The Classroom

A small story created in my sketchbook, based on a series of live-sketching sessions that took place in my daughter’s early childhood classroom. It’s been two years since I made this little book, but it’s circling my mind, repeatedly, as I prepare for my youngest to begin daycare today.

The reasons behind when each child began daycare are very different, and the feelings I carry for each are, too. What remains the same is that there are no little feet at home while I write these words—and I find myself drawing small toes just to see them again.

Through this book, I explored how to capture fleeting movement—and emotion—with quick, stream-of-conscious shapes and linework. Later in my studio, I came back to the drawings to add wash and detail.

The final book was created with paper-over-cardboard covers and hand-sewn with wax thread and a button closure.

Dear Somebody: A simple photograph.

Hi, friends.

Thanks so much for all of the support towards my accordion book, elegy/a crow/Ba and for the warm reception to the Craft series! Most of you enjoyed a look into the process behind my work, so I’ll plan on continuing that series. I’m excited to.

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

On my desk this week: a few in-progress illustrations for my thesis project.

MONDAY

This simple photograph that T took of me and N a few weeks ago, newly clad in my third-generation hand-me-down from B, and before her, J. Prior to this photograph I was living my slovenly existence in too-big sweats and T’s old tees, since nothing fits and I have no time (or desire) to shop.

Nothing makes me feel quite as cozy or cared for as a hand-me-down. I think of all each garment has seen: the laughter and tears housed inside the body it hugged, the hands that carefully held and washed it, the wear-and-tear that adorns only the most well-loved. Like a heart, a hand-me-down shows the signs and strengths of all it’s been through—and all it’s willing to take on.

There haven’t been many photos taken of me since N was born over 2 years ago. I’m still uncertain of my own appearance, and now with baby #2, I know it’ll still be some time yet before I feel comfortable in my body again. But this photo, taken randomly by afternoon sunlight in my parents’ temporary apartment, captures much of what I’d like to remember: the walls that sheltered the people who cared for me and my family during this pregnancy, the littlest heart who is so excited to become a big sister, and the hands that insisted on capturing this moment—because he believed it was important to.

TUESDAY

“My daughters have pulled back the curtain to see that I am the false wizard, that I can offer no promises to them other than to point out the courage and wisdom and heart they already possess. All parents face this moment at some point, but I would have hoped to wait.

My worries hover in the back of my mind, keeping me awake in the dark hours poetically called madrugada in Spanish — the time before the dawn, when the world is quiet. I try not to share those worries with my daughters. That is not the honesty they need. Instead, they bubble up when I break a glass or burn dinner or stumble in any one of a million ways; then I am the kettle screaming to be removed from the heat.”

—My Child Is in an Impossible Place, and I am There With Her by Sarah Wildman, a beautifully-written and heartbreaking read about life, impossibility, and parenting

WEDNESDAY

“If you take a moment to really look at any of the ‘State of Children’ studies, it can be overwhelming. You could easily be thrown into spirals of hopelessness or “overwhelming I’m just not-enoughness”. Heck, just look at your local school and it’s easy to feel the weight of the work there is to be done right in your own backyard.

There’s so much work to be done. There’s so many kids. There’s just one you. There’s just one me. This is a great place to start.

Our best hope forward is not in using our imaginations to escape reality, but using our imaginations to create a better reality. There’s the world that is and there’s the world that could be. There’s also a you. There’s also a me.”

—State of the Children Address from Brad Montague’s newsletter, The Enthusiast

THURSDAY

“Part of it is observing oneself more impersonally… When you go out into the woods and you look at trees, you see all these different trees. And some of them are bent, and some of them are straight, and some of them are evergreens, and some of them are whatever. And you look at the tree and you allow it. You see why it is the way it is. You sort of understand that it didn’t get enough light, and so it turned that way. And you don’t get all emotional about it. You just allow it. You appreciate the tree.

The minute you get near humans, you lose all that. And you are constantly saying, “You’re too this, or I’m too this.” That judging mind comes in. And so I practice turning people into trees. Which means appreciating them just the way they are.”

—How to Be Less Harsh with Yourself (and Others) by Ram Dass, via The Marginalian

FRIDAY

On Earth, just a teaspoon of neutron star
would weigh six billion tons. Six billion tons.
The equivalent weight of how much railway
it would take to get a third of the way to the sun.
It’s the collective weight of every animal
on earth. Times three.

Six billion tons sounds impossible
until I consider how it is to swallow grief—
just a teaspoon and one might as well have consumed
a neutron star. How dense it is,
how it carries inside it the memory of collapse.
How difficult it is to move then.
How impossible to believe that anything
could lift that weight.

There are many reasons to treat each other
with great tenderness. One is
the sheer miracle that we are here together
on a planet surrounded by dying stars.
One is that we cannot see what
anyone else has swallowed.

—Watching My Friend Pretend Her Heart Isn’t Breaking by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

xx,

M

P.S. This letter is from my weekly newsletter, Dear Somebody. To receive these letters in your inbox, please sign up here.

Dear Somebody: Behind the craft #1

Hi all,

Welcome to my first craft post, where I’m focusing on the process behind elegy/a crow/Ba, my first accordion book and illustrated poem.

Last semester, I took a sketchbooking class with Kruttika Susarla. I was eager to develop a sketchbook practice that, I hoped, would cultivate a deep love of drawing. It sounds silly to say that I want to love drawing more, especially because I am an artist by nature and trade, but while my affection for words feels innate, drawing has always felt more like a stranger: someone I am intrigued by, but also afraid of. And like most relationships, it’s harder to love something that challenges you or is difficult to understand.

When I write and illustrate stories, the words come first. This is because I have more of a writer-brain than a drawing-brain; I think and process in and through words. This class encouraged me to push against my natural inclinations—to prioritize illustration as the seed from which a story can grow.

I knew I wanted to illustrate a poem that I’d written, but without having a poem written to direct me, I felt a bit lost. I chose to do something I never do, which is trust the process. I’m a Type A personality, which is conducive for running a business, but not so helpful when getting lost in creative work. I focused on drawing whatever came to me, believing that the words—that is, the entire poem and story—would somehow come to me later.

I began with some thumbnail sketches:

The beginning of my process: thumbnail sketches about a nebulous story.

As you can see here, I used a 6-page template to storyboard my illustration. Together, with a front and back cover, this created an 8-page book. I knew I wanted the end product to be an accordion book, so I settled on a number of pages that felt manageable with my time constraints.

I didn’t have a story in mind, but I did have a subject: my relationship with my paternal grandmother, who lived with us and cared for me throughout most of my childhood before moving back to India when I was in high school.

Without a text guiding me, I wasn’t sure where to begin. Instead, as I do with most of my work, I tried to pinpoint the feeling I wanted to convey: nostalgia, mostly, and the pinprick of heartache that memory evokes.

Here are a few different stories taking shape through tiny thumbnail illustrations:

I created several more sets of thumbnails before a direction became clear.

By the fifth iteration, I felt like I was getting somewhere. The concept of a panoramic illustration, drawn from a bird’s-eye viewpoint, captured the combination of awe and loneliness that I was after. Vast scenery surrounded two tiny characters, creating mystery, which is essential to every engaging story. This sketch did what I wanted it to—it asked a question: What’s the story here?

