(Ray's) Happy Birthday (Bar)
Spring Ephemerals, Resolutions
Hi friends,
Every year I arrive at Taurus season and something shifts. Yes, yes, it’s my season. But I also remember what life can feel like outside of stagnancy, with a little sunlight, sitting out on a patio somewhere drinking something sweet.
Today on my birthday eve I’m prepping a funny cake with almond buttercream and rose jam (fun fact about me is I ran a small cake business in 8th grade… this was during Cake Boss era and I knew how to make frosting roses and work with fondant etc.) and some colorful appetizers to share with friends tomorrow on my birthday proper, when I’ll have a reading at Molly’s Bookstore where I’ll share both poetry and bits of my novel, and then walk over to Ray’s Happy Birthday Bar and wear the funny hat and take my birthday shot ! Before that I’m running a volunteer day at the native plant nursery and before THAT I’ve set aside my morning to write.
It’ll be the last year of my 20s and I’m thinking about how Lena Dunham says in Famesick that your 20s are dominated by questions of where you belong. In the same day I heard that from her audio book, I was also rereading Mary Ruefle’s Madness, Rack, and Honey, and got to the part where she references the famous James Wright poem, and talked about the poet “paralyzed with fear lying in a hammock on a beautiful day—unhappy man in a happy world—does not suffer any less when he looks around him; he does not cease to suffer, he only ceases to try to understand.” (Ruefle 123). I got this news recently that I was in the top 15 of 735 poets for the Fine Arts Work Center Fellowship.
When I read this, I shocked myself by being thrilled. I was truly so proud and validated in my project. I crashed out a few days later, which I had suspected would come, because it made me wonder what the purpose of an “almost” was, or is, (this “almost” and a few others in the last year that were particularly tough,) if there is something I am supposed to be focused on in lieu of the dream that I was so sure (so sure!) was the #1 dream. Josie said I need to dream bigger. Alex said the universe is telling me I need to be in Philly right now. Gabriel said maybe this is making room for the thing that is supposed to come next. Asa said she would be there when I might want to stop being grateful and just be sad. And she surely was, replete with writing prompts and encouraging notes.
When I look back at the past year, I think about how far I’ve come—-a year ago I still worked a music venue job with leadership that was making me miserable. I hadn’t started my book-length poem that would make me a finalist for the FAWC fellowship, I had just decided to do the deluxe album, not yet fully committing to LP2, and I was probably 20 pages into my current novel draft. I had some experience doing arts and sustainability programs, but nothing like the delicious work of putting my hands in the dirt like I do at the native plant nursery. I also had not taught myself sound engineering for working Cannonball Festival!
I have to remind myself what is possible in a year, even a particularly difficult year: getting laid off, a lot of family emergencies. I posted on Instagram for my birthday last year calling in ease. Ha ha ha. This year was arguably one of my hardest yet. And I know that things will not exactly get easier, as I grow up, garner more responsibility, more commitments.
I have been caught in the itchy spring cycle of dread and thrill. I want to know the meaning behind everything that is happening, and that either makes me feel at home in the universe, or bewildered, or both. A feeling that has manically bubbled up a lot this month is the sneaking suspicion that I am making my best art yet. I am more sure about my projects than I’ve ever been. I feel like I’m on the cusp of so much coming together. I see in the year ahead my favorite part of being in my creative life: projects with gravity, a lot of time just focused on writing, the thrill of projects finding sure footing, and connections being made, hard work paying off. A focus on Philly, doing events for the Author’s Guild, potentially reading for the Offing, maybe doing interviews with Philly musicians and writers for Tonearm. I see getting married to Alex!!! We might get to go to Mexico City and Italy within a year.
In an effort to fend off some of the dread of my spring moodiness, I want to share a few magical things that have happened since last newsletter:
featuring at a Milk House reading series in Frederick, Maryland, and getting up the next morning after staying at my friend Devon’s place and taking myself to my favorite coffee shop from high school and writing an essay about sex dreams
feature at a Personal Velocity reading with Nikki Volpicelli and Lucy Ives and reading the essay about sex dreams, after which Lucy Ives stood up and said, thank you, I understand now, and going to the bar with everyone and truly laughing so much and getting more thoughts from Lucy afterwards about Leonora Carrington in a way that makes me feel like a real writer. Along with her recent book three six five: prompts, acts, divinations, Lucy gave me a sort of bibliography of 101 works on Magic and Writing, which I think I will be spending the last year of my 20s working through.
Seeing Gelli Haha with Sam and both of us looking at each other with big eyes like, let’s give them a true SHOW for Noisy LP2, Good Night Hot Clown. Walking around in my long coat and wrestling shoes and headphones after the show dancing around the neighborhood to “Dynamite.”
