i recently learned how to describe that we are not a static person.

think about it. 

in any given 24 hours, you are not 1 person. you are 24 different people. or more.

or, at least, i am. 

happy, sad, friendly, supportive, comrade, angry, flippant, stupid, asshole, insensitive, compassionate, drunk, warm, loving, human.

so. many. feelings.

the book launch was incredible last night. my dad was there to bear witness, and, many of my san francisco family and friends were there too. 13 of the 41 authors read.

there is a passage in the recent BAYS book about how “BAYS is a living, breathing organism. how we live and we die. we laugh, we weep. sometimes we laugh because it’s so ludicrous, sometimes we laugh to keep from crying, and sometimes we just wail. and, we do it together.” 
a BAYS woman, katie, died today. we were both triple positive, a sub-type of breast cancer. we ran the mud run together right after i finished chemo. she embraced me after my first BAYS book reading in 2013. she died on the book launch anniversary, as we birthed our third anthology into the world.

that is the other side of all of this living.

the picture i just snapped is of five hours of sobbing, crying, snotting, swollen, texting other BAYS ladies, confused, like a small animal let out of its cage, blinking in the blinding lights, reminding myself that i am, we are, alive and here.

this is grief. 

i know many of you are riding the waves of grief right now. for the life you were supposed to lead. for the people who are not here physically. for the heartbreak in this big, bad, beautiful, brutiful world. 

several years ago, i got angry about the money going to the arts versus environmental conservation, a sustainable, healthy planet. then, i realized, the arts make us grapple with our own existence. and, that is core to it all anyway. music, painting, drawing, writing, whatever it might be.

i’m kind of refusing to go to bed because i don’t want it to be real, i don’t want to fall asleep to forget about it. i don’t want to wake up to remember it. i still dream in blue, the lyrics of a haunting song that is deeply connecting with me and one of my selves…

my 24th hour of self.

xoxo
meaghan