I have begun working on my first book.
This last weekend I spent hours scanning all of my relevant journal entries + highlighting the fragments of what I think I will be including. The next phase is the patient undertaking of editing the selected pieces, refining them. And then to write the damn thing!
As most of you know by following my story online, my beloved mother, Dorothy Stenson, passed on to infinite realms on July 15th, 2024. This event has taken most of my energy and focus, creative and otherwise. This book serves as both a way for me to parse through all that this emcompasses and a meditation of devotional making. To mother something into being that holds even a fraction of the remarkably vast oceans of love and belief she poured upon me her whole life. Even when she was sick, until the very end.
This book is a collection of poems and images. Some images are seemingly random, but fitting, pulled from a box somewhere, while others are from the 3 months I lived in my parent's house this summer alongside my father. I created a collection of images with the theme of her absence, some of those will be included.
This book is about my personal experience of grief, and I believe simultaneously touches upon many themes of collective grief.
There have been moments in my grieving, small windows gazing into the great black expanse of cosmic beingness. They are windows unto love. It can be strange to string words together around an experience I am still experiencing as seismic waves within me, currents of something to come. I still cannot believe it's true.
While I am digging though my journals I am also pouring over poorly organized hard drives, boxes of unmarked film. It is time to archive all my physical film. It is time to make art as a means to understand, as a doorway to acceptance, as path to praise. I am hoping that the making of this book is not just balm to my broken heart, but to all those who encounter its pages.
Reach for the land
o Mother
o Mother
and the chalice you carry will forever be one of love
o Mother, Mother
every morning I wake reaching for your hand
and now
somehow
we are more one than when you were my only home
my only heartbeat.
I am from her,
She is within me
Rest in prayers of rose water, my beloved.
(An image of Dorothy hand trimming blades of grass along her famous rose garden. Taken two summers ago when I went home for a month to be with her post surgery. This image really is a piece of her spirit. If you know this part of her, you are blessed.)
