Tonight is the eleventh night I’ve been away from my family, first at Hewnoaks Artist Residency1 and now home while they are visiting family out of state. This distance is new. It ends tomorrow when maintaining a sense of routine will once again become paramount in order for all of us to function. But tonight, I’m giving it one last hurrah.

At Hewnoaks, everything was different.

I was alone. I ate only when I wanted to eat and only what I wanted to eat. I slept when I wanted to sleep.2 I woke up every morning with the ovenbirds outside my window but eventually realized that after they got over the excitement of the sun coming up, they would pipe down and I could go back to sleep. Still, I took a lot of naps, wherever I wanted to—the couch, the bed. I pushed my nose into the grass, the wood of the dock.

I wrapped myself in wool and lay under the pines at night, head in the stars, listening to the loons (and occasionally, a creepy men’s choir). I kayaked across Kezar Lake in both velvety smooth and rough waters. I hiked a mountain and wandered in flat forests. I had a close encounter with petroglyphs that warrants an essay in and of itself. Nearly every day, I ran3 and swam—a holy and euphoric pairing. I felt deeply connected to my body and my desires in a way that as a working parent of two small children, I hadn’t for years.4

I brought a big stack of books with me and read a lot.5 I took notes on what I was reading.6 I journaled. I connected to the wifi in the lodge to work with Eli on putting together supplemental materials for potential funding for our elver documentary and got to see these canned eels he brought back from a trip to Taiwan last year (props, you understand).

I wrote a loose draft of a feature I’m working on, put together a very rough proposal for a book on elvers,7 and, pumped out a personal essay in the fading light of the last 24 hours of the residency.

On the last night, we gathered for a “cabin share,” roving from cabin to cabin to see where our fellow residents had been living (à la MTV cribs) and learn what they had been thinking, feeling, and making. Brian demonstrated the beaded sculpture he’d been working on for an upcoming show. Amy read from the novel she’d been revising. Andy8 read us a story and played a few songs he’d written and recorded. Chip showed us the graphite rubbings of rocks and floorboards they’d been making. Eileen’s cabin was bursting with paintings and drawings she’d made during the residency.

I read from the essay I mentioned, tentatively titled “Proud Parents”9 Here’s what Andy wrote in an email today:

…sitting there in Sans Souci at sunset, listening to you read, Cy sprawled out on the floor, and backlit dust motes lazily wandering the air… it was downright magical.

If you talk to people who have done residencies at Hewnoaks, this word—magical —seems to be the most common descriptor. Andy noted that he tries not to overuse the word, “magical” but it was, and is, the most fitting one to describe time there.

How to carry this magic into a world that is far less protected? How to carry even a semblance of this version of myself—happy, even-keeled, equanimous—into the world I usually inhabit, the life that I have chosen, alongside the systems that rattle us all, the crumbling, the terror, the daily struggles with teeth-brushing and getting out the door on time, sometimes to places we don’t even want to go to in the first place?

On the second to last day, one of the fellow residents asked me, “Did you always know you wanted to have children?”

We were on the dock alongside the divine lake, swimming, basking, swimming, basking, (and scoffing and scowling at the motorboats ruining everything).10

While I may have always known that I wanted to be a parent, or haughtily assumed that I could be one if I wanted to/tried, I didn’t know what effect being a parent in this world, in our current arrangement, our burning (and still beautiful) world, would have on me, good, bad, or otherwise.11

On the last day, Derek sent me a few photos of the kids, on vacation visiting family in Rhode Island. Upon seeing them, one thought that occurred to me was, I can’t believe I have children! And, how fortunate I am to be able to leave them for periods of time. Cue: The love it took to leave you.

I tried not to leave Hewnoaks until the sun hit this beautiful “Return Home” print my friend Hannah made12 but Hannah, to be honest, after one last leisurely swim, I had to move the print into the sun myself because I was already two hours late to leave and I didn’t want to have to be escorted out against my will.

I stopped at a convenience store on the way home, in a daze. A child walked out as I walked in.

“Mama!” she called. Her mother said something unintelligible from a nearby picnic table. “I want you with me, mama” the child said.

Before I left for Hewnoaks, Derek and I made an agreement about how we’d communicate while I was away, which was largely, that we wouldn’t, or that unless something was wrong, he wouldn’t initiate communication. I didn’t know if I’d have service, anyway, and wanted to experiment with not becoming too dependent on the wifi in the lodge (no wifi in the cabins). He said it would be easy. He said I’m the one that typically needs more feedback and communication. This is true. I also complain more.

I’m back at home now. They are still in Rhode Island. Today we FaceTimed.

“Is there anything new?” Gloria asked.

“There’s mica in the laundry lint,” I offered.

