my 2026 wall calendar and weekly planners are now available, and they are bright, lovely, and a joy to use. This will be my last calendar collection, so if you’ve been wanting to hang a calendar of mine, now’s the time to grab one.

You can order them directly from Andrews McMeel/Amber Lotus Publishing or in my BuyOlympia shop, as well as your local book shop or Amazon. 

THURSDAY

I haven’t recorded a podcast in a few years now, so it was especially enjoyable to break my recording fast with a really, really lovely conversation with designer and author Radim Malinic. 

We discuss all things creativity and books, but I especially loved how easy it was to sink into a meaningful conversation about letting go: life is a continual series of transformations—and if you’re going to grow, you have to let go of the person you used to be. You can listen to the episode here. 

A bonus episode, that focuses on a few especially meaningful moments (including my belief that letting go isn’t something you do, it’s simply the byproduct of acceptance) is available here. 

My gratitude to Radim for having me on, and for such a pleasurable conversation. And! If you haven’t already, you can pre-order Learn to Let Go: A Journal for New Beginnings. 

FRIDAY

That time
we all heard it,
cool and clear,
cutting across the hot grit of the day.
The major Voice.
The adult Voice
forgoing Rolling River,
forgoing tearful tale of bale and barge
and other symptoms of an old despond.
Warning, in music-words
devout and large,
that we are each other’s
harvest:
we are each other’s
business:
we are each other’s
magnitude and bond.

—Paul Robeson by Gwendolyn Brooks

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A year ago, these were the five things I most wanted to remember:

Dear Somebody: Losing a Penguin (September 20, 2024)

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See you next week!

xx,

M

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To sign up for my weekly newsletter, Dear Somebody, please subscribe here.

Dear Somebody: I'm on my way.

River Thames (London, 2025)

A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:

MONDAY 

After our standard London breakfast (coffee from Tamp, chocolate croissant from Gail’s, a banana from the street vendor) we walk to the train and board for Blackfriars. We’re going to Tate Modern to meet Honee, a friend I made in 2022 when she attended our Visual Journaling retreat in the south of France. 

I haven’t seen her since then, but our time together feels easy. We catch up on our present lives and then we visit our past ones: I learn about her childhood and upbringing, we exchange notes on our familial relationships, on art-making, on daily evolution. When we hug goodbye, it doesn’t feel like it’ll be for the last time. 

Afterwards, I meet up with T and the girls and we venture into the Tate Modern bookstore. I haven’t stepped inside this gorgeous room since 2019, and the selection is always so tempting: dozens and dozens of beautiful books, all of which I want to purchase and take back home. 

T immediately spots Start Where You Are on the shelves and excitedly shows our girls. He makes such a big deal out of it that I feel sheepish. I feel demure—after all, it’s been a full decade since this, my first book, was published—does it still deserve such fanfare? My relationship with deserve is a sticky one, conflated with dangerous notions of self-worth and how I must earn it. 

Start Where You Are: A Journal for Self-Exploration (2015!)

It’s been 10 years since Start Where You Are was published—with well over a million copies in print, it’s sold hundreds of thousands of copies worldwide, has been translated into a dozen languages, and continues to help people all over this earth learn more about themselves. Seeing that it’s still stocked in one of the most prestigious museums in the world, a decade later, is validating. 

Finding Start Where You Are at Tate Moden with N and F :) (2025)

This book changed my life. It began my career as an author; it invited me into the world of publishing—and allowed me to build my life around my love of books; it gave me my first real reason to take a chance on me. It has a very dear place in my heart, and if I consider it quite clearly, it’s disappointing to know that over time, I have learned to push all of my achievements away. 

Luckily, T forces me to recognize my success, regularly, and for that I am grateful. Celebrating this book with my young girls is beautiful. I’m grateful for the chance to show them, first hand, that making things from the heart, with honesty and integrity, can take you to incredible places—to places that once, they weren’t even allowed to go. 

