Literal Love Letters
A poem, and a list of things I'm obsessed with
Dear Ones,
Hi. Miss you if I haven’t seen you. I am humbled as always to be able to share my heart. Thank you x 1,000. Substack is where I process through writing and art, and it’s often quite intimate, vulnerable even. I truly believe that when we look through the lens of the very personal we often get to the universal.
Let’s begin with some things I’ve been curious about/obsessed with lately.
Color analysis (am I a true autumn or a bright spring? If you know, please tell me!).
I am reading Julia Fox’s memoir which is astounding, and, I often have to put it down.
Currently, I am taking a 60 hour EMDR/Somatics training, which is consuming a lot of my learning brain and generally blowing my mind.
I am obsessed with my yoga teacher training cohort!! You know who you are, and I love you so much.
Fear. Still have it. What’s up with that?
Dating! Which caused me to sit in the bathtub until the water ran cold watching all of Taylor Tomlinson’s new comedy special on Netflix from start to finish. It’s so good. Please watch it!
And, I’m working on being more cool (see I can’t even just say cool!) with repressed parts of my sexuality that include dating women, which is probably going to be a lifetime project. Why would that be you ask? Well, not to blame everything on the Catholic Church, but okay, let’s! This culturally Catholic girl, born and raised, who was once very devote, literally got sat down at the kitchen table in 9th grade and told by her parent’s, that she could not be a lesbian, so stop acting like it. My response was not rebellion, but compliance—step number one: don’t act like a lesbian. That must not have gone well because for the length of my high school experience I was told to stop touching the other girls or I would get kicked out of PE and not graduate, thought they never told me to stop touching the boys. My friends and I were often physically separated from one another because that’s what the church does to powerful witches. And, during my whole tenure at Central Catholic High School here in liberal Portland, Oregon, I received tiny little slips of paper in my locker that just had the word “lesbian” handwritten on them. I never told anyone, but I did stop wearing socks with my tevas. I remember the exact moment when I decided that maybe that footwear combo was the problem. I was holding the little slip of paper on the second floor of the school, next to my locker. I looked down at my feet and thought, “Your feet are going to have to be cold now.” I took my socks off and moved forward. I feel like that’s enough to have acquired some internalized stuff, AND, I am excited, and nervous, to actually start working through some of it so I can be free. Have you gone through this? How did you do it? What was it like for you to claim this abandoned part? Asking for a friend:)
Recently in a public yoga class, I shared a piece of writing that students resonated with and wanted access to, so here it is. That’s the magic of this format.
ON LONGING
I would have you know length.
The steadiness of love.
The beating drum of your heart.
The pause between breaths.
The silly desires that punctuate the air around your body.
Turning away from what you want is the same as suppressing pain, it will land on the map of shadow and secrets, growing larger until you finally (finally!) pay attention.
Hiding longing is like hiding light.
The gravity becomes larger, a black hole.
Sucking.
Wanting.
Destructive.
Love your longing, my darling.
It’s okay to want.
Stretch it out.
Lay it before you like fabric smoothed and unfolded.
This kind of writing is different than many of the essays I have shared with you here, as it feels like it isn’t even really mine. After class folks were kind and said that they were grateful I had shared my writing with them, and I felt disingenuous as this kind of writing feels more guided than crafted. Like maybe it’s not mine, but ours. I love that idea, that some little piece of language could be so universal that it becomes ours. By ours I mean human, but transcending any separateness, so also not human. Mary Oliver’s poetry feels like ours. James Baldwin feels like ours. David Whyte’s essays and poems feel like ours. The serenity prayer feels like ours. Dance performances I’ve seen feel like ours. Rothko paintings feel like ours. When my teachers talk, it feels like ours. Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem “Kindness” feels like ours, and in fact she describes the writing of that poem as having nothing to do with her. It was channeled, downloaded, guided, separate from her ego.
Okay, love you! SO MUCH!
Audra