It is a morning dripping with what isn't thick enough to be rain and not fine enough for fog. One year ago today, I opened this platform.
December 28th 2023. I wrote about vitamin D and fire. I sat in my dad's living room in CONNECTICUT having spent christmas there. I kept up with the platform when I returned to NEW YORK a few days later. I wrote about gazing into an americano and seeing a hawk. By then I already had my ticket to MEDELLÍN. I worked on an apiary and wrote collaborative poetry with a man named Sebastian. I taught at a school in the desert region of HUILA and looked for work in BOGOTÁ. I wrote in the dark of dawn with plastic cups of coffee between my feet. I left and returned to CALIFORNIA where my family and I buried my grandfather. He had passed just after the new year. He received a military funeral with a trumpet salute and three volleys of rifle fire. The american flag was folded and presented to my mother. I wrote for the occasion and read at the podium. In that moment to share was quite physically difficult. The piece of paper I wrote upon was lost but the feeling stays near me.
I spent the summer working in MINNESOTA writing in the early mornings on a dock that stretched out into a steaming lake. It was in there that I received an offer for a three month residency in the NANTOU region of taiwan. Upon arrival, the submissions on this platform halted. Those months provided a container, space and companionship to dig much more carefully, methodically, self-consciously into my relationship with writing. With the support of the residency I completed two books by the time I gave my last good-bye hugs. The books are small projects but have signaled a way forward. I am moved to have made my writing physical, to be held in the warmth of hands.
The pause on this platform during taiwan became death. But one year is significant. In one year of simply so many different beds slept in, being able to ground myself in my writing and in sharing my writing has been utterly important. Thank you. Thank you for reading. I opened this platform to create and to share. This submission may be the final dilation in the eyes of this little blog. I want you to know that what I wrote here was for you and that I was joyful to know that you might be reading it.