smalljoys

m is for; tiny missives from virginia

[smalljoys]

more than a little joy in an ugly year

[smalljoys]

What I Read in 2016

Louisa Meets Bear, Lisa Gornick Dryland, Sara Jaffe The Only Ones, Carola Dibbell The Faster I Walk, The Smaller I am, Kjersti Annesdatter Skomsvold Tell the Wolves I'm Home, Carol Rifka Brunt Eileen, Ottessa Moshfegh Tipping the Velvet, Sarah Waters After Birth, Elisa Albert Bright Dead Things, Ada Limon Mr. Splitfoot, Samantha Hunt Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl, Carrie Brownstein Lumberjanes, Vol. 3: A Terrible Plan, Noelle Stevenson Pax, Sara Pennypacker I.D., Emma Rios Gender Failure, Rae Spoon & Ivan E. Coyote The Red Parts: Autobiography of a Trial, Maggie Nelson The Bricks that Built the Houses, Kate Tempest Lumberjanes, Vol. 4: Out of Time, Noelle Stevenson i love this part, Tillie Walden Love at Goon Park: Harry Harlow and the Science of Affection, Deborah Blum The Year of No Mistakes: A Collection of Poetry, Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz Hot Dog Taste Test, Lisa Hanawalt Sex Object, Jessica Valenti The Girls, Emma Cline Security, Gina Wohlsdorf I'll Tell You in Person, Chloe Caldwell The Mothers, Brit Bennett The Sunlight Pilgrims, Jenni Fagan Buffering: Unshared Tales of a Life Fully Loaded, Hannah Hart Girl Mans Up, M-E Girard Listen to Me, Hannah Pittard The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and the Body in the Healing of Trauma, Bessel A. van der Kolk Land of Enchantment, Leigh Stein

[smalljoys]

note to self:

when you realize there are parts of the past you aren't required to carry around, dispose of them

[pigmenting]

say i am a series of creeks & i am warm, warm, giving, giving, always feeding into someone else.

Raena Shirali, from “say i am a series of creeks” published on Better (via 7-weeks)

[smalljoys]

Contempt conveys the sense that you have a quality that is hopelessly unfixable.

[smalljoys]

What I Read in 2015

(the year I fell in love & read mostly comics)

Hawkeye Vol. 3: L.A. Woman, Matt Fraction Find Me, Laura van den Berg Harlem Nocturne: Women Artists and Progressive Politics During World War II, Farah Jasmine Griffin Ongoingness: The End of a Diary, Sarah Manguso The First Bad Man, Miranda July Saga Vol. 4, Brian K. Vaughan The Unspeakable, Meghan Daum Lumberjanes Vol. 1: Beware the Kitten Holy, Noelle Stevenson The Argonauts, Maggie Nelson Nimona, Noelle Stevenson Ms. Marvel Vol. 2: Generation Why, Willow G. Wilson Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates War of the Foxes, Richard Siken Ms. Marvel Vol. 3: Crushed, Willow G. Wilson Golden Boy, Abigail Tarttelin Kiss and Tell: A Romantic Resume Ages 0 to 22, MariNaomi Zero at the Bone, Stacie Cassarino The Miseducation of Cameron Post, Emily M. Danforth Long Red Hair, Meags Fitzgerald Honor Girl, Maggie Thrash Battleborn, Claire Vaye Watkins Station Eleven, Emily St. John Hawkeye, Vol. 4: Rio Bravo, Matt Fraction Rat Queens Vol. 1: Sass & Sorcery, Kurtis J. Wiebe Lumberjanes Vol. 2: Friendship to the Max, Noelle Stevenson SuperMutant Magic Academy, Jillian Tamaki Snaps, Rebecca Kraatz

[smalljoys]

unedited/unseen end of the year selfies for @openboat feat.: mud masking with edie, sweating in the woods on a solo walk, delivering coffee with expertise and glee, mugging myself in the gym bathroom, applying all the makeup, eating pork dumplings after 5+ years of vegetarianism, walking wulfe with an epic top knot, realizing how flattering brake lights are, attending a fancy party & feeling myself (tag yr it: @asktheangels, @untranslatablephrase, @groan-didion, @afirethorn, & @aubade)

[smalljoys]

show me

how do you make a life in a world that does not value your skills or interests

how do you find time for those truest parts of yourself, anyway

how do you remain vulnerable but not wounded

[halflunar]

Something’s not right about what I’m doing but I’m still doing it—living in the worst parts, ruining myself. My inner life is a sheet of black glass. If I fell through the floor I would keep falling. The enormity of my desire disgusts me.