Whenever I read interviews with authors and illustrators, they talk about how, eventually, after hours of writing about them, the characters began speaking on their own. They talk about how the idea for their story came from nowhere, a shiny moon that suddenly appeared in orbit. They note how inspiration is not something that strikes like a lightning bolt, but something that visits occasionally, after you’ve been sitting at your desk discouragingly, doing the damn work.

It’s easy to roll your eyes when you read this, especially if you’re someone like me, who wants a formula for success that they can follow. It’s discouraging when any creative you admire tells you that they don’t know how the astonishing work they made came to fruition. It just kinda happened, they say. All they know is that they showed up. They put their hands on the keyboard or their fingers around the paintbrush. They wrote words that amounted to nothing. They drew embarrassing sketches that led nowhere. And once in awhile, usually when they least expected it, something beautiful arose.

The truth is, that is the formula that I’ve been looking for—I just hoped there was something else I was missing. But there isn’t. The formula is simple: Show up, do the work, see what happens.

I did a tiny color sketch next. Here, you’ll see that I combined elements from my fourth concept with my fifth, incorporating the bird as a third character. It wasn’t until I drew this that the bird became a crow, and it wasn’t until the bird became a crow that my story, all of a sudden, came together. This was a poem about our culture, our heritage, our relationship, and my memories. This was the poem about my grandmother that I’d been wanting to write.

It was the first time that this strange phenomena happened to me, and it was such an important, special lesson for me to experience. Drawing is uncomfortable for me, but it’s a skill that requires mastery if I want to successfully share the stories inside me with the world of children’s literature. This unexpected breakthrough gave me the motivation to keep going.

A final, digital sketch, and more experiments in color—which I generally use to create mood, atmosphere, and emotion.

I did a tighter sketch on Procreate, and tried a quick sepia-toned colorway. I liked it, but the blue version felt just right—cold, wintry, lost; like a story that happened many lifetimes ago. So I collected my materials and began the final drawing on 2 strips of Arches cold-pressed paper that I taped together—real fancy!

The final painting on my desk…need a bigger desk!

The completed painting is 8”x48” and was created with a combination of Holbein gouache (my underpainting and large swaths of color), Faber Castell polychromos colored pencils (detail work and texture), and Caran D’Ache neopastel oil pastels (blending, atmosphere, and texture).

After the illustration was completed, the words slowly came. I wrote and rewrote the poem that accompanies the final page of this book several times, and then spent many weeks between October and December of 2022 revising it.

I then added the front and back covers in Photoshop and spent approximately a week or two of my life trying to format it properly so that when printed across 4 panels and assembled, the accordion book would fold and unfold exactly the way I wanted it to.

Here’s a photo of my shoddy version:

When I couldn’t quite figure it out, my friends at Done Depot here in St. Louis graciously took this task off my hands and printed the final panels for me. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been assembling the accordion books here and there, whenever I have small patches of time, and I’m so excited to now offer them for sale.

elegy/a crow/Ba is an 8-page accordion book based on an illustrated poem I wrote about the memories, passing, and recollection of my grandmother. This poem was inspired by the Hindu tradition of Shradhha, in which we feed crows, the symbols of our ancestors and the carriers of our lineage.

A limited edition of the book, assembled, signed, and numbered by hand, is now available in my shop.

P.S. This letter is from my weekly newsletter, Dear Somebody. To receive these letters in your inbox, please sign up here.

Dear Somebody: Life is infinitely inventive

Hi, friends.

Once a month or so, I’ll be sending out a newsletter focusing on craft. These posts will highlight the inner workings of specific projects I’ve made or am working on. It’ll be an opportunity for you to ask questions about my process and for me to share the thoughts and inspirations behind certain decisions.

A process post detailing the behind-the-scenes making of elegy/a crow/Ba, my accordion book (highlighted below, in Monday’s section of today’s post) will go out to all subscribers on Monday, March 6.

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

---

MONDAY

elegy/a crow/Ba is an 8-page accordion book based on an illustrated poem I wrote about the memories, passing, and recollection of my grandmother. This poem was inspired by the Hindu tradition of Shradhha, in which we feed crows, the symbols of our ancestors and the carriers of our lineage.

A limited edition of the book, assembled, signed, and numbered by hand, is now available in my shop.

TUESDAY

I grew up listening to Simon & Garfunkel’s version of Blues Run the Game, but when Laura Marling’s version came on the radio today, T reminded me that this beautiful song was originally written and recorded by Jackson C. Frank.

Of course, that sent me reading, and I was excited to learn that Paul Simon produced Frank’s first (and only) album, and that Frank used to live with both Simon & Garfunkel in England for some time. Can you imagine having these people as your roommates? I’ve got a lovely husband and toddler as my own, personally speaking, but geez louise the envy has taken hold.

I’ve been listening to Frank’s eponymous album on repeat all day, and of course, the original Blues Run the Game has already played more than a dozen times.

WEDNESDAY

“I grew up mostly happy, in relative poverty, using colorful paper food stamps to buy salty potato chips and sugary twenty- five- cent juice from the corner store and then trekking up to our second- floor apartment, belly satiated and heart full. And. As an adult, I’ve flown business class across the world (many times) and enjoyed meals that cost more than a month’s rent at that childhood apartment. This and that. Both true. As a kid, I spent rainy summer days climbing inside of plastic milk crates so that my brothers could push me alongside the curb on our city street, my tiny vessel floating along the current of backed- up rainwater that would quickly take me down the hill on Smith Street. It was glorious and exhilarating. And. As an adult, I’ve spent lush sunny days on a steep hillside in Italy, enjoying a private pool overlooking a vast vineyard, wine in one hand and a laptop in the other. This and that. Both true.

With full clarity, I understand the uniqueness of my position, which exists because of, rather than in spite of, how I grew up. Living both sides of the same coin has gifted me the insight to never take my experiences for granted. And to be certain, all of these experiences are etched into the happiest places deep inside of my soul. I can still instinctively feel the delight of simpler times floating down rainwater on a city street, just as much as I can feel the deep exhale and warmth of an afternoon in the Tuscan sun.

Though some may perceive poverty as bad and prosperity as good, I know that neither is absolutely true. That clarity has taught me to accept life as it is and still find joy wherever I am.”

—For Richer or Poorer, excerpted from Cyndie Spiegel’s MICROJOYS: Finding Hope (Especially) When Life is Not Okay

THURSDAY

“Sitting in a windowless room in Times Square, scrolling from library to library, state to state, we were unexpectedly moved by the color, light and joy at our fingertips. These glimpses into lives of strangers were a reminder that copies of the books piled on our desks at the Book Review will soon land on shelves in libraries across the country and, eventually, in the hands of readers. You’ll pass them to other people, and on and on.

We all know that books connect us, that language has quiet power. To see the concentration, curiosity and peace on faces lit by words is to know — beyond a shadow of a doubt, in a time rife with shadows — that libraries are the beating hearts of our communities. What we borrow from them pales in comparison to what we keep. How often we pause to appreciate their bounty is up to us.”

—A Love Letter to Libraries, Long Overdue by Elisabeth Egan and Erica Ackerberg

FRIDAY

More amazed than anything 
I took the perfectly black 
stillborn kitten 
with the one large eye 
in the center of its small forehead 
from the house cat's bed 
and buried it in a field 
behind the house. 