I want to raise young girls who don’t feel the constant need to minimize their achievements, and believing that I deserve good things is fundamental for doing that. Believing that I deserve good things is hard—but I’m on my way. 

TUESDAY

I’m On My Way by Ben Kweller, obviously, for the aforementioned reasons. 

WEDNESDAY

A peek into N’s London sketchbook, which was made inside an actual sketchbook but also on various paper menus throughout the neighborhood. This one, that she made while we had lunch at Franco Manca’s with a dear old friend, is one of my favorites:

N’s London sketchbook (2025)

THURSDAY

A few sketchbook pages from my time in London, including (in order): St. James’ park, colors as memories, the girls walking to Homefield Park, N in front of a cobbled doorway, and the greens of London.

London sketchbook (2025)

London sketchbook (2025)

FRIDAY

Starting here, what do you want to remember?
How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?
What scent of old wood hovers, what softened
sound from outside fills the air?

Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect that you carry
wherever you go right now? Are you waiting
for time to show you some better thoughts?

When you turn around, starting here, lift this
new glimpse that you found; carry into evening
all that you want from this day. This interval you spent
reading or hearing this, keep it for life –

What can anyone give you greater than now,
starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?

—You Reading This, Be Ready by William Stafford

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A year ago, these were the five things I most wanted to remember:

Dear Somebody: I am not a machine. (September 6, 2024)
Dear Somebody: Losing a penguin. (September 20, 2024)

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See you next week!

xx,

M

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To sign up for my weekly newsletter, Dear Somebody, please subscribe here.

Dear Somebody: A pair of wings.

Observing Mont Blanc in Chamonix, France (2025)

A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:

MONDAY 

As we approach Chamonix, I see Mont Blanc rising in the distance, rising up out of the ground as it once rose out of the sea. The only time I ever felt the word majestic come alive with meaning was in the Yamanashi Prefecture, when, after days, the clouds petered for a few minutes and let Mt. Fuji materialize before our eyes. 

I felt awe then, as I do now.

Moon! F says, pointing at the sky, and we all look up. Dozens of moons sway in the sky, so tiny they look like colorful pinpricks in the clouds. They slowly drift closer, and as they do, we realize that each pinprick is a person falling from the sky.

Falling from the sky in Chamonix, France (2025)

I’m going to do that, says T, watching each paraglider careen over mountains and pine trees. Some pirouette as they come towards earth, some swing back and forth, many simply glide. Each one is attached to their own pair of wings, in hues of bright yellows or pinks or reds. As the ground swells up before them, they quickly find their legs again, no longer able to rely on pockets of air to help them move. 

Every time I look up, I see tiny pinpricks in the clouds: red, yellow, pink. Our eyes follow each person as they slowly come into view; we hold our breath until we see them land; we cheer as their feet touch the ground. Each flight is staggering, a feat of engineering that allows a person, who will never possess the splendor of a bird or a mountain, to momentarily gain wings. 

All week, T talks about paragliding. He asks me to go with him, but I have little desire to fall from the sky. I have no interest in jumping off a cliff, or a plane, or a bridge. I like being on the ground. By the end of the week, it becomes evident that no one else is up for the risk, either. The only person adventurous enough to accompany T is N, who, at four years old, simply isn’t allowed. When I’m five, I’m going to fall out of the sky, too, she stubbornly vows. Like dad.

Two days before we leave France, I tell T I’ll join him. I know we simply can’t go home without him having flown. I make peace with knowing that for my wings to take flight, I’ll first have to fall.

In the morning, I feel calm—detached, even, but as our gondola begins the steep incline up Mont Blanc, the familiar rush of anxiety washes over me. We climb higher and higher. After a few minutes, I stop looking down. At the foot of Aiguille du Midi, I’m 8,000 feet above ground. My gliding instructor, Luciolle, is serious and kind. He asks me what my name is.

OK, Meera, he says. When I tell you to run, you run quickly, with strength. You run until you run off the mountain. Don’t slow down. Don’t stop running. Can you do that?

