Thank you, new subscribers! Your encouragement means a lot.
I am trying to restart my writing practice. It completely flatlined while I was ill with OG and Delta COVID. In a Klonopin withdrawal coma. Re-learninh how to human, post traumatic brain injury. I should be dead. Thus the substack title. It is strange that I am not.
That experience pretty much wiped the memory banks and reformatted my firmware. A pop culture example would be in True Blood, when the Vampire Eric is enchanted by the necromancer Antonia possessing local hippie witch Marnie. It took Sookie’s magical microwave fingers to undo that.
A blonde on a screen with a ponytail screams, powerful forces rush to her aid. I don’t scream, anymore, here in the real world no one is coming to save me. I would be putting myself in greater danger by screaming, most likely. Noise ordinances.
I have no faeries, vampires, werewolfs or waitresses in my crew to help me. So I’m trying to save myself. Retreading the old paths. Reading the smells, sights, tastes, vibes, memories of who Andrea Lambert was. Putting her back together. While being doxxed and swatted, beset by blizzards, vexed, essentially realizing that Reno, Nevada is the most dangrous place I have ever lived.
I wish I was making this up for effect, but alas. It is really happening. I am incandescent with rage when not properly tranquilized. Using that rage as fuel that to keep the life light on. Focused. On restarting the writing. This is the process. It can be a bit messy.
The full moon approaches. I know what this means.
Saving my menstrual blood in tidily labeled Tupperware. I’m surprised to still be having periods, As with any rapidly disappearing resource, I am careful to preserve it. Full Moon womb blood a potent magical ingredient. Ethically sourced. Cruelty free. Non GMO.
I use different folk magic traditions of my ancestors. As I’m dealing with the racism, I need to avail myself of the magic. Carefully. Respectfully. I am many generations of separate indigenous and colonizer strains.
When using personal effects, as they are known in hoodoo, one is dealing with DNA. Doing science. Thus I label my samples and store them carefully. My mother was a microbiologist. I picked up a few things.01/08
A moment of holiday cheer:
Reporting live from the couch in the living room at 4 am. Black candalabra lit. Christmas tree all aglow. A dear cat, my eldest by my elbow. This is nice.
It’s a tremendous “Barbaric Yawp,” of realizing adulthood in my own home. I can do whatever I want. With in reason/legality/laws of physics/cogniscent of consequences. That phrase is from Walt Whitman, a poet who blew my mind in the last century. Now I wonder if anyone reads him at all. Walt was high on an America that never existed. My takeaway was the strength and enthusiasm of free verse. I wonder what the link is there to slam poetry of the same premillenial decade. It would follow.
Welcome to you too, as you follow down this primrose path with me.
Andrea Lambert 