I suppose I could have given it 
to a museum, 
I could have called the local 
newspaper. 

But instead I took it out into the field 
and opened the earth 
and put it back 
saying, it was real, 
saying, life is infinitely inventive, 
saying, what other amazements 
lie in the dark seed of the earth, yes, 

I think I did right to go out alone 
and give it back peacefully, and cover the place 
with the reckless blossoms of weeds.

—The Kitten by Mary Oliver

xx,

M

P.S. This letter is from my weekly newsletter, Dear Somebody. To receive these letters in your inbox, please sign up here.

Dear Somebody: Listening to yourself.

A small note: next week, this letter will come from Substack instead of Flodesk. Please set your inboxes to accept email from meeraleepatel@substack.com to prevent your spam filter from intercepting them.

This weekly letter will continue to be free, but moving to Substack will allow me to foster community: you'll be able to comment on letters and engage in conversation if you wish. As I prepare to graduate from school this semester, I'm re-evaluating what I want my business and career to look like. Being able to offer a paid tier for my work (some possibilities I'm considering are process tutorials, personal comics, illustrated poetry, or guided journaling workshops) will allow me to sustain my business while stepping back from work that I've outgrown. 

I've spent the past two years deep in transition and 2023 will include even more change, both personally and professionally. I'm strictly prioritizing writing and illustrating books, including a new beginning in picture books––and caring for my young family. I want to be more present; I want to continue growing; I want to uncover the work inside my heart. I imagine many of you share these same goals. 

If there is an offering you'd like to see from me in the future, please let me know! Just hit reply to write to me. Thank you, always, for supporting me and my work. 

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

MONDAY

When K, C, and their daughter M arrive to spend New Year's Eve with us, I am both excited and nervous. It's one thing to have a good friend visit, but another to mesh your families together for the first time. As an adult, long-term friendship requires more than the friendship of youth: more emotional investment, more depth and deliberation, more evaluation. I take friendship seriously; I cull my garden regularly; I become more protective of my heart and my time. 

The days pass easily. Time slips by like water. We start each morning with a long, meandering walk through St. Louis, stopping only to grab coffee or watch our girls hold hands. The conversation dips between music, culture, and parenting before sloping into relationships, families, finances. Nothing feels too intimate to share. I watch our families lean into each other and feel my friendship with K widen. 

The four of us sit on the couch long after December disappears into January, our laughter occasionally, slowly, shaping into yawns. The future is open; I watch the possibilities multiply; my heart swings against itself. I take note of how lucky I am.

TUESDAY

On listening to yourself:

"Over the last few weeks, I’ve prioritized myself again. I’ve begun meditating, spending time with a notebook and pencil, and consciously separating my own thoughts from the ones externally projected onto me. I’ve protected my vulnerability by only sharing myself with those I trust to understand and support me. I’ve begun writing, though it is difficult, and though the words come much more slowly than they used to. I paint for how it makes me feel, not for what the final image looks like.

I do all this with the understanding that learning to hear myself again is a continuous practice, and one that I won’t always be able to sustain with regularity. Life will happen, again—as it always does, and as it should. I will stumble again, possibly succumbing to self-doubt, much to my own disappointment. If I can continue to create, however—if I can reach down and discover what else there is inside me, to listen to myself more closely than I have before, and to write and draw what I believe to be in my heart, then there is a chance that someone out in the world will see it—and that it, too, will be what they need most in that moment."

––An excerpt from my latest column, Being, for Issue #56 of Uppercase Magazine 

WEDNESDAY

A holiday gift to myself: surrounding myself with strong, unapologetic women––including this new studio inspiration from Her Name is Mud to guide me through this upcoming year of creating, transition, and challenge:

“I've been absolutely terrified every moment of my life and I've never let it keep me from doing a single thing that I wanted to do.” ––Georgia O'Keeffe

THURSDAY

“If we are sincere in wanting to learn the truth, and if we know how to use gentle speech and deep listening, we are much more likely to be able to hear others’ honest perceptions and feelings. In that process, we may discover that they too have wrong perceptions. After listening to them fully, we have an opportunity to help them correct their wrong perceptions. If we approach our hurts that way, we have the chance to turn our fear and anger into opportunities for deeper, more honest relationships. The intention of deep listening and loving speech is to restore communication, because once communication is restored, everything is possible, including peace and reconciliation.” 

––Thich Nhat Hahn, from Fear: Essential Wisdom for Getting Through the Storm

FRIDAY

you owe it to yourself to quit being the apology. to

hold your hand and sing your favorite song. to

love another and see how far that will go. to love

yourself and forget where you were headed in the

first place. love is a funny story. it wakes up and

builds a plot. it wakes up and shapes you into the

kind of woman your mother studies. i am not per-

fect in it. i am not even remotely articulate. but it

is big, this love. it is airborne and triumphant. i am

no easy show. i hurt like the climb of my lineage. i

hurt on purpose. i hurt to not be hurt. no, none of

this is an excuse. just a blueprint. a map. come

find me when the day is bronze and the sorrow is

full. i am building my poem in this here heart. all

of it is a working title.

––Until the Stars Collapse by Tonya Ingram

xo,

M

P.S. This letter is from my weekly newsletter, Dear Somebody. To receive these letters in your inbox, please sign up here.

Dear Somebody: Running into a new year.

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

MONDAY

While you are sleeping, I consider your breath, wait for it beside my own, measure each one by the slow climb of your stomach against blue linen sheet. 

You are round; the moon. You love me, for now. I try my hardest to keep you curious, believing there is more—ocean floor under sea under twilight under sky under cloud under bird under song, I try my hardest not to undo you.

Your eyes, closed. The moon, alone. No one sees it come and go, its great back against the persistent sky, its face turned this way or that, with no mother to watch or wait for it. 

TUESDAY

N and I watch a handful of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood episodes on repeat, especially Episode 47 from 1985 which features Yo-Yo Ma, so I was especially interested in learning more about Ma's latest collaboration which unites music, culture, connection––and America's national parks.

“Culture is able to look at the macro universe and the micro universe and bring it back to a size that we can see, feel, touch and analyze. What if there’s a way that we can end up thinking and feeling and knowing that we are coming from nature, that we’re a part of nature, instead of just thinking: What can we use it for?"

––Yo-Yo Ma is Finding His Way Back to Nature Through Music by Joshua Barone

WEDNESDAY

Holding this sentiment close as I move into the final semester of my MFA program, work on my thesis project + defense, and remind myself why I do the work I do: 

“The books I’m writing are houses that I build for myself." ––Etel Adnan via Shira Erlichman

THURSDAY

The reflections I'm considering as we move into 2023:

1. What do I want to prioritize in the next 12 months? Are these pursuits rooted in an internally or externally-motivated sense of self-worth? And: If no one sees what I'm making, do I still want to make it?

2. The relationships I'd like to prioritize, cherish, and foster: the people that make me feel like enough, who celebrate my successes, and who aren't afraid of life's messiness. Making an effort to create community in my new city, continuing to be honest about life's joys and disappointments, and understanding that not everyone is for me.

3. What are the feelings, fears, and habits I'd like to leave behind? Especially: What cycles of thought and convictions am I better off without?