Yes, I say. I can do that.

Luciolle clips me into the harness, and then clips himself in behind. He untangles our wings and makes sure our wires aren’t crossed. He checks that the impending storm brewing in the clouds isn’t heading our way. Then: he tells me to run. 

The foot of Aiguille du Midi, Chamonix, France (2025)

I turned my brain off in preparation for this moment, so when I hear his shout in my ear, I don’t hesitate or think or ask questions. I just run, really fast. I run off the edge of the mountain. 

Suspended 9,000 feet in the air in Chamonix, France (2025)

Suspended 8,000 feet in the air, I try not to let the anxiety in my stomach turn into nausea. We catch thermals and climb higher, to 9,000 feet, and then higher still. I tell myself I’m a bird, and I am. I tell myself to breathe slowly and I do. Luciolle teaches me to steer, and I take us over a sea of pine trees, emerald crayon marks against a bright sky. If I go east, I’ll head towards the storm, and if I go west, I’ll scale Mont Blanc, the crest of its face covered in glittering show. At 10,000 feet in the air, I make choices I never dreamed I’d have. 

The air is cool against my face. Up this high, the world is quiet, and calm, and sweet. I feel the silence of everything; freedom from thought. It’s my one chance to fly—to do what man isn’t supposed to do—and I do.

T jumps into flight in Chamonix, France (2025)

Even now, weeks later, I’m not certain of why I decided to fly. All I know is that my desire for T to get his wish is greater than my desire to keep my feet on the ground. I recognize that the thrill, for me, isn’t in becoming a bird or in surprising myself by doing something I’d never imagined I’d do. It isn’t even in the joy of seeing my small children run to me upon landing, their sweet faces split into wide grins. For me, the thrill is in seeing T get his wish—in knowing that because of our companionship, a person I love won’t later feel regret. 

I joke about it now—how I begrudgingly ran off a cliff for a person I love. But I know that every now and then, in order to become the person I wish to be, I, too, will need a gentle prod—or maybe, a pair of wings. 

TUESDAY

The portrait of a young artist in Annecy, France (2025)

Lake Annecy is stunning—so turquoise and clear that it’s easy, for a moment, to believe it won’t always be this way. Dozens of summering families mill about, sunbathing or sleeping or wading out into the water. For once, summer feels easy—like the simple glories provided by the earth are finally enough.

As is her way, F makes friends with a local street artist who invites her to paint with him. As we leave, he gifts her their collaboration, which now hangs proudly in her room. 

WEDNESDAY

I promise myself I’ll work in my sketchbook while traveling, and though I did here and there, I mostly take notes and photos, save scraps, and make scribbles to revisit later. 

France sketchbook (2025, colored pencil and marker on paper)

France sketchbook (2025, crayon and marker on paper)

France sketchbook (2025, crayon and marker on paper)

I find that I work in my sketchbook more when I give myself a break: get to it when I can, make peace with the drawing that appears, and demand less of myself when I’m in the present moment—other than simply being there. 

THURSDAY

“Imagine the places you grew up, the places you studied, places that belonged to your people, burned. But I should stop pretending that I know you. Perhaps you do not have to imagine. Perhaps your library, too, went up in smoke.

You must understand: There is no single day on which a war begins. The conflict will collect around you gradually, the way carrion birds assemble around the vulnerable, until there are so many predators that the object of their hunger is not even visible. You will not even be able to see yourself in the gathering crowd of those who would kill you.” —from V. V. Ganeshananthan’s Brotherless Night

I listen to Brotherless Night, which is set during the Sri Lankan civil war, over the course of a week. Each time I stop to tend to the realities of my life, I find myself unable to stop considering the reality of a life—and a family, splintered by war. There is nothing I didn’t love about this book, but Nirmala Rajasingam’s eloquent, perfectly-paced narration makes listening to it an absolute pleasure. 

