with love, from soft snow, from wide sea
an update from life's swirl
Dear you,
If you are new here, and have found me from the NH Chronicle piece, I am waving hello, and saying welcome, and saying thank you for supporting the work of poetry. I hope this corner of the internet will be a safe & loving space for you.
For those of you who have asked where you can find me— I will be writing custom poems on my typewriter this Friday, February 24th at Exeter Town Hall Gallery, 2nd floor, from 5-7. I will be posting all future pop-up locations on my Instagram.
To all you who have been here the whole time: thank you. Here is a rose, a handful of glitter, a deep bow.
Last time I wrote, I was sitting in the airport, wondering if I would make a standby flight, in the midst of surrendering to some greater force organizing our travels.
It turns out, I DID make that flight. I made that flight all the way to Japan, where Derick & I wandered Kyoto and ate cake and walked until our feet hurt and bowed more consistently than we ever have. D fed the deers at Nara and one bit him in the butt, and I laughed so hard. We rode the trains, hush-quiet, and visited 7-11 everyday, and shivered in our very cold AirBnB. The whole time, I just kept thinking about that feeling of surrender, of letting things be absurd and ridiculous and beautiful and difficult— to be outside a language I knew— to need help just to order food, to be in the midst of the unknown almost constantly.
I don’t think I needed to go to Japan to understand how magic happens in this place of mystery, one where every meal is new, every doorknob is new. I’m grateful people were so welcoming and offered so much help. And yet, maybe I did need to go far enough that the part of me that organizes and grips and controls was so disoriented it didn’t know what to do. I fed that part a lot of rice and soaked it in the public bathhouses.
And since that trip, a tidal wave of flights back home— I am trying to remember the moments. Walking through Los Angeles in the pouring rain, Topanga flooding. The saturated blue sky of New Mexico. Surprising my dad for his 60th birthday. Weeping in an airport hotel.
It felt like we lived ten thousand years in two weeks.
My mantra of late has been: I am all in. I am all in for the poetry of my life, on and off the page, and not just the fun parts. Losing my license. The multidimensionality of grief, when it comes. My anger, when it comes. My fear, when it comes.
As more of my life has become writing poems for people in some of the most difficult and celebratory moments of their lives, I have found I need new and different practices. Not so much meditation and ceremony but absurdity, ridiculous trickster energy. Listening and dancing to one song daily. Walking through Target with my headphones on and buying one silly thing. Laughing so hard (at myself)— at how serious I can be about my poetic practice, about my love, about my grief.
It IS a serious thing. It is an honor & a privilege to do this writing. It requires serious discipline. It requires me getting myself out of the way, so the words can come through, so that I can work in many modalities of loving you (& the world).
And also, it requires me to put down the seriousness of it all and lift my face to the sun and listen to Selena Gomez on repeat.
So here is my coffee mug, clinking against your coffee mug, saying— yes, we can laugh so hard. Even if the laughing doesn’t fix a thing, it opens a door in the pain. Maybe, just maybe, we can shimmy ourselves through it, into another space, where we can hear our okayness, like a chiming of a bell.
What has made you laugh hard lately? I truly, deeply, want to know.
With great love,
Raisa
PS— Some of you have asked you can support my work. A growing edge for me is receiving help when it is offered! One way is by sharing my poems or inviting others to subscribe to this newsletter/ to follow me on Instagram. I will also always accept a coffee on Venmo.
Some things:
A fiction piece of mine
I have a book coming out!!!
I love Andrea Gibson and I love this video
Derick & I got ENGAGED! Hell yes I believe in creative expansive intentional responsive love. For us, this was our way— one way— of expressing it.
This song on repeat
This poem
❤️❤️❤️