Live from Gaylord Lane

Dispatch #32: Diving into The Well

Hi friends,

The heat is a wild thing. I find myself foggy. I want to write to you, to connect, to share, & yet I keep starting & stopping, losing myself in groggy not-quite-thought. This iced coffee is barely helping. I think of L, a 3 year old I nannied a decade ago, who whenever she wanted you to do anything for her would demand, “Try! Try try try try try!” It didn’t feel like a suggestion, LOL. It felt like “muthafukka you better do as I say, even though it’s disguised as a casual give it a try.” I hear little toddler L today loud & clear, despite my sluggishness & my heartache at the world: try try try try try.

Reader, I want to tell you linear, concrete things. Yet, that type of language doesn’t come most naturally to me; it’s usually hard earned. I tend toward writing (and thinking and existing) from a place of texture, color, feeling, atmosphere. I’m a vibe guy. A touchy-feely, a feely-touchy. A ribbon-dancer, but the ribbons are language itself. I like to feel the wishy-washy wow of those silk impossible ribbons slipping through space.

All my life I’ve found myself to be someone who gets portaled via a soft shadow shifting across a wall, or a passing truck’s nourishing blues, or the imperfect perfection of a shape’s appearance where I least expect it.

A moth’s delicious upside-down V on a rough couch cushion, a polaroid’s washed out grasp of blues that otherwise reach my eyes vividly, even a little anchor tucked inside an O on a sign – all of these send me into a state; at times, transcendent, at other times, utterly…scendent – can that be our new word for here? Etymology doesn’t work that way, I know, but who cares, I’m playing by my own rules right now. Let’s be scendent together.

This past week, Angel & I were in Connecticut for a self-created writing residency we named The Well. While Angel & I have always shared our works-in-progress with each other, when lockdown began we started to do so in a more ritualized way & we called this sharing time, you guessed it, The Well. “Do you want to do The Well today?” became shorthand for do you want to spend anywhere between 1-4 hours going over each other’s (poetry, novel, essay, etc.) together? The Well came to signify spaciousness, intimacy, safety, & support. It’s been a highly productive space. During lockdown, we used The Well to revise my essay My Radical Instagram Sangha: A Love Letter & my poems Ars Poetica With a Pick in Your Hand & ‘Oumuamua, to name just a few.

For 4 years now, we’ve maintained this practice. It is our sacred space, a structured way to be each other’s first readers, a devotional, serious, & flexible practice. In 2021-2022, when I was writing the 1st draft of my novel, I’d share chapters with her in weekly “installments,” almost like episodes of a TV series, as I was writing them. Essentially, I read aloud the book in its rawest form. Deep into my 5th draft now, I look back on that year-long 1st draft sharing with wonder; how amazing to let someone in like that, someone so generous & present (& scendent!) – to let them into the earliest rendition of a project in real time.

So a few weeks ago, when Angel suggested we get out of New York & create our own writing residency, I of course said yes. A few days before we headed to an Airbnb in Connecticut she surprised me, in true Angel fashion, with a welcome basket “from our residency” waiting for me on my desk.

In Connecticut we drove past Trump signs & American flags en masse. One morning before heading out for our drive for coffee, I slipped on a new shirt from Trans Masc Studies – whose brief fundraiser’s entire profits went to Palestinian families via Operation Olive Branch; the shirt reads QUEERS FOR A FREE PALESTINE. The quote on the back is by Leslie Feineberg: “I do not believe that our sexuality, gender expression and bodies can be liberated without making a ferocious mobilization against imperialist war and racism an integral part of our struggle.” It is a massively necessary statement, especially during Pride Month, whose liberatory roots have long been hijacked & watered down by corporations & mass media.

If we do not make a “ferocious” (this word choice is critical) mobilization against imperialist war & racism, how the heck can Queer people say that we care about autonomy, equity, or community?

I mean, truly, what in the holy @#$%@%? Are we to only care about the freedom of some bodies? It’s giving Columbus. It’s giving apartheid. It’s giving Jim Crow. It’s giving “civil unions.” It’s giving the Reagan administration’s response to AIDS.

When I think about Israel decimating Palestine, braggingly, right before our eyes; when I think of the arguments I hear from certain Israelis, Americans, & Jews that attempt to defend this decimation, my cognitive dissonance full-on bucks: So, on behalf of “freedom” you are okay with starving an entire population, withholding water, medical supplies & electricity, intentionally plowing over human beings as they risk everything to access food, & in the first 23 days of this genocide, dropping more than 12,000 tonnes of explosives, “equivalent to the power of the first atomic bomb dropped by the United States on the Japanese city of Hiroshima”? That works for you as the methodology toward said freedom?

In the words of Toni Morrison, "If you can only be tall because somebody is on their knees, then you have a serious problem.”

