Existing in Physical Space and Time

all is {writing} practice zine orders + a physical home for Writing Sangha

My Dear Writing Sangha,

Today’s newsletter is all about Adventures in Space and Time.

The all is {writing} practice zine now exists in Physical (not just Psychic!) Space, and I am so pleased with how it turned out:

These Zines are a Gift to You. You can request copies here, and I will start sending them out toward the end of September.

To the twenty seven of you who responded to the call for submissions: Thank You, Again and Again! What a joyful process it has been to receive your generosity, and to now be able to pass it forward. I’m mailing your copies this week.

In terms of Time, it actually took less than a week from putting out the call for submissions to having the cover and pages risograph printed… at Friends & Neighbors, of course. Only a couple days later, I had the gorgeous pile of folded and stapled zines in my hands.

Why, then, has it taken me ages to release them into the wild?

First there was a cup-filling trip to Seattle, where I spent time with another family-history-obsessed cousin, and got to hang out with several of you in person, My Heart! Then Scott joined me for a visit to the house on Salt Spring Island that for decades was the site of all my early solitary meditation and writing retreats, long before I had that language to describe what it was I was doing there.

Then I got distracted by another very exciting Spatial development:

Over the past couple of weeks, I have been negotiating (and finally signed) a commercial lease, legally binding myself in Space and Time — two years in this case — to the spot pictured above. It’s located in the midst of the action on Clement Street in San Francisco, just half a block from Green Apple Books and around the corner from Friends & Neighbors.

(I should mention that it was Friends & Neighbors’ All Star Art Club events — along with their kind-yet-firm refusal to consider co-working arrangements — that inspired me to look for such a space in the first place. “I wish Art Club happened every night,” Evan said as Scott and I drove him home from the last one. I hadn’t told him yet I was already working on it, ha.)

I’m gathering a team of collaborators to collectively create a shared space for writers, sewers, and other community-minded, crafty people to do their thing in SF’s Inner Richmond neighborhood.

Stay tuned for announcements about classes, flexible and dedicated desk availability, and of course an Opening Party… and please share this newsletter with sympatico friends and allies who might like to co-create a real, live, collective Space, in this Place, at this moment in Time.

A lifetime longing of mine is to be an Active Citizen of a Community of Place, so I am very much looking forward to being an Active Citizen of the vibrant Inner Richmond Community <3

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The movements of Sun, Moon, and Water through Physical Space and Time today, as depicted in the Northern California Tidelog

Mount Tamalpais reflecting a similar pattern when viewed from the South

In other Space-and-Time news, the Moon appears exactly half full today, and her visible sliver of light will thin over the coming week.

I think of this period between the last quarter and the new moon as “my phase.” It’s the point in the lunar cycle when I usually feel most productive, most alive, most awake-at-all-hours-with-seemingly-endless-energy for plans and projects. (See above!)

Turns out I was born during this phase of the moon. You can check your birthday moon too!

It’s not all good news, of course.

My father’s cognitive state is declining faster and faster, and I’m finding living with him more and more challenging. Scott somehow manages to take care of us both without ever cracking under the increasing pressure.

My once-beloved brother and I have been estranged now for six months. He only flies down from Washington to spend time with Dad when I’m not around, an arrangement which hasn’t become any less painful with Time.

And then there’s the fact that Dad keeps asking me when we can scatter Mom’s ashes. Does he keep forgetting that his children have yet to figure out how to speak to each other without devolving into the anger and resentment of ripped-open wounds? Or maybe he doesn’t want to believe this is how things are… or at least, how they have been, every time we’ve tried communicating since February? Either way, it breaks my heart to keep having to explain to him something I don’t even understand myself.

And of coures Dad wants the family together for his 80th birthday in September. We’ll be giving it a try. I can’t wait to see my dear brother again, and I’m scared to the bone that we might cause each other further harm. “Lots of opportunity for practice,” as my Buddhist friends say.

I’m doing my best to remain open to the possibility that things can change. That some sort of resolution might be possible, stubborn as we both may be. It happened with Mom, after all, even if only in the hours before she died.

What is Alive in You these days?

with Lovingkindness,

Elizabeth