“She feels like she is drowning, but she’s just meeting herself again for the first time,” Alexis Pauline Gumbs writes in Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals. She’s talking about a baby Weddell seal, how she’s born without the knowledge, the instinct, that she can breathe underwater. “No one has told her about the great oxygenating capacity of her blood.” She’s a mammal in Antarctica, after all! “She doesn’t know the depths of which she is capable. But her mother does.”
So her mother pushes her squealing baby’s head underwater. Holds it there. And as the seconds pass, something changes. Baby seal coughs and spits and clings to what she has known—but then she lets go. She learns to breathe in a new way.
Sometimes we are shocked into knowing our capacities. We wake up to the unexpected, turn the corner in a challenge, run into what’s illogical—lungs suddenly underwater, and, yes, we do—we adapt, we learn to use our lungs anew. We realize we can dive and navigate milky ice mazes, thousands of feet deeper and colder than our first wildest dreams. We tire, but we see how light refracts across the surface, and we know now, instinctually, to come up for air. To breathe.
Not all growth should be forced. (How exhausting!) Some life lessons can be soft like burnt pancakes in a too-hot pan. Others come at you like a hurricane, foisted by physics or divine providence. The changes I’ve experienced since leaving my marriage and relationship of eight years have been profound—I’m growing, I’m expanding, I’m grieving, I’m believing. Sometimes it’s extra-buttered black pancakes, sometimes it’s hunkering down with my loves in gale-force winds. But no matter the weather, we get up. We take a long look out the window. We get dressed. And we greet the day.
WHAT I’VE BEEN READING
I’m beginning my James Joyce era, thanks to Sylvia Plath. My lover gave me A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man as a Christmas present, and I jumped right into the Irishman’s coming-of-age story… it’s inspiring me to think more about the origin story, about building blocks, about what makes us into who we are.
Then I jumped into Joyce’s short-story collection, Dubliners. There are a few good gems, but mostly I soaked in how the writing just felt so old.
My new Roaring Fork Valley bookclub read The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue this month, and I loved it! I gobbled up her story in four days. My lover read it the week before I did, and we both appreciated the present-tense storytelling. It’s vivid, imaginative, and puts a nice twist on otherworldly romance. Reminded me in some ways of Reincarnation Blues, another long-time favorite novel.
Strega by Johanne Lykke Holm was the strangest book of my month. Gothic and gloomy, it’s the story of nine girls sent away to work the summer at a hotel, where things aren’t as they seem… and one of the girls goes missing. Translated from Swedish, Strega’s thick, saturated moodiness sets this book slightly apart from others.
Bear I read with my friend Birch and the novel I chose for March’s Colorado Sun x Explore Booksellers monthly review column. “What if?” is among the central questions poised in this quick, satisfying, and controversial novel by Canadian writer Marian Engel. So—what if—what if you were sent alone to a remote Canadian island to inventory the library of a deceased historical figure, and there at your work site you find a bear, sitting there, collared to the end of a chain, staring at you with “small, sad eyes,” waiting for its breakfast, just like a dog? What would you do? The story is ripe with lessons about presence, purpose, possession, and peace as the protagonist begins to see herself anew, wrapped for the first time in furs.
After
read Lisa Taddeo's Animal this month, I picked it back up again as research for a “depraved” female character/story I’ve been writing. I first read Animal when it came out in 2021—and on this second reading, I gleaned more than the first. The story is about a woman who ends up killing someone, and, yes, it’s disturbing. But it also makes sense. That’s what does it for me in this novel: Taddeo builds a rich world for her character, andThe day I finished Animal, I dove immediately into Three Women, Lisa Taddeo’s first book, a nonfiction page-turner that profiles female desire via three women with very different life circumstances—specifically, Taddeo looks at how female desire has shaped/impacted their lives. FIVE STARS. The book is being made into a TV series starring Shailene Woodley and I cannot wait to watch.
And, slowly, with Birch, I’m savoring Alexis Pauline Gumbs’ Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals, “… a book-length meditation for social movements and our whole species based on the subversive and transformative guidance of marine mammals.”
WHAT I’VE BEEN LISTENING TO
Listen to (!!) The Poet Who Sat By The Door, a spoken word album by J. Ivy, who won a Grammy for this 2022 collection. He explores endurance, love, and healing—listen all the way through in one sitting, if possible—makes for the perfect walk, long-run, or long-ski meditations on words.
No audiobooks or new music for me this month… relying on that silence to keep me whole and sane 🫠
WHAT I’VE BEEN WATCHING
(⭐️/5 stars)
Lady Chatterley’s Lover ⭐️⭐️ eeeeek don’t watch the movie. Just read the book! The film’s only redemption were the sex scenes.
Promising Young Woman ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ if you liked Killing Eve you’ll like this film. Inventive and propelling, I could’ve done with more gore, tbh… but I did appreciate how it cast an entertaining light on our ~infuriating systems~ that govern responses to sexual assault.
1883 ⭐️⭐️⭐️ After finishing the latest season of Yellowstone, my lover and I dove into this spin-off. Too melodramatic at its worst—gorgeous sets at its best!
The Morning Show ⭐️⭐️⭐️ my sister and I watched this together, and I loved processing the character evolution with her. This felt like somewhat of a “bridge” season, where not a ton happened (or am I just “over” COVID?), but lots of seeds were planted for future seasons… so we’ll see where this goes! I’m rooting for Bradley and Laura!
Taylor Tomlinson’s 2022 stand-up set, “Look At You.” ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ She dives right into her experiences with mental health, bringing both irreverence and insight… I appreciated much of her delivery, laughed out loud all by my lonesome self last night, even if some parts were indeed, dumb.
WHAT I’VE BEEN EATING
All the soups, still. (Forever!) Girl scout cookies! Oatmeal every morning! I didn’t take enough food pics, obviously. Green chile hominy! Tortilla soup! Lasagna with a vegan bolognese!
WHAT I’VE BEEN THINKING ABOUT
…how I took these two photos 24 hours apart. Devastated by all my anxieties one day, content to accept them the next. I am compelling myself to be honest—here, there, everywhere—to not mask or hide myself, to not smooth over my edges, no matter how
sharp or sparkled, bitter or bruised, absorbed or apathetic, burdened or buoyant.
I used to feel like I could only have one emotion—that I could only be one thing—and if I changed, or my desires changed, then somehow—somehow—I was wrong before, or I made a wrong turn. Is a sad-girl allowed to be happy? A happy-girl allowed to be sad? Yes yes yes, a million times, yes. Be YOU, bby.
WHAT I’VE BEEN LEARNING
Explaining myself and defending myself are two related but different actions. I am learning to stay open and soft as I understand when and where it’s important to be understood, and when it’s enough to just know myself, my heart.
Keeping this from last month since it’s still so true: Silence and boredom are UNDERRATED. Go outside without headphones. Plan an unplanned evening, do nothing with it but what calls to you in the moment. (It can take a lot of work to reach an “unplanned evening” when never-ending to-do lists are a part of life, but I believe in you!) Let yourself lie fallow.
WHAT I’M LOOKING FORWARD TO
A trip to Texas for a wedding, then a trip to Bend and Portland, to ski and spend time with wonderful friends!
More skiing! The Roaring Fork Valley’s snow continues to be unreal. Downhill, uphill, and cross-country … I love, love, love movement outside!
I’m also planning a trip to Cuba with my lover, if you’ve been or have recommendations, let me know what we should do/where we should go!
Update: I have a new email! Let’s stay in touch: eathenamurray@gmail.com
What’s been tickling your senses this month? Leave a comment or hit the reply button!
🖤🫶