“What’s mizzle?” Tex asked the other night, looking up from her book. She’s currently reading The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff and apparently mizzle was the weather they were having.
My beloved Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (in three volumes!) has five definitions of mizzle:
- to rain in very fine drops
- a fine rain
- confuse, muddle, misinform
- to take oneself off, disappear suddenly, slink off, decamp
- to make spotted, speckle
Last night, before bed when Tex looked out the window, entranced. “Come see!”
It was mizzling to beat the band – beautiful, mysterious mizzle all over the place.
I’ve been thinking a lot about containers lately, now that I know I’m all ADHD up in my beautiful brain. A one-hour accountability call; a deadline (love love love a deadline!); access to a writing studio for an afternoon; a deadline, a deadline, a deadline.
Don’t you love haiku? You start really, really contained – some might say restrained – by an exact requirement of syllables and construct, and then, slowly, the more you write, the more that container expands and opens and you’re flying into the stratosphere (looking at you, my friend BO’S!)
Words, too, are containers. We can go along perfectly happy with drizzle for almost 60 years, and then, suddenly, one evening in front of the fire, we come across mizzle. What new worlds might open up! What delight and discovery!
When I was younger, containers often felt like prisons. I couldn’t wait to get out of the house, out of college, out of what felt familiar and dull and so uninspiring. Other people weren’t so impatient. At a party recently, I had a nice chit chat with a guy who has never left his hometown of Northampton. He sees no need to. He’s traveled, but is always glad to come home. He spoke with such love about the wilderness areas where he fishes and hikes, about a sweet connection he made recently with someone he went to high school with, who also has never left town.
Oh, my sunny bunch of femme sister souls, are you restless, are you yearning? Perhaps you are not mizzled nor in no way wishing to mizzle, but this fast and furious culture we live in keeps trying to make you look and look and look any and everywhere than where you are.
Today, where I am, the weather is way on beyond a bit of mizzle, and I am cozy and grateful inside, with kitty and pup and Tex and tea. Contained.
Darlings, you. You, too. Look around, be on your own ground. Settle and stay.
I wish that for you today.
Every Monday I offer a Meditation for Queer Femmes, in the spirit of my maternal grandmother, Mimi, who was fabulous, and from whom I inherited her Meditations for Women.
At the Total Femme, my intention has been to post three times a week: Meditations for Queer Femmes on Monday, Pingy-Dingy Wednesday on Wednesday, and Femme Friday on Friday. Lately, I’ve just been concentrating on Mondays. And sometimes weeks go by… I’m here, though. I’m here. Do you have a post you’d like to share? That would be fucking awesome! Contact me at thetotalfemme@gmail.com
The Total Femme 
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