It Has Been a Minute, I Have Small Updates
a little list of recent publications + some love for you all
Hello all,
I hope you are having an okay day.
Here are some things I wrote that got published recently:
MONSTERING MAGAZINE: “Frankenstein’s Monster and Micheangelo’s Angel: A Dialogue Between Two Trans Inhumanities,” free online link, December 2020.
UP THE STAIRCASE QUARTERLY: “Mouth (the Task of a Name)” and “Nocturne with Dirt,” February 2021.
SPORKLET: “Aisling with the Ballard Locks,” November 2020.
DIODE POETRY JOURNAL: “Aubade with the Bleeding Sky,” “Mama & I Talk About Salvation,” November 2020.
I have also started a Fiverr page (https://www.fiverr.com/umadwivedi26) for editing services! If anyone has a book manuscript and would like another set of eyes, I offer 3 tiers of feedback: the look-it-over (for just large-scale thoughts), the careful perusal (for a more thorough examination), and the fine-tooth comb (for two rounds of painstaking attention). Link is here again: https://www.fiverr.com/umadwivedi26
Unrelatedly, I have been thinking about spring a lot. This is always a hard time of year for me, and I’m never quite sure why. After all, spring is a relief to most everyone, the days lengthening so that we can actually make acquaintance with the sun, the weather warming, flowers pushing through the soil. Every year, however, I find myself miserable come March, the feeling climbing to its fever pitch in April.
I was talking about this last week with my therapist, and she said something rather interesting. Colors are brighter in spring, she mused. There are more people out. More sounds, more smells. Considering the fact that I’m on the autism spectrum, perhaps it’s unsurprising that after a winter of muted colors, limited sounds, and never encountering too many people in too little space, I am overwhelmed by spring, its shine and crush. I had never thought of that before. I’ve been mulling it over since, and I think that she is right, at least in part. Spring *is* overwhelming, overstimulating in a way that winter has made me unused to, bright and crowded, a deluge of light and voice and sensation. But I think there’s more to it than that. There is such comfort in winter and its confines. I need not leave the house, I scarcely need leave my room. The set of things to contend with is tighter, more easily managed. This goes beyond mere stimulation. It extends to the responsibilities that come along with being a person in the world, a person with relationships to maintain, tasks to complete, duties to oneself and to the world at large. These can be avoided in the winter. The pandemic at large has functioned as a kind of winter. I very much do not want to understate how devastating it has been for the vast majority of people, much as winter devastates those without the privilege of warm and stable housing, those who cannot afford to avoid the cold, those whose lives necessitate exposure. I am lucky beyond measure. For me, winter and the pandemic both have meant staying inside and risking little. Risking little in these extraordinary circumstances, but also risking little of what life regularly demands that we risk. I have stayed inside. I have restricted my responsibilities. I have not carried out all my regular duties to the world. As things begin to look brighter, the winter warming, vaccines becoming available to more and more people—it comes time to think about the work of spring. The work of reentering the world and all its demands. Winter has atrophied my muscles as it does every year, and I have fallen out of the habit of exertion. Now, as I have done so many times before, I begin the work again.
Anyhow, I hope you are all taking care. Go outside (mask on, obviously). Soak up some sun like the silly little sponge you are. Do your square inch of work as well as you can.
Love,
Uma