“Can I tell you something, mama?” Aloysius asked. “We went to a bamboo forest.”

I felt my voice and facial expressions tuning into them. I stared at the new freckles on Gloria’s nose, Aloysius’ growing hair, their eyes.

This evening I went for a run on Sears Island / Wassumkik and sat on a rock I last sat on when incredibly pregnant with Gloria almost eight years ago. There was a woman out there walking her dogs. She had the urge to circumnavigate the island and was weighing her desires against the tides and light. One of her dogs hopped up on the rock and leaned against me. This was something I missed.13

“I’m sorry,” she said, “It’s a good thing you’re not afraid of dogs. Anyway, you probably came out here to be alone and now I’m yapping your ear off.”

I didn’t mind. I looked out to sea and didn’t note which direction she took.

I send Derek pictures.

“My new wife!” he texts back.

“I think you’re really going to like her,” I write.

Tomorrow, we’ll find out.

Currents

Hewnoaks Playlist

I made a playlist of songs I listened to while in the magic, and to accompany me on the voyage home, and now. Maybe you would like to listen, too.

The Love It Took to Leave You

Good lord, thank you Suzanne of White Gourd (another divine player of the saxophone) who posted a story on IG within the last 24 hours that changed my life, as it led me to Colin Stetson and this song, which I think would have caused me to disappear into a black hole if I had discovered it while at Hewnoaks. Check out what Stetson says about the song (which I have listened to on repeat all day, as I do):

'The love it took to leave you' is a love letter to self and to solitude and to tall old trees that sway and creak in the wind and rain."

The Journalist and the Murderer by Janet Malcolm

A million things have I to say about this book but all the candles have extinguished themselves and I am but a guest in the dark night risking typos.

Wolfish by Erica Berry

There’s something quaint about restaurants/pubs that still think a portabella mushroom is an appropriate vegetarian substitute for a hamburger in the year 2024. The owner/bartender asked me if a portabella would be “okay” and I said “no” and ordered these nachos instead. He was kind enough to ask the kitchen to throw some avocado slices on top. It was a mountain I could hardly change the shape of. He said the dishwasher would probably take care of them. I hoped so.

Wolfish is a funny book to be reading while sitting alone at a bar, as I discovered within the first chapter. Please read this book.

Stranger by Emily Hunt

This book has been with me since Song Cave put it out earlier this year and I’ve been waiting to read it until I could unfurl with it. I’m grateful to have been in conversation with Emily for many years, grateful for Emily’s possession of language, her noticing of our greatest—her greatest—sorrows and greatest joys, and for hearing her exquisite laughter at the inanities of life in the lines of these poems. I finished Stranger on the dock and let the dock rock me for a long time after I finished it. Thank you Emily, thank you dock, thank you Song Cave. (Much acclaim for this book—Vulture calls it one of the best books of 2024!)

Pulsation and Pleasure: Wilhelm Reich Conference 2024

The annual Wilhelm Reich conference14 is happening in August and lucky for you, this year is online only.15

The two talks I’m most excited about are Reich’s son, Peter’s place-setting opening remarks on “how the topography and geology of the Rangeley Region of Maine reveal a perfect model in nature of Wilhelm Reich’s concept of energy” (Friday, August 2, 12:30–1:15 p.m.) and, Renata Reich Moise’s16 (CNM, MSN, BSN) talk on Female Sexuality, Energy, and Birth (Friday, August 2, 2:45 pm–3:15 p.m.).

This talk will discuss Renata’s observations, with an energetic perspective, from over 40 years of practice, of which 25 years were spent in direct care of women from puberty through old age in the intimate setting of the exam room and the labor room. Renata will explore how the concepts of emotions or trauma held within the body (which Wilhelm Reich called armoring), and energetic bonding (between parents/child, couples, as well as between the patient and clinician) are key factors within the context of female sexuality, contraceptive needs, pregnancy, the birth process, and postpartum challenges such as breastfeeding, postpartum depression, and return to work pressures.

Renata is left with many of the same questions Wilhelm Reich had: why don’t we as clinicians ask women about sexual response/orgasm on a regular basis in gynecological settings? How can practitioners be of help to average people who don’t have access to sex therapy? How can we help improve sex education everywhere? As we see the attacks on reproductive rights and sexuality in the USA and elsewhere, how can we make a difference?

Janet Planet

I downloaded Annie Baker’s recent guest appearance on Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso and listened to it while preparing food. I recommend this episode, both for learning about Baker’s new film, Janet Planet, but also, for the ways in which she reshapes the interview and Fragoso’s warm reception of live feedback.

The candles are dark, my temples heavy, I’ve done what I came here to do, I think. Thank you for sticking with me. Sorry for any typos, brain has shut itself off.

xo

Michele

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