Richard Siken, “Birds Hover the Trampled Field” (via weltenwellen)

[smalljoys]

tonight in repetitive behaviors: drinking wine & watching this video of my best friend and the girl she's engaged to & feeling every inch of my heart 

[smalljoys]

good advice

think about stout and stew and a new color of flowers you can put by your bed

[smalljoys]

if the past year were a single song, it might be this one

[smalljoys]

article notes left in gmail drafts after learning the friend who raped me went on to spend two years compiling case summaries on sexually violent predators

"I wanted control in a situation where I completely lost control," she testified. "I wanted to tell myself I had the control of the situation. 'I can make it better. I can do this, it's all on me.'"

(I don’t really know how to talk about what happened next in my life, and I don’t think I’m ready to, on so many levels. But the rush you get from men changes, I think, when your boundaries are violated, when desire turns violent upon your body, when you nearly choke under the weight of just how much you’re ‘WANTED.’)

In a way, writing maps a path out of the self. Instead of sobbing, you write sentences.

SLV:

This question of how to talk to a partner about what are, I realize, wounds that I carry, is a very tricky one because it directly confronts my fear of being defined by these wounds (or having these wounds defined for me). I both want to be able to give a lover a map of my scars, to recognize the permanence of their topography, and to contextualize them in the atlas of my experience. As a person who instinctually clings to silence and privacy even when I am certain that speaking and sharing is what I need more than anything, for me to hand over this particular map to someone I love and whose opinion I care about is a wrenching experience. What if they are disgusted? What if they are embarrassed by my revelations? What if they are utterly unaffected?

At the end of my suffering

there was a door

18

A friend——ashamed after years of awkward sufferings from a body she felt was disproportionate, breaching its allotment——shared with me her mantra, which I have since kept close: TAKE UP SPACE.

Under the circumstances, violent sex wasn't a matter of recreation for me. It was a way, one way, to help get better.

"Do you have anyone who can do that for you?" Meredith asked simply.

10:36 p.m.: I guess it’s true: sometimes in life, we need release. We need someone to listen and to drop the heavy stuff to move forward. We need to get deep, not wild.

[endless-unfolding]

Longing, we say, because desire is full of endless distances.

Robert Hass, from “Meditation at Lagunitas,” Praise (HarperCollins, 1979)

[smalljoys]

buy the same shirt in XS and XXL & have no idea which size will fit; finally google “how to get your breast reduction approved”

[smalljoys]

“Did you always know?” is one of the questions queer people are expected to answer readily—for strangers, friends, co-workers, parents and their friends. That question, of course, really asks: “Would I know?” It’s the burden of explanation: offering a comforting, clear narrative to others to affirm that sudden change isn’t coming for them. They’re stable.

I don’t know, but really I know sometimes, and have decided not to report those times, especially not casually, especially not passively.

But not knowing is not unstable. There are parts that will fall away, and you’ll still be there.

…

The act of explaining: It’s as if, before you speak, you have to relight the room you’re standing in.

…

Becoming is taking what you want, not what’s allowed.

via Katherine Bernard’s essay “Not Knowing“

[pigmenting]

My second grade teacher liked to ask us, “How do you feel today, on a scale of one to ten?” Ten always meant I’m super, thank you and one was always not today, Mrs. MacAuley, not today. But I never liked numbers, they would always twist and rebel against my mind so I chose to speak in colors instead. January third - I am the color of mint chocolate chip ice cream but I’ve eaten all the chocolate chips. I am calm. February seventh - I am a bruise of blues and violets today. I think it would be best if I sat by the window. These are unhappy colors. April eleventh - I am turquoise, I am magenta, I am every color in the rainbow. April thirtieth - I am gray, I am silent. May first - I am orange, the color of melting creamsicles on a beach in July. June twelfth - I am as yellow as the school bus that will bring me home to summer. I am free. Twelve years later, I still use colors. The winter makes me feel cobalt blue, the ocean turns me a seafoam green. Violets and purples leave me uneasy and scarlet is a fever of fury. Some nights I drown in shades of navy, denim, and cornflower but other nights I meditate in forests of harlequin and shamrock. But you, you leave me a blinding white followed by a soft yellow: the color of sunlight after a period of darkness.

Kelsey Danielle, “A Diary of Colors”  (via pigmenting)