FRIDAY

By the first of August
the invisible beetles began
to snore and the grass was
as tough as hemp and was
no color—no more than
the sand was a color and
we had worn our bare feet
bare since the twentieth
of June and there were times
we forgot to wind up your
alarm clock and some nights
we took our gin warm and neat
from old jelly glasses while
the sun blew out of sight
like a red picture hat and
one day I tied my hair back
with a ribbon and you said
that I looked almost like
a puritan lady and what
I remember best is that
the door to your room was
the door to mine.

—I Remember by Anne Sexton

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A year ago, these were the five things I most wanted to remember:

Dear Somebody: I am not a machine. (September 6, 2024)

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See you next week!

xx,

M

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To sign up for my weekly newsletter, Dear Somebody, please subscribe here.

Dear Somebody: How do I start this day?

Dear Somebody,

My family has spent most of this month traveling: Chicago, London, Geneva, Chamonix, Geneva again, London again, Phoenix, and back home again. It’s been wonderful and exhausting; astonishing in different ways. I’ve come back feeling untethered, which is, for once, a pleasant feeling. This, too, is a surprise. 

I’ve missing writing to you, but I have been writing: in my Notes app, in my sketchbook, in the margins of takeaway menus and ticket stubs. I have a series of letters to send from our time overseas, and you can expect the first one next week.

In the meantime, a few of my favorite past letters are below. I enjoyed revisiting these. I hope you do, too. 

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A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:

MONDAY 

Dear Somebody: Cutting out the rot.

“Over the past decade, my relationship with my work twisted itself into a rotting mass—one where I searched for the proof of my own self-worth in my work. When my ability to work very hard was the only thing I still liked about myself, I knew it was time for a change. So I cut the rot out.

Part of this excavation process involves consciously expanding my love for working into a broader love for everything outside of it. I know that my work will only be as thoughtful, as intelligent, and as full as my actual life is. I also know that I live in a country where no one really cares if a mother has a room or time of her own to put towards developing her mind, spirit, or craft. I live in a country with a supremely unhealthy work culture, where there’s little desire to separate a human being from their production value. I know the history and lineage behind my harmful admiration of debilitating independence and relentless hard work. And yet, I love my work. I am lucky to have found it, lucky to love it so. But I want to love myself more.”

Read full story

TUESDAY

Dear Somebody: Losing a Penguin.

“In the morning, N makes the shape of a penguin with her arms. Mom, last night when I didn’t have penguin, I closed my eyes and it felt like I was holding him. I am grateful for her brilliant imagination, for its ability to comfort her. I am disappointed that memory—as shoddy and unreliable as it is, with all its faulty limitations—is still the next best thing to the actual presence of something we love.”

Read full story

WEDNESDAY

Dear Somebody: When all is quiet. 

“On the other side of worry, I divert my energy towards developing a trust between myself, my work, and the world: things will work out. I can move towards my goals andbelieve they will be achieved. I can build creative growth and hope. I can feel forgotten and be excited to one day reemerge. I can choose to feel good—and the more I do, the more meaningful my subsequent choices are.

Back on the porch, I chew slowly. A small breeze comes along and my napkin flutters, a thin pair of two-ply wings. The tulip poplar tree across from our front yard has grown so large in the few years I’ve lived here. Now, green leaves burst forth, invigorated by our recent rains. The branches stretch towards me like the future does, like the past used to before I closed the door on it. In a few hours, my kids will thunder down these sidewalks, begging me to jump rope with them. We’ll walk down to the nearby bridge, press our faces through the windows in the cement walls, and wait for the city trains to rush by. It doesn’t matter if the conductor looks up or not; we always wave.”

Read full story

THURSDAY

Dear Somebody: Being here.

“I don’t optimize. It doesn’t make sense anymore. In the past, I have worried, having convinced myself that worrying is doing something and therefore, at least, still productive. Of course, I was wrong; each day, I continue to be. If there’s a purpose to life, maybe this is it—to constantly unlearn until, at the end, I am stripped of all belief, leaving the way I came in: honest, unharmed, full of possibility.”