4. Recalling the impermanence in all things.

FRIDAY

i am running into a new year
and the old years blow back
like a wind
that i catch in my hair
like strong fingers like
all my old promises and
it will be hard to let go
of what i said to myself
about myself
when i was sixteen and
twenty-six and thirty-six
even thirty-six but
i am running into a new year
and i beg what i love and
i leave to forgive me

––i am running into a new year by Lucille Clifton

xo,

M

P.S. This letter is from my weekly newsletter, Dear Somebody. To receive these letters in your inbox, please sign up here.

Dear Somebody: How I give my thanks.

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

MONDAY

I step out into the evening and breathe it all in: the borrowed sky, the pinprick of star, your small hand lost in your father’s. I’m six paces behind. I follow your shadows like a stranger, I memorize each crack before you step on it, I see the uneven anger of sidewalk lashing against your toes. You talk in night voices, small but bright against the still air. I step onto the ending of each sentence—an eavesdropper, a passing thought, a pair of wings in the sky. A few maple leaves still hold onto the emptying branches above us, stout. Resolute.

For now, we are three. For tonight, there is only us. I give my thanks to whoever still listens, I gulp each stony breath more deeply than the last, I collect the cold like marbles in my lungs. I count how many evenings like this we still have left.

TUESDAY

"Inspiration propels us to act. Within the world of creativity, it is something that inspires us to create, experiment, or expand the way we think. While plagiarism merely replicates another person’s work, inspiration motivates us to thoughtfully collect elements of an artwork we resonate with, to create something new—something that previously did not exist. At its most genuine, inspiration guides us towards innovation and natural evolution.

When I’m drawn towards a particular piece of art, I study it and try to understand what it is I’m captured by. I consider three specific areas and mark my observations in my journal or sketchbook. What I’m looking for is a through-line—the line tying my sources of inspiration to the art that I’d like to create. Pinpointing this is essential in making work that is original and honest—that carries the spirit of you, despite who or what it’s inspired by." 

––An excerpt from my latest column, Being, for Issue #55 of Uppercase Magazine 

WEDNESDAY

“We seldom think of conversation as commitment. but it is. I find that expressing what I really feel and telling another person what is actually important to me at the moment is difficult. It requires a commitment on my part to do so, and I sense that this is true for most of us. It is equally difficult to listen. We are usually so full of our own thoughts and responses that we seldom really listen close enough to one another to grasp the real flavor of what the other person is attempting to convey. Creative communication in depth is what allows us to experience a sense of belonging to others. It is the force that limits the destructive potential in our lives and what promotes the growth aspects. Life is a struggle. Coping with a lifetime of change is a struggle, but through a lifetime of change we will experience ourselves as full persons only to the degree that we allow ourselves that commitment to others which keeps us in creative dialogue.” 

––bell hooks on conversation as commitment.  

THURSDAY

Last night, we watched The Snowman, an animated short based on the original children's book by Raymond Briggs. It was perfect in the way most movies from childhood aren't––that is, it stood up to the high bar of wonder and magic my 7-year-old self encased it in. Better yet, as an adult (and artist), I'm now able to fully appreciate the hundreds of hours that go into drawing and animating such a fantastic film.

Today, I listened to the soundtrack on repeat. My favorite track is, of course, Walking in the Air: gorgeously haunting piano music paired with Peter Auty's beautiful voice. 

P. S. I'm also reading Grace Loh Prasad's The Orca and the Spider: On Motherhood, Loss, and Community. Have you read it? I'd love to hear your thoughts if you have.

FRIDAY

Sundays too my father got up early

and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,

then with cracked hands that ached

from labor in the weekday weather made

banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.

When the rooms were warm, he’d call,

and slowly I would rise and dress,

fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,

who had driven out the cold

and polished my good shoes as well.

What did I know, what did I know

of love’s austere and lonely offices?

––Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden

xo,

M

P.S. This letter is from my weekly newsletter, Dear Somebody. To receive these letters in your inbox, please sign up here.

Dear Somebody: Confronting your inner critic.

Hello, everyone! I know it's been awhile. I'm navigating some unexpected personal news and health changes, but things are finally beginning to finally shift to a manageable place. Though it's freezing here in St. Louis, I'm enjoying the seasons' transition; I hope brisk air is sweeping you into its arms wherever you are. 

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

MONDAY

I don't often feel like a mother. Two years into being one, the title continues to feel like a pair of too-big shoes I'm eagerly waiting to grow into. What does a mother feel like? I have my suspicions, certainly. A mother is calm. A mother is well-assembled. Someone that knows what to do. Someone who has answers, and a medicine cabinet full of tried-and-true remedies. A mother knows their way around the kitchen, and a new city, and the inner workings of their own mind. A mother is someone who knows. Someone whose heart has been split open, as I hear so often, by their child––a heart that's now grown so large there's barely enough space for it left in their chest. Is this me? I don't know. My heart seems well-adjusted to its cavity. 

N wakes up sobbing lately. Her cries are like a siren; she sits up and wails with such alarm that I wonder what terrors visited her young mind. When the crying doesn't stop, I go in and pick her up. We move to the light that slips in between the closed blinds. I sing Carole King until she says Mama, no, putting her hand to my mouth. We sit in the big chair, her face buried in my chest, my cheek resting on her head. Already she's so tall, legs like a ballerina jutting out from my either side. Her breath becomes deeper, steady. She is asleep and my arms are full of her. She is asleep and I feel strangely settled. She is asleep and I am someone who knows how to soothe. For her, I figured out how. My medicine cabinet is empty, but my heart is full. I am a mother––this I have known, but for these few minutes, I begin to believe it, too.

TUESDAY

For the WORK issue of The Nib, I made a comic about the worst boss I've ever worked for: myself. You can read the comic here on my blog and order a print issue of the The Nib – please help support this wonderful indie publication!

My 2023 calendar and planners are also now available, through Buyoly and Amber Lotus Publishing. These are excellent gifts for the upcoming season, and a great way to encourage my little business.

*Support more BIPOC makers this year! I love these hand-poured candles by Golden Hour Co. in rainier and oakmoss. 

WEDNESDAY

“You have consented to time and it is winter. The country seems bigger, for you can see through the bare trees. There are times when the woods is absolutely still and quiet. The house holds warmth. A wet snow comes in the night and covers the ground and clings to the trees, making the whole world white. For a while in the morning the world is perfect and beautiful. You think you will never forget. You think you will never forget any of this, you will remember it always just the way it was. But you can’t remember it the way it was. To know it, you have to be living in the presence of it right as it is happening. It can return only by surprise.” 

––Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry

THURSDAY

All through autumn I wish for my body to become something new. I want my body to be stronger, less sensitive to these invisible, internal changes. I want it to be stoic, indifferent to the weight of its responsibility. I want it to perform flawlessly. I disregard the fact that it completes thousands of tasks to keep my heart beating and lungs full of air, without my knowing when or how. I am grateful, I think, but I ask it for more. I want my body to be decent. I want it to look beautiful though I know it is doing too much. It is tired and needs rest, but there are books to write and school to attend and so many to care for. 

For months, I offer my body no grace. I shroud it in resentment. I criticize it and wonder why that doesn't amount to change. Why it won't simply be better, the way I imagine other people's bodies to be. I speak to it like I would never speak to another; I allow my imagination to make me even more cruel. After months of sickness, when I finally come to my senses, when I remember how love actually works, it strikes me that I have never taken my body into both arms, never voiced the words buried beneath my anger: Yes, it is you. It is you that I choose over and over again.

