After that title, I’m supposed to have some hot goss to give you. I don’t think I have any right now, but I did have an actual tea incident yesterday, where steaming hot tea bubbled out of my travel mug and scalded both thumbs while I was holding the thing. It was a revelation. I yelped like a dog whose tail had been stepped on.
It feels dangerous/ludicrous/painful to mention my small scald when people are losing their lives and whole worlds right now. Sometimes I think I need to acknowledge the lack of my camera on world events in Under a Spell. Other times I think it’s clear that this project is about having the courage to look minutely at your own shit, which we are frequently told doesn’t matter, or isn’t as bad as someone else’s, all the things.
I don’t mean this as a justification for willful ignorance, I just mean that I hold space for the extremely powerful innocence in us all, and try to write from this untouched space. When a child gives you one of their drawings, you don’t say: I was hoping your picture of the moon and the stars would reflect the headlines today. Right? Anyway, that’s what I always want these posts to be: a drawing I scribbled and left on your desk, making a smile flit across your face or a pause settle in your body for a moment.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Under a Spell to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.