Read full story

FRIDAY

It’s ripe, the melon
by our sink. Yellow,
bee-bitten, soft, it perfumes
the house too sweetly.
At five I wake, the air
mournful in its quiet.
My wife’s eyes swim calmly
under their lids, her mouth and jaw
relaxed, different.
What is happening in the silence
of this house? Curtains
hang heavily from their rods.
Ficus leaves tremble
at my footsteps. Yet
the colors outside are perfect--
orange geranium, blue lobelia.
I wander from room to room
like a man in a museum:
wife, children, books, flowers,
melon. Such still air. Soon
the mid-morning breeze will float in
like tepid water, then hot.
How do I start this day,
I who am unsure
of how my life has happened
or how to proceed
amid this warm and steady sweetness?

—August Morning by Albert Garcia

See you next week!

xx,

M

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To sign up for my weekly newsletter, Dear Somebody, please subscribe here.

Dear Somebody: The anchors we carry.

Moon Man and the five children (sketchbook, 2025)

A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:

MONDAY 

For the second time since N was born, I board a plane and travel with my children alone. We embark on a surprise trip to my sister’s, and none of us can wait. For N, it’s her cousins and all of the treats she doesn’t receive at home—but mostly, it’s her cousins. For F, it’s her cousins and the acrobatics—three flights of stairs to climb up and down on—but mostly, it’s her cousins. For me, it’s all of it: me and my sister and our five children, all corralled under one roof, a tangle of limbs and tears and, of course, indoor hide-and-seek.

Now and then, it pokes at me that the places most comforting to me are the ones where I’ve spent my formative years: by the water, on the east coast, near my sibling. Will I always turn towards the anchors of my childhood? Will I always feel the tug, known deeply by younger siblings—of reaching, wanting more? Of forever feeling two steps behind? 

The thoughts tumble in my mind while I stand at the kitchen island, watching my nephews play Madden on the living room floor. The oldest offers to teach me, but I love him too much to disappoint him by actually playing. N and Z are in the playroom, concocting meals out of pretend ingredients. They feed their dollies, they feed each other. They yell to see if anyone else is hungry; we all yell back that we aren’t. Only F feels out of sorts, clinging to my legs, wailing for something she doesn’t have the language to express. My sister scoops her up and carries her outside.

I smell the snow before I sense it, before I see the soft clumps accumulate on the back steps. The kitchen window isn’t cracked but the sharp, dampened scent of winter leaks in anyhow. I’m going to watch the snow, I announce. No one responds. 

In my sister’s arms, F is quiet. She’s listening to the snow, or maybe it’s very arrival is the world’s simple way of listening to her. Such is the strength of a young child’s heart. 

One by one, the rest of our band files onto the porch: first Z, who wants to see; then N, who wonders what Z is up to; then both boys, curious as to where everyone went. For this moment, Madden is on pause. 

The snowdrifts sort my thoughts and I know what I know: I don’t have an affinity for New Jersey or the east coast—or any particular nostalgia for the past. The only anchor I carry from childhood is my sibling, an anchor I’ll carry from house to house, shore to shore.

Our five children are cousins: together and sweet. The snow is the snow: always a pleasure. And I, so far removed from the roof, roads, and city that I call my own, feel perfectly at home. 

TUESDAY

“There’s one ceramic piece, by my daughter — my wife and I are super sad that we lost that. It’s an image of her as a 12-year-old holding a globe with the world on fire on top of her head. And it’s her in her overalls with her striped shirt on and brown hair. It’s an interpretation of an image I made after the fires in Malibu. She was becoming this awesome artist, interpreting the world through her art just like I do. To me it was an image of uncontrollable powerlessness — that feeling you know everyone shares, but through a kid’s eyes. My daughter’s sculpture was a symbol of someone becoming who they are in a moment of time we’ll never get back to.” —Cleon Peterson on what they grabbed.

