I made an e-book!

It's been a long while since I have posted. Rest assured, my goodbye letter to Seattle was not a goodbye to this blog.

However saying goodbye to Seattle and starting my long transition toward a brand new state (I'll eventually be landing in Madison WI this winter/spring) has been quite a task. Writing of course has remained a constant but finding time to refine my words has proven a challenge.

I have been putting work into a personal writing project for the past few months. As some of you may now I've been experiencing some health problems lately. The problems themselves aren't new but their severity and frequency have spiked in the last six months. I've been learning how to navigate the world at a reduced capacity and it's been tough. More than just physically.

I made a project out of documenting the disconnect and frustration I felt with my body, the medical industry, and my own conception of self.

I am really excited to announce that in addition to the various hard copies of Symptoms I've been printing out and sending off to my loved ones I finally took the plunge and e published the contents of this collection via amazon.

This is the result.

I wanted to share it with the world. I've wanted to since I finished the project last month.

Hell, it was tough not to immediately publish some of the things that came out of this project right here on this blog.

So sorry to have held out on y'all but it needed to be a collection. As recourse I'll let you taste the preface:

Crafting records, quiet bravery, and beginnings


This is just a beginning.

We all know what it is to want to feel better than how we're feeling. This is a beginning because the work of becoming comfortable in our bodies is never finished. This work deserves recognition. It is my hope that the pieces in this collection offer a safer space to recognize the discomfort of living. 

In the following pages I detail my own experience of discomfort, frustration, and conflict within my own body. In doing so I have crafted as true a record as I can of my body's experiences. I, like so many, often misread or misremember my body's signals. So when there are minute shifts in my functions and capabilities it can feel like my body has betrayed me. Having this record reminds me that when it comes to my body there is not a “normal” and that my expectations can always and often should be changed. 

Going through uncomfortable body stuff has challenged me to surrender to uncertainty as much as I can. And to really listen for new information about how to live in my body more sustainably. This surrender requires a new kind of bravery. One that is quiet and almost invisible, but a bravery that has become vital to my survival.
On your journey through the words that follow and beyond, I hope that you find this bravery and that it carries you from beginning to a place where you can feel better than you're feeling now.

If you've already received a paper copy of Symptoms buying an ebook version is a great way to show your support of my writing.

If you don't have an e-reader or really really just want a paper copy let me know and I'll send you one by post.

Thanks.

I'm breaking up with my city and it's tough as nails

To My Dearest Seattle,

I love you, but you have broken my heart.

Not swiftly or intentionally I think, but for three years there's been a slow crack growing in my chest. This crack's been pulling slowly open from the repetitive tension of lacking that, for so long, went beneath my notice.

I've made love to the grooves of your geography. Found comfort in the crooked of you disagreeing streets. The curling friendship of your neighborhoods has cushioned the empty of my resources these three years we have shared together.

I came to you, Seattle my ass freshly kicked out of a rigorous and a sadly less-than-radical teaching program. I showed up with 800$ in my pocket and no job guaranteed. I came seeking rebirth, looking to put some roots down. With you I wanted to fuck around unfurl in ways I was afraid to do while I was digging myself into the debt of college. I let the story of starting fresh seduce me. I believed I could prosper here.

Little did I know my belief in your gift of prosperity was the same one that ruined my college experience. It's the one that so many young folks of my generation are painfully and swiftly recognizing as a false promise.

When I arrived I sunk the last of my borrowed money into you. Dear city, I've spent the time since waiting for a return on that wistful investment. In the three years we've been together I've been out of work more than I've be in it. I worked as a pizza delivery guy and a data entry clerk. I pulled shots at a doomed co-op in the south end. For six weeks I drove through winter's hardest hours of morning with a van full of fresh bread I couldn't afford to buy.

I took a job on a boat giving tours. I proudly told strangers all about your most beautiful features. And in some ways I loved it (minus the 10 hour days and rigorous nautical duties). Talking about you always brought a smile to my face and almost made those grueling duties worth it. I used to dream about mentioning you and my love for you on the back of my very first bestseller. But your lack of give back has stopped me from dreaming about such things.

But I loved you before all of this, before I even came close. Seattle I loved you before I sunk my trust into your salty soil. It would take me days to list everything I love about you. Every third poem I write is about your body. None of my other lovers can boast this number. But you've never belonged to me. Your salt, who's flavor I love, has continually rejected the all of the roots I've tried to stick into it.