FRIDAY

she told me then
that they
"the slaves who were ourselves"
searched for one another
tried to get back
to places they had been before
to them that they had known
needed and loved
to them that knew

she told me then
that this searching
was hard journeying
harder even than
moving over water
than finding strange language
and people with nothing under their skin
hard journeying she told me
this way back to ourselves

––exiles return by bell hooks

xo,

M

P.S. This letter is from my weekly newsletter, Dear Somebody. To receive these letters in your inbox, please sign up here.

The Worst Boss I've Ever Had

For the WORK issue of The Nib, I made a 4-panel comic about the worst boss I’ve ever worked for: myself.

My guess is that most of us who work for ourselves quickly come to terms with how self-critical we are. For me, the high expectations I have of myself were always a gift. They motivated me to work harder, aim higher, and to persevere when nothing seemed to be working out. i saw my self-criticism as free mentorship towards self-improvement, and my ability to tolerate the rougher, unfiltered, and downright mean-spirited parts of myself as a strength.

It’s only within the last couple of years that I began to recognize my boss-self for what it actually is: a bully—with zero boundaries, and an ever-changing meter of success that is not only impossible to meet, but leaves me feeling ridiculous for even attempting to try.

This comic recognizes the moment when I realized that the person who hurts me the most….is me—along with my (ongoing) attempt to reconcile the divided parts of myself.

Many thanks to Eleri Harris and Matt Bors for their thoughtful edits and feedback—and for giving me a chance to contribute to this issue of The Nib. The WORK issue is available for purchase at The Nib.

Dear Somebody: Together at last.

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

P.S. This letter is from my weekly newsletter, Dear Somebody. To receive these letters in your inbox, please sign up here.

Three Shooting Stars

Pen on bristol paper

Re-reading Tove Jansson and older Maurice Sendak compelled me to create a short comic in black ink lines, a style I never really engaged in before. I was surprised at how much my brain enjoyed the simplicity of using only one color and medium. I was able to focus on the movement from panel to panel, in subtle shifts, on building emotion.

The scratch scratch scratch of pen on bristol was satisfying, meditative in a way I remember only from years ago, before I worked for myself full-time, before illustration carried with it the pressures of stability, income, or impressing others. As I enter my second (and final) year of graduate school, I’m beginning to experiment less wildly and turn back to the methods that have always intrigued me: simple pencil or ink on paper, deliberate lines. In the past, I have always done more, more, more—searching for an answer haphazardly.

Nothing major has changed. No big breakthroughs or milestones, just a general settling of anxiety and acceptance of where I am in this journey. Now, the answers feel within reach. I still don’t see them, but I know they’re there. I still find myself trying to do more—without hiding under costumes of color and mixed media. Simple lines for simple textures that, when combined with a simple story…come together to do much more.

Dear Somebody: A Simple Hello.

A quick note: Tonight I'm leading a Time Capsule workshop with the Summer Writers Institute at Washington University, where I'll teach you to make an 8-page zine that captures this moment in time––using a single sheet of paper. Join me if you wish! This virtual workshop will be casual and reflective.

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

MONDAY

I've been home for nearly a month now and things between me and N have improved, although she does still ask for dada while I put her to bed, help her get dressed, or do almost anything. I smile and nod along while it's happening, saving my grimacing for later––for when I am alone or on the phone, or with T, who speaks to me sympathetically, albeit with the security of someone who is loved.

It's nearly 5:15 in the evening and N and I are coloring together, bright green silky scribbles on the paper that reach for the wooden floor. She makes marks the same way a dancer leaps across the stage––deliberately, with strength, using her entire body. I excuse myself to start dinner and she follows me into the kitchen, urgently shouting to be picked up. She wants to play with the upper cabinets, where we keep the cocoa and coffee, bags of sugar and corn starch, tins of assorted mushroom teas that I impulsively bought and will, really and truly, never drink.

“I have to cook, Naddo, so I can't watch you while you play on the counter,” I say. “It's not safe to stand up there alone.” She stares at me blankly and then resumes shouting, choosing not to understand the plight of a person who can't be in two places at once.

I want to be loved, so I pick her up and put her on the counter. She opens the cabinets and grins at the assortment of powders and potions inside. She laughs maniacally––with satisfaction, I imagine, at both the scene stretched in front of her and the agility with which she controls her mother. I turn away from her, leaning against the counter so she can't fall, but she shouts “Mama!" so loudly I spin back around.

N kneels down on the counter and takes my face between both of her hands. Her eyes are open wide, studying me intensely, and I unexpectedly feel…seen. Like I am a person in the world. Like I am someone special. Like in this very moment, all N wants is for me to be here with her. She leans towards me until our noses are touching and takes a deep breath.

“Hi," she says, exhaling the word deeply. Hi. A one-syllable meditation. The most beautiful word I've ever heard.

TUESDAY

“Writing, like all art, can be a site of safety, freedom, imagination. It can hold futures and dreams, our best memories, our worst. But because we deal in language, it seems inevitable that each writer, at one time or another, must confront other uses of writing, its place in a larger structure of power, and that structure’s hold on our social hierarchies. How we take in these moments, how we react to our knowledge of them—that is what makes the difference in the kind of writing we can hope to do.

The nice thing about going your own way is that you’re already “wrong”—but in your wrongness, in being off the map, you can stay free for a little while longer. To become that writer requires a radical act of imagination. More than one. And then the courage to choose yet another path. To keep moving, and know that there is truth and strength in that.” –Yanyi, on Justifying Your Writing

WEDNESDAY

"In the early 1940’s, abstract expressionists Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko began pushing artmaking into uncharted territory: they sought to create works that resembled their internal sources of being—their spirit or consciousness. The abstract artists of this time rejected traditional images and visual realities in favor of walking freely into their own untethered imaginations. They were explorers of their own consciousness, interested in understanding (and reflecting) the vulnerable and often unseen sides of themselves.

I often wonder why I am so interested in my own feelings. I occupy a large amount of my time with emotional sorting: sitting with, identifying, and then categorizing the various heaps of daily emotion that pile themselves upon me. It’s only later, when I finally sit down to work, that I recognize the environment that begins to build from layers of paint on paper. It is my own emotional residue, transferring itself from my hand onto the painted page. Any powerful piece of art creates an atmosphere—a feeling of sublime that transports the reader or viewer out of their own world and into another." –An excerpt from my latest column, Being, for Issue #53 of Uppercase Magazine

THURSDAY

My new 2022-2023 weekly planner with Amber Lotus Publishing is now available! You can get a copy in my BuyOlympia shop, through the Amber Lotus Publishing website, and in bookstores everywhere.

FRIDAY

When you come, bring your brown-

ness so we can be sure to please

the funders. Will you check this

box; we’re applying for a grant.

Do you have any poems that speak

to troubled teens? Bilingual is best.

Would you like to come to dinner

with the patrons and sip Patrón?

Will you tell us the stories that make

us uncomfortable, but not complicit?