The images & videos of Israeli soldiers “becoming tall” because somebody is “on their knees” are widespread, haunting, braggadocious, violent, searing, & impossible to locate a worthy ethics within. Of the infinity of horrors, the image that has been haunting me as of late is of Israeli soldiers strapping a wounded man to the front of their Jeep. The wounded man’s name is Mujahed Azmi. As quoted in Al Jazeera, “Abdulraouf Mustafa, a Palestinian ambulance driver, said the Israeli soldiers refused to hand over Azmi to them. ‘The jeep passed by and the wounded man was on the hood,’ Mustafa told Al Jazeera. ‘One arm was tied to the windshield and the arm was on his abdomen. They drove past us. They refused to give us the patient.’”

Of course, come to think of it now, I know why my mind has been so foggy, my energy depleted, my heartbreak at the surface. There is a psychic weight to holding the normalization of genocide, this incessant onslaught of dehumanizing & soul-crushing images, the unblinking fact of Gazans’ enduring annihilation. We are nine months into this genocide. Nothing is ordinary these days. I write, I travel, I watch a movie, I read a book, I cuddle with my partner, I celebrate a friend’s birthday in her backyard – but the suffering of others is under my skin, I cannot shake it off, I don’t want to. Everything I see lives in contrast with undigestible horror.

During our week residency we wrote, shared, stayed up late deep inside the cocoon of making, we cooked together, drove through all that greengreengreen, took Polaroids, fed our dog Pup Cups TM from the coffee truck, ordered elaborate sandwiches, sat on the porch in silence as the trees whooshed & the bats flew. When I got dressed for that particular morning coffee run that day, I pulled on that shirt as a small way to bring Palestine explicitly to the forefront of my movements. As I was out & about, I thought about what the state justifies doing to bodies – the violence it condones, perpetuates, even delights in. I thought about what it means to be queer & in an interracial relationship while traveling through America, what it means to kiss in the frozen foods section of the supermarket, to be visible & happy & alive, to always be conscious of police presence & where the exits of any room are. A thought kept rising to the surface, My rage must be a portal I fall through. It must take me somewhere expansive, generous, & just. At the coffee truck, the young woman handing me my iced coffee said, “I like your shirt” and amidst all the Trump signs & American flags, there was a flicker of alignment, of seeing & being seen, of lovefulness. It matters.

Angel & I are back home now & I’m diving even deeper into prep for the July session of In Surreal Life. With only a week left until it’s August, I’m thinking about how our team can offer the most inspiring & connected month of writing & community possible. Since we still have only a few spots left (!!) we thought we’d do something extra special this July. Not only have we extended our deadline to June 25th at midnight, but we are also offering:

In first come first serve fashion, our very own Angel Nafis will be offering *ten* 1-on-1 sessions. In Angel’s own words, “People always ask if I do 1-on-1s. The answer is no…except for now!” We’re honored.

If you’ve been thinking about joining ISL & haven’t signed up yet, now when you sign up you can tack on a session with Angel for a super-reduced fee. (Already enrolled July ISLiens get bumped up to the front of the line - woo!) Angel is a crowd favorite when it comes to visiting ISL. However this intimate format has never been offered before. We are really excited to have Angel on board sharing her ridiculous, candid, & interstellar wisdom with you.

Some things I’ve been mulling over…

• Can’t stop thinking about this poem The Voice of God by Mary Karr: “Ninety percent of what’s wrong with you / could be cured with a hot bath, / says God from the bowels of the subway.”

• From Toronto Ink Company’s Substack, this quote by Ven. Tiradhammo, Buddhist monk: “Sadly, as adults we've become too sophisticated to go around looking into flowers and little things. We function on a much more conceptual level. Now when we see a flower we think 'flower. And then, Yes, I know all about flowers. I've seen flowers all my life and this is just another one. Actually, each flower is unique: it is here, at this moment, this time, this place, this flower."

• Trying to learn & practice this: “Love is misunderstood to be an emotion; actually, it is a state of awareness, a way of being in the world, a way of seeing oneself & others. – David R. Hawkins

• Please consider donating directly (& perhaps continuously) to displaced Gazans: Bisan, 32, a teacher, writes “I am struggling to keep my family together and provide them food, and clean water, all because of the war that destroyed the past, present, and future.” The Samir Family writes, “Our GoFundMe is committed to securing a brighter future for our precious daughter, Eman, who is the only thing we have left from this war, Eman has been our beacon of hope amidst the darkness to leave and evacuate soon. We strive to provide her with a life filled with love, care, and opportunities before it’s too late…” Nevin writes, “[We] need the money to be able to move across the Egyptian border. Crossing the border costs adults $5000 and $2000 for children under the age of 18. My family consists of 34 members in total…”

• More than any meditation teacher I've sat with at any retreat, or heard on any podcast, or read in any self-help book, Bisan saying "the sky is already liberated" as she beams at Palestinian flags soaring above, after the hell she has endured & keeps enduring, is my teacher.

• How “to love someone to the point of creation…”

Today, I am sending you the courage to know yourself. I am sending you pizzazz, queer ancestor wisdom, kinship in the corners. I am sending you a gift basket filled with a hive of unexpected yesses. & The proud symmetry of tiny beings (moths, for example). & Wildflowers. & greengreengreen.

With ample maple syrup,