I found these resources for LA from Nicole Cardoza’s Reimagined to be really helpful. Included are links to help organize, volunteer, and donate to aid those impacted by the wildfires. 

WEDNESDAY

The Hunters in the Snow, 1565, oil on wood

The Census at Bethlehem (1566), oil on wood panel

These world landscapes by painter Pieter Bruegel which simultaneously evoke in me a sense of war and peace, storm and calm, winter and the first day of spring. 

THURSDAY

“Consciousness lives on. The body is like a car, and the driver is the spirit, the bit of consciousness, the atom, the soul, you could say. And so the car gets old and rusted and falls apart and the driver gets out and continues on.” —David Lynch, rest in peace.

“Ideas are like fish. If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you’ve got to go deeper. Down deep, the fish are more powerful and more pure. They’re huge and abstract. And they’re very beautiful.

The beautiful thing is that when you catch one fish that you love, even if it’s a little fish—a fragment of an idea—that fish will draw in other fish, and they’ll hook onto it. Then you’re on your way. Soon there are more and more and more fragments, and the whole thing emerges. But it starts with desire.”

—from Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity by David Lynch

FRIDAY

So after weeks of rain
at night the winter stars
that much farther in heaven
without our having seen them
in far light are still forming
the heavy elements
that when the stars are gone
fly up as dust finer
by many times than a hair
and recognize each other
in the dark traveling
at great speed and becoming
our bodies in our time
looking up after rain
in the cold night together

—January by W. S. Merwin

See you next week!

xx,

M

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To sign up for my weekly newsletter, Dear Somebody, please subscribe here.

Dear Somebody: Together at last.

From Three Shooting Stars, a tiny comic about the life of an artist. 

A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:

MONDAY

When we board the plane to New Jersey, a switch goes off. I don't know where the switch was, or is, but it must exist because something flips it from ON to OFF. 

I refer to it as The Sea Switch. This switch controls the space between me and N, a swath of distance that rose between us when I crossed the Atlantic for France back in June, and has remained between us for the 8 weeks since. This sea is full of rocky waves. Thrashing storms. A constant swallowing of debris.

When the plane begins taxiing, N‘s eyes open wide. She immediately shuts the window shade and crawls into my lap. I’m wedged into the middle seat, a sleeping stranger to my right, T to my left. N takes my hand in hers and burrows her face into my neck. I’m surprised by the intimacy in her actions: something so traditionally mother-and-child, that for us, has become foreign. Forgotten. I’m so pleased that I ask T to take pictures of us, and he does. 

When I send the photos to my sister later that evening, she tells me I’m beaming, the light shooting out of my face. I study the photos and it’s true: mother and child, in each other’s arms, together at last—even, if only, for a little while.

TUESDAY

"A merging of two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both parties of their fullest freedom and development. But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky.” 

––Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

WEDNESDAY

For those wondering if art school is necessary, I enjoyed this series of interviews:

“I think college is important if you want to learn specific skills. But later I prioritized making art — I didn’t go into an M.F.A. program after I got my bachelor’s degree, because I really wanted to think about what I was doing. That’s when I made a U-turn — I stopped taking assignments, decided to make use of what I had learned, went home to Jamaica for a while and began making work about the Caribbean, a marginalized place, but a place of opportunity nonetheless. And that’s what a lot of my work still deals with: Caribbean ecosystems, their issues, what’s beautiful. School taught me to write down my dreams and attack them, that they turn to dust if you don’t.” ––Paul Anthony Smith, from Art School Confidential by Noor Brara

THURSDAY

A simple ink-on-bristol comic titled Three Shooting Stars: Chronicling the Life of an Artist, now up on my blog.

FRIDAY

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

––The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry

xo,

M

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Dear Somebody: After some time away.