Watching Stop Making Sense and taking notes with Alex and Sam. Crying when David Byrne sings “I got plenty of time, you’ve got light in your eyes. And you’re standing here beside me. I love the passing of time.”
Quickest getaway / writing retreat in NYC with Alex - We had the best Vietnamese food of all time and walked an hour to see the Moonstruck house, then the Brooklyn Bridge at night. The next day I wrote at a cafe Jacob told me about when we toured back in 2023, perused the Brooklyn Botanic Garden for inspiration and was reunited with my favorite plant from my time working at Morris Arboretum: the Japanese snowball viburnum, but a cultivar which had the same colors as fruit-flavored marshmallows. Borscht and pierogis for lunch, Turkish coffee and baklava afterwards, writing workshop with my pals from McCormack. Reading Mary Ruefle in a rooftop bar waiting for Alex wearing a REALLY GOOD dress and tearing up a little bit because I love writing and language more than I could ever express and I would never want to be done expressing it. Listening to Spanish lessons on the drive back with Alex through the rain.
Alex and I went on a walk for ice cream back in Philly (a recent routine to get us both out of work-brain-dread) and had the beautiful collective neighborhood experience of seeing a big ass double rainbow
a very successful show at the Foundry! Before whch I got Murph’s with Nate and Jon and talked about work ethic and exhaustion, after which I went to Johnny Brenda’s and dreamed with Jon and Daniel and Alex about how much feels possible in music, during which I had an absolute blast, and danced on stage in a way that I am almost not embarrassed by
practicing for playing back-up for Daniel’s show at Rug Club and truly enjoying learning the new riffs and surprising myself with how quickly I can pick things up. Triangle Tavern with everyone after, sweet encouraging texts from Kat about the show, feeling so lucky for my friends.
one particularly good Monday off where I went from cafe to cafe to cafe reading poetry and working on my novel and in the travel between listening to Famesick
I’ve been thinking about how beautiful seeds are lately and am enjoying so much just planting as many seeds as possible. I’m applying to a PA Master Naturalist program in the fall that I’m so completely excited for I can barely wait. I went to a Philadelphia Botanical Club meeting the day I was rejected from the FAWC fellowship, and it sparked something for me. The featured speaker talked in-depth about American ginseng and I was thinking about field work and spending a lot of time studying specific plants very deeply. How that feels so similar to the craft of poetry, and how the two kind of feed each other.
I’ve booked some studio time for July :) So hopefully we can get this album moving!! It’s happening guys!!
Some thoughts on aging from Lena Dunham and Mary Ruefle respectively, a brief foray into hotness studies.
I’m working on a couple more essays, one about obsessive friendships and needing to have rules in my book-length poem, one essay about restlessness. I’m a Taurus, toddler of the zodiac, and I’m worried I’ll always feel this specific itchiness so I’m trying to work out etymologies, where the itchiness comes from. What should I accept, cease trying to understand about myself, about the world?
Here is an excerpt from sex dreams essay as part of hotness studies for this month… Read if you dare…
Within erotic fantasy, we allow ourselves something that we do not outside of it. The technology of sex dreams has been prophetic in my life. Historically I have made life-changing decisions based upon the logic of sex dreams! They warn of coming disruptions, ones beyond the romantic. These dreams arrive as relief when I am stagnant. They have foreshadowed ruptures in relationships. They demonstrate my spirit’s ability to continue to desire, to want to change, to have, as a counselor once put it, an intense bodily experience. They’ve insisted on presence in my body at my most dysphoric. They got me out, ungracefully, from a relationship with terrible power dynamics, when I was experiencing pain during sex I couldn’t explain, I still found eroticism through sex dreams. In times of feeling my most lonely, they remind me of my connection: erotic ones, intimate ones, romantic and non-, which is welcome and lovely, to think of crushes beyond the obligatory sexual implications, to instead understand how the spectrum of closeness feels in my body. They’ve helped me feel transness as a constituent part of me outside of others’ perception. They reinforce my ability to transmute or be transformed by sensation. When I have felt undesirable, unwanted, grotesque, they reassert me into a position of agency, that my sensuality is not something that waits to be awoken by another person.
My wish for my birthday this year is time to write. I hope the last year of my 20s I can bridge the gap between the whimsy of my young Sara Mae self and the lessons my 20s have given me about looking out for myself, taking care of myself. Time with friends being a part of that, getting to keep learning about plants and poems and music being a part of that. I want to throw a million garden parties with Alex, and have a million late night walks where we talk about our days and make sense, or not, of all that’s going on. I hope I can be present to more of my life, and enjoy it, instead of always preparing for the future, or asking why. My dreams lately have been work stress dreams, answering to invented logistics that don’t even match my day to day. I hope I can breathe enough in my daily life to make room for more sex dreams aka the mystical, mysterious, erotic, beautiful, and yes even hot, parts of my subconscious.
Wish me luck <3
Sara Mae