I've moved 7 times in the past 3 years. Your arms may have been open but not always comfortable. Even in this last year, while I've had enough resources to render my poverty invisible, while my address finally stayed the same for a little,  I could feel you shifting, still feel you constricting.

This is tough for me to say. Because if anyone asks me where I am from I will say “puget sound born and raised”. I'm proud of how constant you've been in my life. I love your fractional politics and your highly visible friction between urban an rural communities. In so many ways we are family, you and I.

I don't even know how to contemplate living someplace without salt in the air. Your breath is all that know.

But I've begun to prepare my lungs anyway. Started slowly packing a few bags. I'm tired of being the only one of my friends who doesn't pay their own rent.

My dearest Seattle, I simply have no idea how to make it with you. I've always felt at least one step behind your gorgeously rapid cultural beat. I have been intimidated by your purportedly artsy and encouraging communities. Those I've attempted to dip into have always seemed a little too cool for me. And I've been dipping into your icy for long enough to see that its not just my impostor syndrome anymore. As cultured as you are Seattle, you are the wrong city for beginners like me.

I am not a prodigy (I gave up this version of myself long ago). I'm actually a lot slower than you think I am. Addicted to the uncertainty of learning, I don't know if you can wait for me to catch up anymore. And as much as I love the way my legs long to race when I see you looking at me, this time I need to resist the way you tug at my sensibilities.

I'm not sure of what I am going to do with this life. With you, Seattle there is so little room for confusion. I always feel you begging me for a definitive answer to questions my body is not ready to set free. Can't you see? I want to stay in the swill of my curiosity. Curiosity is my salt.

I recently saw some pop article that rated you as the hardest working city in the US. With most residents putting in a combined 56 hours per week of work, volunteering, and other scheduled activity. Who knows if it's true, but it felt true when I read it. Right now and for the near future, I don't intend to work a regular 40 week. I'm not going to over-volunteer or compromise on how much work I know my body can and cannot do. I don't intend to martyr my energy for the righteousness that's touted as one of  your defining features. I am still playing, I am still trying things out and in some cases doing what you some of your other residents would call "wasting time". But I'm still a beginner. And I'm not going to rush anymore.

People often talk about the "Seattle chill" (some of your residents will express interest in an event or relationship then not show up/follow through). And sometimes and I think that this chill is an unfortunate byproduct of how you pressure us to always be doing and to be pulled in so many directions. We're drawn to commit our energy and interests in ways that are unsustainable and eventually become disingenuous.

As my health has declined in the last several months I've become less able to keep the same commitments I've had in the past. Those commitments have become less and less sustainable I've not had any sort of replacement or acceptance of my new shift in/ability. I am afraid continuing like this will lead to a breakdown in my integrity.

I have never lived anyplace else. So maybe this is a problem everywhere, for every city. But I'm willing to strike out and see if there is a city out there that might just be a little better for beginners like me.

Seattle I want to be with you, but you ask so much from me and you don't give back enough for me to stay healthy and honest to the person I aspire to be. So I've decided to leave.

I'm leaving with less money, less hope, and less health than I came to you with. I am leaving to see if I can find or create that which you could not give me.

I'm leaving in September. I might come back in November, or February, or April. I know you hate when plans aren't concrete, I do too, but I can't say for sure when I'll be back.

Because I might not come back.

And yes, Seattle, it's true that there are parts of you I can never leave. I've embedded my identity in your most precious residents; sunk my love poems into your salty pockets; mixed my saliva with the sweat of your distant ocean neck. My bike and I have sliced through your avenues churning, yearning, and howling out 80's power ballads.

Oh the glorious moments we shared! Like the first morning of this year, when I was wildly hungover you convinced me to climb out to you. You snagged my vision on your distance, on the crisp of your wide cyan embrace. The cold comfort of a mountain range steady behind each of my shoulders pushed me and my bicycle forward. In that open moment, emptied of breath, it was easy to love the pressure of you and to forget how you constrict me, my gorgeous winding salt water lover.

I love you so much. And I'll send you so many post cards. Thank you for giving me what you did. I think we both wish that it had been enough.

<3
WRM