how to stay in touch
Welcome to Mommy’s El Camino.
This week I received an email from a long-distance poet friend. I was one of numerous undisclosed recipients (maybe you were one).
The poet had once asked me, If you could ask everyone one question, what would it be? or something like that, for a poem they were writing.
Their email this week contained
a blanket greeting that, while simple, felt sincere
an acknowledgment of the bleakness of the moment
an invitation to tell them about my life and my art
a brief update on where they live, with invitations to visit, connect with mutuals, and invitations to read or perform in their area
an invitation to write about whatever I might be working on, with links to two pieces of writing they did on other people’s art
an invitation to send a drawing to me
updated contact info including email address (which I noted as being non-gmail, like mine) and phone number, as well as a nod to their possible frame of mind in sending the phone number as a just-in-case
an invitation to write back
a sentiment of love
I’m noting all these things because I thought about it all week. How this is an important communication, because it lets me know that I am being thought of, and it offers me many things, including invitations to connect further.
Some of us tend to isolate (hi) especially during winter (hi) and also during times of deep uncertainty (hi). This message makes me want to send a similar missive to my own set of acquaintances—a note in which I am not book promo-ing, I am not asking for something, but instead I’m offering. I sometimes think of this newsletter that way, and if I could make any one person feel like they are thought of, cared for, even if we don’t know one another very deeply, I would consider that magic.
For anyone feeling unmoored (hi), I want to say that if you feel like losing yourself in fiction but also want to feel tethered to time and history, get your hands on Good Girl by Aria Aber, and Us Fools by Nora Lange. Both books take place in the recent past, in vastly different locations and circumstances, but both offer eerie glimpses of the future we are now living.
Now it’s time for me to reply to the poet’s email.
Take good care, everyone.
I love this and I just began reading Us Fools.