Don’t read the one where you

are just like us. Born to a green house,

garden, don’t tell us how you picked

tomatoes and ate them in the dirt

watching vultures pick apart another

bird’s bones in the road. Tell us the one

about your father stealing hubcaps

after a colleague said that’s what his

kind did. Tell us how he came

to the meeting wearing a poncho

and tried to sell the man his hubcaps

back. Don’t mention your father

was a teacher, spoke English, loved

making beer, loved baseball, tell us

again about the poncho, the hubcaps,

how he stole them, how he did the thing

he was trying to prove he didn’t do.

–The Contract Says: We'd Like the Conversation to be Bilingual by Ada Limón

(our 24th Poet Laureate of the United States!)

xo,

M

P.S. This letter is from my weekly newsletter, Dear Somebody. To receive these letters in your inbox, please sign up here.

Dear Somebody: After some time away.

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

It's been awhile since I last wrote because I haven't had the words. While I was away teaching, a lot happened here at home. Mass shootings continue on a daily basis and we're now living in a post-Roe America, which is horrifying to me first as a person, then as a woman and mother.

Many of you reading this wonder why I bring these two issues to the forefront of each letter. The reason is that my work as an artist is irrevocably informed by my life as a human being––one cannot exist without the other, nor do I ask them to.

Please consider donating to Everytown for Gun Safety and/or Sandy Hook Promise if there are children in your life, National Network of Abortion Funds if you have money, or to the Baby Formula Exchange if you have formula.

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

xo,

M

P.S. This letter is from my weekly newsletter, Dear Somebody. To receive these letters in your inbox, please sign up here.

Dear Somebody: The Classroom.

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

---

MONDAY

A few months ago, my professor asked us to keep a sketchbook of life drawings. Our instructions were simple: draw quickly, draw truthfully. No self-editing, no time for over-thinking, and no digital materials.

I decided to focus on N's classroom, capturing a little of her day during morning drop-offs and afternoon pick-ups. I drew the loving community she'd formed in the few months since she'd begun attending school, the way she chanted her friends' names over and over on the drive home. I drew her teachers, who cared for her mind and her body, though none of their blood ran through her. I drew her imagination, the way it chugged steadily along and then blossomed, encouraged by all she's exposed to within her four classroom walls. I drew the ache of leaving her behind, and the relief of it, too.

This collection of sketchbook pages, titled The Classroom, is now on my website. In light of the news from Uvalde this week, this project feels different to me now: still joyful, but calloused. I know I shouldn't. No one should feel guilty for being spared. But I also know this: nothing separates me, or N, from the parents and children in Texas––nothing but sheer luck.

TUESDAY

N's home sick from school today, so I take the day off work, too. We're in my studio drawing when the first Times headline appears in my inbox. I scan it quickly, my body tensing. Oh no, I say quietly, under my breath. N, who listens too carefully for an 18-month-old, looks up and echoes my reaction, her smile splitting her face in half. Mama? Oh no? Oh no! Not understanding, she begins to laugh.

Not understanding, I close my email and focus on our drawing. We are drawing scribbles today, which is different from every other day only in that it is a different day. I inhale and exhale. I will myself to relax, monitoring my body language and tone constantly, all in an effort for N to feel free and joyful for as long as she possibly can. If I can hold it in, she won't have to hold it at all.

I'll read the news after she goes to bed, I tell myself. The headline said the children were only injured. My own reaction is ludicrous––poisoned, even: only. Only injured. The rest of the day progresses routinely, save for the punctuating news updates and anxious texts from other parents. I read each one and then press a smile back onto my face. After she goes to bed. We push the wagons, we throw strawberries on the ground, we begrudgingly take a bath.

Around 6:45, N snuggles up to T and coaxes him to read the second of one thousand bedtime stories. One dozen times is how many times I tell N that I love her, and even after that, I continue telling her within the confines of my own mind as I head downstairs to make dinner. I take all the ingredients out: the soup, the bread, the spoons, the bowls. I place the dutch oven on top of the burners and start the flame. After that, I simply lean over the stove and sob, my body shaking for all of the beautiful children we insist––so stupidly, on leaving behind.

WEDNESDAY

"There’s a thousand ways it could happen, I know. Images flash in my mind, glimpses of what could be when danger looms near. A car gets too close to the curb when we’re walking on the sidewalk. Another rolls through a stop sign just as we cross the intersection. I imagine scooters flipping and bikes ramming into walls. Trucks driving in the wrong lane. I see baseball bats swung too close to heads and escalator rides gone awry. Every fever brings on the reality that illness can hit anyone at anytime, that many don’t recover. That that could be one of mine. I tell myself to breathe deeply and heavily when they go onto the roof with their dad to string the Christmas lights. But I don’t actually breathe until their feet are back on the ground. I grip their hands tight on the Ferris wheel, remind them to sit and not lean over too far. Remind them not to dive into the shallow end. To not walk too far out into the ocean.

Some of this is my anxiety, I know. But the rest is my motherhood. The part of my brain that changes when babies are born, the part that is conditioned to sense danger in every corner.

It’s the part that screams in silence when nightmares are near.

And here, in America, nightmares are always near."

––on living in the space between grief and rage by Ojus Patel

THURSDAY

This week, I look at what other artists have chosen to remember:

American People Series #15: Hide Little Children, 1966 by Faith Ringgold

“Mera sohna gagaloo magaloo puth” by Baljinder Kaur

Boy Among Withered Leaves by Chihiro Iwasaki

Three Ages of Women by Gustav Klimt

FRIDAY

The world

is full of doors.
And you, whom I cannot save,

you may open a door

and enter a meadow, or a eulogy.
And if the latter, you will be

mourned, then buried
in rhetoric.

There will be
monuments of legislation,

little flowers made
from red tape.

What should we do? we’ll ask
again. The earth will close

like a door above you.
What should we do?

––Letter Beginning with Two Lines by Czeslaw Milosz by Matthew Olzmann

xo,

M

P.S. This letter is from my weekly newsletter, Dear Somebody. To receive these letters in your inbox, please sign up here.

Dear Somebody: Where has all the time gone?

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

MONDAY

“Probably the best thing my parents did—two simple things that don’t seem to occur to many people—was to give me my own desk just for art and to let me use professional (or at least good) art supplies from a very young age. My father was a printmaker in the 1980s, so he had all of his stuff lying around and was very generous about it. Other than that, I did not have after-school art classes or trips to museums or things that people assume are key to inspiration. In the 1980s, art was seen as an optional thing in the sidelines of life, so you got to make “creative stuff” at school if you happened to get a teacher who was personally into it. That was about once every three years. I would say that, instead, boredom was the key to inspiration. My family didn’t have any money to spare, didn’t go many places, and therefore my brothers and I had loads of unstructured time, our own desks, and a backyard with plants and dirt. We didn’t have vacations, other than driving to a river or a beach once in a while, so I figured that exploring ideas in the far reaches of one’s imagination was perhaps the best way to travel.”

–from Elizabeth Haidle's interview with Haley Laningham in Southeast Review

P.S. Elizabeth (who is as lovely on the phone as she is on the internet) has a new needle felting course out that I'm excited to take this summer. Maybe you'd like it, too!

TUESDAY

Today marks the last day of my first year of graduate school. It feels anticlimactic; I knew it would. Significant days have a way of doing that: feeling like a terrific storm that took a wrong turn somewhere, forgetting to arrive. The body fills with an anticipation so large that there is very little room left for the prospect of satiety.

