The Total Femme

Driving home from my just-completed writing residency in Vermont, the trees, fields, and hills were were limned with snow. It was incredibly gorgeous and deeply peaceful. Because I was driving, I couldn’t whip out my phone and document it the way we do now; I just had to smile and sigh and enjoy. It took a bit of pressure off. It gave me permission to just drive.

            And driving, I could let the past ten days settle in. How being in person at residency allowed creativity to manifest so differently than when we were on line. How it afforded connections, leaps of thought, shared moments of delight, and, for me, the most basic of human joys: being able to hug each other. For we students and alumnx of Vermont College of Fine Arts in Montpelier, this was the last residency to be held on campus before a move to otherwhere. I tried so hard not to let upset at this sudden and poorly handled move take me out of my delight at being there. In the old dorm room with the wonky blind and the cinderblock walls. In workshop where finally – finally! – we were together in person and on fire with writing epiphanies and passion. Poking carefully at yet another interesting iteration of tempe in the cafeteria. Sitting on the couch in the library with Bowie, the orange library kitty who greets you at the door. And hugging, so much hugging!

             Mono no aware, that balance on the razor edge of grief and ecstasy when something is so incredibly beautiful but also so incredibly transient. It comes at cherry blossom time, where the petals already are beginning to fall right when you’re transported by their incandescence. Each moment of residency held this kind of poignancy, and sometimes I clicked into it and sometimes I didn’t. Driving home with the snow already beginning to melt but still so marvelous, so gorgeous, I let it all sink in.

            My living, loving, moving, changing blossoms of femme marvel! You may not be in the midst of the kind of excitement that I just experienced – these major events don’t come about every day. But I know that today there is something. There is something every day, even every hour. The silk of your dogs’ ears. The laughter of passing strangers outside your window. The sunrise, the moonrise. Showing a child how to work a gumball machine for the first time. A loving text from a loving friend at just the right moment. The way the sunlight highlights a beloved knick knack on your shelf. The first sip of coffee. Fleeting. Exquisite. Life giving.

Today, oh, my dears, let it sink in!

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. Would you like to offer up a Meditation of your own? I would love that! Send it along to me at thetotatalfemme@gmail.com.

Since 2016, I here at The Total Femme have done my best to post thrice a week: Meditations for Queer Femmes on Monday, Pingy Dingy on Wednesday, and Femme Friday on you know when. I’m pulling back the reins now, darlings, and going down to once a week, this Meditation. This doesn’t mean I don’t want to hear from you. Send me your poetry, your musings, your art, your wonderful you, and I will love you and hold you and feature you right here. So let me hear from you! thetotalfemme@gmail.com. And stop by on Mondays for a bit of sacred femme space.