Wendell Berry had a practice that he called Sabbath Poems. Once a week or so, when his wife was playing piano at the little church that he had been going to since he was a small child, and if the weather permitted, he would walk into the woods near his home in Kentuky. For him, this was his most sacred time of the week, where he could be alone with his thoughts and feelings. He wrote little poems, ones meant only for himself, and for God, or whatever the spiritual/natural world was for him. He didn’t publish these poems until he was in his 60s, and was surprised how much they spoke to other people. He said that he did the Sabbath Poems for his own spiritual growth and need. Not for an audience. For himself.
I’ve been thinking a lot about privacy lately. For the last 10 years I have been a very public trans person. I was a teacher for the first half of transition, then writing a bunch of poems, and sharing them daily for years and years on the internet. I wrote long newsletters that I sent to a growing number of people, about my thoughts and feelings. I mailed out poems to journals, got a bunch of publications, small little hits of ego.
But I’ve been in a serious rut when it comes to my poems. I’ve been thinking about what would be easy to post, what would fit into the structure of poems, what would be easily digestable in a square. And that’s good. It’s gotten me out there, fed me likes, kept me showing up.
And currently, I’m feeling bored. I’m feeling depressed about what I’m seeing online, especially in trans spaces. A lot of despair. A lot of bad feeling. A lot of anger and recrimination.
And I’ve decided to take a little break from sharing my brain with the whole world.
And so I’m retreating into my notebooks for a while. I’m going to stop posting poems and newsletters for a season, recharge a little bit. From now until the winter equinox, any public posting I am doing is going to be extremely limited. I will still like my friends’s posts. I may even post a couple of pictures of my notebooks here or there. But I think my words need to be private for a while. Learn to do this for me again. To be a bit selfish, and not share every thought with the world.
If you want to chat, I’ll have my text messages open. Email is still there, waiting for your reply and letters. In person time is always welcome (though now that I’m working again I’m cherishing the privacy with a bunch of selfishness). I’m hoping I will return in the winter, recharged and with beauty to share.
Love you a bunch, my dear friends.
Misha