In preparation for my final review, I finished illustrating Ilya Kaminsky's We Lived Happily During the War, and bound my illustrations for William Bronk's The Tell into a neat little book. I thought about how much I love poetry, and how poetry has always loved me back, the way only books or paintings or music can, without reason or knowing how.

This summer, I'll write and illustrate some of my own poems. I want them to be good. I want them to be so good, so badly, that I often think about not writing them at all. The one thing graduate school has taught me is the one thing I already knew. In life and love and art and parenting, you can't really plan on it being good. The only thing you can plan on––all you can really count on––is trying.

WEDNESDAY

"The Ama divers of Japan are all-women divers. The women dive tankless making them free divers, and while they also collect seafood and seaweed, their main focus is pearls. Ama means ‘woman of the sea’ or ‘sea women.’

The world of the ama is one marked by duty and superstition. One traditional article of clothing that has stood the test of time is their headscarf. The headscarves are adorned with symbols such as the seiman and the douman, which bring luck to the diver and ward off evil. The ama are also known to create small shrines near their diving location, where they will visit after diving in order to thank the gods for their safe return."

–on the Ama divers of Japan, from Erin Austen Abott's newsletter, Field Trip

THURSDAY

It's 6:45 am and we are downstairs in the kitchen, Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers playing on the stereo, N shoveling fistfuls of granola into her face. Her head hinges at the neck like an L-shaped bracket and she moves corpse-like to the beat. She is, by far, the best dancer under this roof.

I laugh aloud and the future flashes behind my eyes: N at 14 slamming the door in my face, N at 3 giving me a soaking wet post-bath hug, N at 22 calling me on the phone, I hope, just to say hello. I laugh aloud and her voice fills the space between my ears like crickets' song, beautiful against the early morning stillness.

It's 6:48 am and I'm back downstairs, standing in the kitchen while she bops along to Kendrick Lamar. “MA-ma!" she shouts, beckoning me to dance, but I feel exhausted, having traveled to the future and back. She's only 18 months, I know, but it was yesterday that I brought her home from the hospital.

Where has all the time gone, I wonder.

FRIDAY

I like the lady horses best,

how they make it all look easy,

like running 40 miles per hour

is as fun as taking a nap, or grass.

I like their lady horse swagger,

after winning. Ears up, girls, ears up!

But mainly, let’s be honest, I like

that they’re ladies. As if this big

dangerous animal is also a part of me,

that somewhere inside the delicate

skin of my body, there pumps

an 8-pound female horse heart,

giant with power, heavy with blood.

Don’t you want to believe it?

Don’t you want to lift my shirt and see

the huge beating genius machine

that thinks, no, it knows,

it’s going to come in first.

–from Ada Limón's How to Triumph Like a Girl

xo,

M

P.S. This letter is from my weekly newsletter, Dear Somebody. To receive these letters in your inbox, please sign up here.

We Lived Happily During the War

Mixed media collage, pencil, gouache

Illustrating poetry is something I come back to again and again. I enjoy illustrating narratives, and poetry leaves space for me, as an artist, to breathe and explore.

These 5 illustrations accompany Ilya Kaminsky’s We Lived Happily During the War, a heartbreakingly honest poem. Many thanks to Ilya for writing poetry that moves us to think, act, and create.

Dear Somebody: Another year over.

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

MONDAY

When my mother first comes to visit me on the farm, she’s in awe. She’s lived in the suburbs for her entire adult life, ever since she emigrated to the United States as a young woman. For the last 30 years, she’s been surrounded by streets and sidewalks, the chatter of neighbors, the early morning rumble of school buses picking up their children. Here, it’s quiet.

"Look at all this land!” she says, walking around the 20 acres of wood that surrounds us. “Wow. It’s so green. So beautiful. Look! There’s deer there.” I look, but my eyes miss their delicate limbs as they disappear into the maple trees. Instead, I see the weeds inching past my knees, the stone driveway in need of leveling, the demolished kitchen I spend my days re-tiling. We wash our dishes in the bathtub. We spend our nights tilling the earth, weeding the greenhouse, or clearing years of neglect from the yard. It’s difficult for me to imagine the future, but I know it will take many years to love this neglected land into something new.

–An excerpt from my latest column, Being, for Issue #53 of Uppercase Magazine

TUESDAY

"To be reminded of your cosmic insignificance therefore isn't just relaxing, but actively empowering. Because once you remember the stakes aren't anywhere near that high, you're free to take meaningful risks, to let unimportant things slide, and to let other people deal with how they might feel about your failing to live up to their expectations."

–Oliver Burkeman on Cosmic Insignificance

WEDNESDAY

Today, on my birthday: this is what I look like. This is what I look like nearly all of the time: like I'm sleepwalking through life.

I've got one year of graduate school nearly finished, one forthcoming book of essays written and under my editor's care, and one beautiful baby who loves waking up at 4am.

Sometimes I look at my little family and feel like I'm in a dream. Sometimes I get off the phone with a friend and I think about how lucky I am to have such meaningful relationships. I've built a life my 15-year-old-self couldn't even have imagined. I feel myself changing nearly all of the time. Things are hard and beautiful; challenging and all the more fulfilling because of that.

Low on sleep, but life is full, full, full: this is a lucky life.

THURSDAY

Over the past half-year, slowness has settled into me. I've become a lot more comfortable with taking the long road, letting go of ideas that dictate where I should be and how it should look.

It is especially difficult to be patient with creative work, which can be quite isolating and lonely, and which relies on a strong connection with your honest, artistic self. I'm continuously rebuilding this relationship. While I do so, interviews with those I admire have been especially comforting: Shaun Tan on taking the long road, Caver Zhang on gradual acceptance, and Lois Lowry on reading as a rehearsal for life.

FRIDAY

Lucky Life isn't one long string of horrors
and there are moments of peace and of pleasure as I lie in between the blows.
Lucky I don't have to wake up in Philipsburg, New Jersey,
on the hill overlooking Union Square or the hill overlooking
Kuebler Brewery or the hill overlooking S.S. Philip and James
but have my own hills and my own vistas to come back to.

Dear waves, what will you do for me this year?
Will you drown out my scream?
Will you let me rise through the fog?
Will you fill me with that old salt feeling?
Will you let me take my long steps in the cold sand?
Will you let me lie on the white bedspread and study
the black clouds with the blue holes in them?
Will you let me see the rusty trees and the old monoplanes one more year?
Will you still let me draw my sacred figures
and move the kites and the birds around with my dark mind?

Lucky life is like this. Lucky there is an ocean to come to.
Lucky you can judge yourself in this water.
Lucky the waves are cold enough to wash out the meanness.
Lucky you can be purified over and over again.
Lucky there is the same cleanliness for everyone.
Lucky life is like that. Lucky life. Oh lucky life.
Oh lucky lucky life. Lucky life.

–from Gerald Stern's Lucky Life

xo,

M

P.S. This letter is from my weekly newsletter, Dear Somebody. To receive these letters in your inbox, please sign up here.

Dear Somebody: Holding onto the proof.

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

MONDAY

The past few weeks have been a series of can-we-make-it-to-the-next-day? days. Days full of class-and-homework, my looming book deadline, and the last dregs of winter; weeks that all seem the same.