A page from my recent sketchbook in Rabastens, France

I spent the larger part of June finalizing my visual journaling retreat with my friend and skilled illustrator Rebecca Green. Over the course of 10 days, we taught 17 students how to capture everything they saw and felt within the pages of their sketchbooks. We focused on both the emotional and technical aspects of translating moments into drawings, and by the end of the trip, we all went home having learned more about art, community, and ourselves than we'd bargained for.

I plan on writing more about our France trip later this month, but for now, today's letter is a jumble of the many things circling my mind over this past week.

MONDAY

I've been away for 11 days. This is the first time I've been away from N in her entire life, and I'm nervous to go home. Will she still want me to be there? I climb out of the Lyft and up the four steps to my front door––a heavy wooden number punctuated by a dozen panels of glass. T swings the door open and N peeks out from behind him. He's grinning, excited to see me, but N is quiet, even solemn.

“Look who it is!" T says, encouraging her to react. "Mama is home!”

N touches my knees quietly before toddling away, and in that moment, I feel relief. At least she's not upset, I think to myself, not knowing what the following 3 weeks will bring.

I didn't know then that N could hold so many tears. I didn't know that my little laddu wouldn't want me to brush her teeth or give her a bath. I didn't know that she'd scream hysterically for her dad, kicking herself out of my arms to create more distance between the two of us. I didn't know then that my 11 days away would plant 23 days of screams, tears, and confusion in the body of a small child who no longer wants her mother.

I didn't know. I didn't know.

TUESDAY

The best part about traveling is that time stops being itself, instead choosing to stretch on and on and on. For the first time in years, I sit and work in my sketchbook for as long as I want––without interruption. Such joy! Such absolute luxury. I know it won't last long, so I try my hardest to be in the moment. And I do. And I am.

Some sketchbook pages from France are here, here, and here; Becca's sketchbook pages from our trip are here. My favorite sketchbooks these days are from Koba, Emma Carlisle, Cromeola and Sean Qualls.

WEDNESDAY

I think about my friendships frequently: how to nurture and support them, how to be a better friend, and also, how to cut a not-quite-right friendship loose. T and I talk about community regularly. We witness our own friendships stiffen or expand through the various seasons of our lives. More than once, I ask him if I desire too much from my friendships. Echoing my friend Cyndie, he reminds me that not everyone is for me––and that it's also OK to aim higher–-to want more.

“I want more friends, more casual impromptu hangs, more dropping by with dinner, more walking and talking and advice sessions, more kids underfoot, more asking for and saying what we need, more hands to carry heavy boxes, more laughing and cackling and snorting, more children farting at the dinner table, more of what makes life messy, less painful, more sweet. I want to give and receive, to always be swapping Tupperware and food, all of us crowded together like curvy lumpen mangoes in a baking dish.”––from Angela Garbes' latest book Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change

Friendship means different things for different people. Not everyone is in it for the same reasons, and quite frankly, not everyone is interested in the amount of effort a beautifully messy, loving friendship requires. But Angela Garbes, I think, is.

THURSDAY

I am reading: The Land of In-Between, Planning for Disaster, How to Cope with Radical Uncertainty, The Sour Cherry Tree

I am listening: Baquenne, Carla Bruni, Yves Montand

I am watching: Ernest & Celestine, based on the original children's books series by Gabrielle Vincent. Becca & I watched it on the plane ride home from France and were immediately taken by the soft watercolor and ink washes and the endearing tale of two friends who choose each other, again and again.

FRIDAY

To love life, to love it even

when you have no stomach for it

and everything you’ve held dear

crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,

your throat filled with the silt of it.

When grief sits with you, its tropical heat

thickening the air, heavy as water

more fit for gills than lungs;

when grief weights you down like your own flesh

only more of it, an obesity of grief,

you think,

How can a body withstand this?

Then you hold life like a face

between your palms, a plain face,

no charming smile, no violet eyes,

and you say, yes, I will take you

I will love you, again.

–The Thing Is by Ellen Bass

Thanks for reading and for being here with me. See you next week!

xo,

M

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