a poem draft from october about memory & living; a bucket list for feeling alive
and a few creative updates
OCTOBER KEEPS MOVING AND I AM THINKING ABOUT IDENTITY + TIME + DEATH + CHANGE (FUCK!)
i know that i am not a girl but i will only say it in writing maybe two people see me as i am but even then i am not so sure, questioning what’s in their heads everyone else i love pretends to understand it and then turns me into their daughter & sweetgirl i don’t need to be life-changing. just tell me i am worth the love i keep receiving i am forgetting the names of people in my favorite books a few minutes after my hands quit touching the words i cannot remember how i looked at the world as a child. and my memories of people don’t feel like my own yesterday at work my task was to remove the dog-ears of an old book, folding the corners the opposite direction as the hands who marked them. i thought of pushing down pages to remember the words, just to get rid of the book in the end and have the work undone the season moved orange and my feet stumbled over the roots morning and night slipped away every time trying to close the blinds without panicking - without eyes on me surgery opened up and left him out to dry but now the sky is gray and soft the honey is the same color as the tea it goes into and this calls to me i may not be a good writer but i have the habits&personality (not a compliment)
bucket list that has nothing to do with how productive i am
collect rocks and shells. put them in jars around my home.
treat my mind like a gate left open. try to remember to close it behind me sometimes.
become more kind. remember to do random things for people.
embrace the messiness of my journals. but try to organize the rest of my life and objects, just a little bit.
learn and remember constantly, but accept that sometimes i will forget things even if i care about them. write notes to come back to.
fill photo albums. use my camera every year.
sketch drawings no one else will ever see. fill coloring books.
never be caught up on anything, but always write down to-do lists.
use my record player. put it next to the window.
learn about nature, history, science.
what i am up to at the moment
i started working at henderson books in bellingham a few months ago! it has been so cool and i am constantly discovering new books, authors and subjects to learn about.
i wrote my first album review for florist’s jellywish, a beautiful album released this year. it was published in november with the ugly hug, a wonderful music journal.
wishful thinking press opened for mini zine submissions, and we have lots of projects in the works! more on that soon.
my poem “Gray Folds” was published in pile press’s 11th issue, as well as a collage by my best friend jada! it is available here.
ry and i played a set at new prospect theater a couple weeks ago for “to whom it may concern”, a monthly event where people read (unsent or sent) letters out to the audience. everyone was so kind to us and it was so nice to be a part of and listen to people read such vulnerable letters. we also put out our first YouTube video recently, of our song “Tethered.” lastly, we will be putting out an EP of demos on december 31st, available for pre-order now!
thank you so much for reading. i have not been writing as much as i want to recently, but i feel like i am starting to move past that. this newsletter i read last week has helped me shift my perspective on writing, and i am loving the experience of free writing without expectations of what it will become next.
- hazel
“your worth as a writer is not determined by your daily word count, nor by how much and where you’ve been published. hell—it’s not even determined by whether you showed up to your desk this morning.
your worth as a writer is determined by whether you’re paying attention to your life, and whether you’re brave enough to wait until you have something worth saying.”
WOW that poem left me speechless. you are amazing <3