I sit on the edge of our bed talking to T, whose eyes are worn with sickness. We have food poisoning, and it's the first time we've both been sick, at the same time, since having N. I rake the carpet with my toes, listening to her shout No! over and over again, her tiny voice permeating through the walls and ringing in my ears. She should've been asleep a long time ago. This weekend has been hard. I am tired. But something in me feels new.

Somewhere between the hours of school and hours of work, between the food poisoning and the exhaustion, between the constant cleaning and meal-planning and piles of neglected laundry, I'd found the proof. I didn't even know I was looking for it, but here it was, hanging in the mundanity: proof of a life well-lived.

Even the most disappointing of experiences hold meaning. I try to remember that even though I'm not always successful. But when I stop rushing through them to get to the “good” part of life, the value is too great to miss. The good part is here––in the illness, the deadlines, and the round, giddy baby who watched an entire hour of Daniel Tiger while her mother lay, utterly exhausted, beside her.

The good part is here: I'm holding onto the proof.

TUESDAY

"But how does one keep an imagination fresh in a world that works double-time to suck it away? How does one keep an imagination firing off when we live in a nation that is constantly vacuuming it from them? And I think that the answer is, one must live a curious life. One must have stacks and stacks and stacks of books on the inside of their bodies. And those books don’t have to be the things that you’ve read. I mean, that’s good, too, but those books could be the conversations that you’ve had with your friends that are unlike the conversations you were having last week. It could be about this time taking the long way home and seeing what’s around you that you’ve never seen, because most of us, especially city folk, we stay in our little quadrants.

But what if you were to walk the other way? What if you were to explore the places around you? What if you were to speak to your neighbor and to figure out how to strike a conversation with a person you’ve never met? What if you were to try to walk into a situation, free of preconceived notion, just once? Once a day, just walk in and say, “I don’t know what’s going to happen, and let’s see. Let me give this person the benefit of the doubt — to be a human.” ––Jason Reynolds on Imagination and Fortitude (via On Being)

*For those with pre-teens, I recently listened to When I Was the Greatest and recommend it for many reasons, but especially for what it teaches about non-traditional friendships, families, and building inner confidence.

WEDNESDAY

I'm continuing my experiments in collage (see above for my latest). This process has brought forth several questions within me: Whose voice is lost when an existing work is combined with something new? Does an artist have the right to illustrate someone else's words? What does it mean to be inspired?

For now, I'm enjoying the exercise collage brings. It attracts me to a wider range of ephemera, opens up my compositions, encourages me to combine textures, and forces me to relax. It's also been a really surprising exercise in letting go: I cut and paste without really knowing why or how, propelled further by intuition than my thinking brain, and in the end, I find that I'm somewhere unexpected––and that it is good.

THURSDAY

As far as kisses go, N's way of giving them has been to smush her cheek next to yours. This is all she's ever done in her 17 months of life. Tonight, after dinner and bath time, she climbed into T's lap and gave him her first real kiss: her mouth against his cheek, followed by a great big cozy hug. The first kiss she's ever given anyone! I watched the whole thing from a front-row seat, extremely wide-eyed, only 20% of my body angry with envy.

FRIDAY

And when they bombed other people’s houses, we

protested

but not enough, we opposed them but not

enough. I was

in my bed, around my bed America

was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house.

I took a chair outside and watched the sun.

In the sixth month

of a disastrous reign in the house of money

in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money,

our great country of money, we (forgive us)

lived happily during the war.

–from Ilya Kaminsky's We Lived Happily During the War

xo,

M

P.S. This letter is from my weekly newsletter, Dear Somebody. To receive these letters in your inbox, please sign up here.

Dear Somebody: The perfect day.

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

MONDAY

I climb into the car after a long day of classes and J, who's visiting for the weekend, tells me she's brought along a bottle of The Perfect Day all the way from New York, having socked it away in the airplane's belly, along with dozens of bagels.

We do the perfect day exercise, the one where you imagine your perfect day 10 years from now. In it, I live in a house with a separate studio and a family that looks just like mine. In it, I write stories and help other people share theirs. In it, a friend comes by to hang on the porch and share in laughter. In it, I feel good, with a body less stressed, with a mind less stretched. In it, there is time for me.

Between J and me are 19 years of memories. My 15-year old self never imagined friendships this old, but here we are: still friends. I know time goes on, but where does it go? Time becomes the ease, I think––the natural laughter, the conversations about bodies, and babies, and home. Time becomes the tears in my throat. A swift catch when I slip on the ice, all the words we don't say, her hand in mine.

We're sitting outside in the fifty-something warm-wash weather, the sunshine glinting in our eyes, legs draped over the porch walls. I can tell it's happening right now––the meaningful part of life, the part you remember years later, the part that wakes the sleeping bird in your heart.

I'm going to remember this, I say aloud. You and me on the porch, this orange wine, this moment in time. The perfect day.

TUESDAY

In an effort to understand what direction I'd like to take my illustration work in, I've been making collages. Here is one, and another, and another.

Collage opens up the way I think about composition and layout, by providing more air between my subjects and their environment. Everything in the picture breathes.

WEDNESDAY

"Does working so much fulfill you?” a skeptical writer friend asked; I’d opened up to him a bit about my other lives, then regretted it. I wasn’t trying to show off. I was just trying to explain why I’d been tired for an entire month. He seemed annoyed by how much I worked and, after expressing concern for my general health, suggested that, because I wasn’t giving the M.F.A. my full attention, I wasn’t taking my writing seriously. I was taking my writing seriously, but I also needed to make rent. He, on the other hand, was fine financially, and would continue to be fine, even if he never made money from his writing. I brushed off his judgment and, for a while longer, we continued to be good friends. The obvious but tedious fact is that some of us are conditioned to work much harder than others because some of us have a lot more to prove. Had I mentioned this to my friend, he would have rolled his eyes.

–from Weike Wang's Notes on Work

THURSDAY

Factories at Clichy: might be my favorite Van Gogh? I stared at it not-long-enough, while N ran amuck, her tiny feet slamming echos through the museum. Next time, we'll look at this painting first.

FRIDAY

It has begun: they climb the trolleys

at the thief market, breaking

all their moments in half. And the army officers

in the clanging trolleys shoot at our neighbors’ faces

and in their ears. And the army officer says: Boys! Girls!

take your partner two steps. Shoot.

It has begun: I saw how the blue canary of my country

picks breadcrumbs from each soldier’s hair

picks breadcrumbs from each soldier’s eyes.

Rain leaves the earth and falls straight up as it should.

To have a country, so important,

to run into walls, into streetlights, into loved ones, as one should.

Watch their legs as they run and fall.

I have seen the blue canary of my country

watch their legs as they run and fall.

–from Ilya Kaminsky's Deaf Republic: 2. 9AM Bombardment

xo,

M

P.S. This letter is from my weekly newsletter, Dear Somebody. To receive these letters in your inbox, please sign up here.

Learning to Float in My Own Body

A short comic about the parts of ourselves we try to push away, and what happens when we do. Fighting myself is a futile battle; despite whichever side wins, I always lose. I try to spend more time with what feels ugly and the parts of myself I’m tempted to push away. These are the more difficult parts of me, yes—but also the most beautiful and strange.

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This comic was made using Faber Castell colored pencils on 11”x14” Stonehenge paper.