Moon Glade
Hi Dear Readers,
Have you heard of the term, “Moon Glade”? I hadn’t until last week. I went to a talk with a friend to hear Gareth Higgins speak about his book, How Not to Be Afraid: Seven Ways to Live When Everything Seems Terrifying. To be honest, I don’t remember why he brought up “moon glades” because I was too busy meditating on the phrase in the moment. I liked how it sounded—slippery and sweet. The definition is: “The bright reflection of moonlight on water.” It sounds like so much more than that, though. I love that this very specific thing has its very own specific definition.
Summer is here, not officially, but officially for me since it’s now the time I check my weather app every hour. I mentally prepare for the onslaught of heat like a moon cutting water with its light. A sun glade of hell. I have summer seasonal affective disorder, and it’s now vampire time. My body wants hibernation and isolation. While everything is growing around me, I am having my tiny deaths. I’ll be like this until the click of autumn. I used to downplay this. I used to feel pathetic about it. But it’s a mood disorder and I can’t do any more than I’m already doing.
I’ll soon be relaunching this newsletter with a new name (but same—and more!—great content). I appreciate all 912 of you so much. Thank you for supporting me and my work. It feels so good to have you here.
Enjoy this week’s Leftovers,
xL<3
Reading List 🔖
Trauma Is Everywhere—Write About It Anyway - Adam Dalva
I’ve found in my own work that including personal anecdotes can be challenging, because to make them worthwhile we must view ourselves through a lens that allows for weakness and even wrongdoing
Who’s Afraid of Amber Heard - Rayne Fisher-Quann
It’s exceptionally clear to me that ever since the advent of the mainstream MeToo movement, the public (even women, even some so-called feminists) has been foaming at the mouth for a neat, uncomplicated example of an evil woman publicly conspiring to bring a good man down. The problem, of course, is that an instance of that is hard to actually find, and so — to paraphrase Voltaire — it became necessary to invent one.
A Black Woman Invented Home Security. Why Did It Go So Wrong? - Chris Gilliard
I hate the title of this since it acts like she failed, but the article itself is good. It’s from 2021. Its gaze is always going to wind up focused on Black folks—even if that was not the “intent” of the inventor. Surveillance, first and foremost, performs a carceral function by attempting the capture and control of marginalized populations. That it may serve additional functions is somewhat beside the point. Surveillance systems, no matter their origin, will always exist to serve power.
What Could Have Saved Oluwatoyin Salau? - Clarissa Brooks
There are no easy answers, no one thing would have kept her alive. Patriarchal violence is insidious in that way. It finds you at your most vulnerable, it makes a bed of your worries, and it feeds them back to you. Living in a time when the cultural fight for abolition and community care networks remains infantile, all while gender-based violence surges, means that systems of harm fold into each other, with Black girls always falling through the cracks.
Ruth Wilson Gilmore Talks Abolition Geography and Liberation - Lexi McMenamin
[We need] to combine curiosity with our capacity to see patterns. It’s a really human thing to see patterns. A pattern combined with curiosity enables us to see, “Oh, people do this kind of thing,” or “This is happening everywhere,” or “Oh, I wonder whether this pattern tells me something I couldn’t figure out, that I haven’t thought about yet.”
Librarianship 🌻
Once More for Those in the Back: Libraries Are Not Neutral - Nicole A. Cooke, Renate Chancellor, Yasmeen Shorish, Sarah Park Dahlen, and Amelia Gibson
How Local Libraries Help Welcome Refugees - Alice Nuttall
Books of Note 📚
A Thousand Ways to Pay Attention: A Memoir of Coming Home to My Neurodivergent Mind - Rebecca Schiller (nonfiction)
We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies - Tsering Yangzom Lama (fiction)
Hotel Magnifique - Emily J. Taylor (young adult)
A Gift For Nana - Lane Smith (children’s book)
Broken Halves of a Milky Sun: Poems - Aaiún Nin (poetry)
How Not to Be Afraid: Seven Ways to Live When Everything Seems Terrifying - Gareth Higgins (self-help)
[If you order any of the books above or any listed on my Bookshop site, a percentage goes to local bookstores and I get a small commission. Thank you for not ordering from Amazon!]
Playlist 🎵
“Easy” - Tomberlin
”Ordinary” - Miya Folick
”Stop Before I Cry” - Kevin Morby
”Girls Against God” - Florence + The Machine
”Selfish Soul” - Sudan Archives
”I’m Alive” - Beth Ditto
Mood Board 💓
Self-Care + Good Things ☕
Needle punching. Air conditioned spaces. Dark rooms. IRL friend hangs. Qigong.
