this post is inspired by this tweet from Ben Platt! thank u, Ben!

art that carried me:

• Upstream, Mary Oliver (book)
• Well Read Black Girl (blog)
• A Prayer Journal, Flannery O’Connor (book)
• The Complete Stories, Flannery O’Connor (book)
• words of James Baldwin: I Am Not Your Negro (film), The Fire Next Time (book), Go Tell It On The Mountain (book)
• sitting-in-the-sadness songs from Julien Baker, head-lifting songs from Stevie Wonder, soul-settling songs from Sandra McCracken
• Dust Tracks on a Road, Zora Neale Hurston (book)
• the musings of Lore Wilbert, via Sayable (blog)
• New Seeds of Contemplation, Thomas Merton
• Chef’s Table, season 3 (tv)
• the prophetic witness of the women of Truth’s Table (podcast)
• On Being (podcast, attn: Ruby Sales and Fr. Greg Boyle)
• Brain Pickings (blog)
• This American Life archives (podcast)
• & this tweet,

things I looked forward to:

• lighting candles (my windowsill is now a candle graveyard)
• snuggling the babies and kiddos I babysit
• morning cup of Yirgacheffe coffee
• kitchen sunlight around 4pm
• sociology on Tuesday/Thursdays
• my grandmother’s smile when coming home after a while
• seeing birds

things I learned how to do:

• make biscuits
• make candles
• date a boy
• keep going when you are no longer dating a boy
• use the Enneagram for my good
• welcome skepticism
• make handwritten gifs

mom, dad, content creators, poets, Black Twitter, levity, lightness, JOY, resistance, good bakers and coffeemakers, writers alive and dead, my favorite auntie, swings, kind professors who accept late papers, fresh bread, grandmothers (always), dogs (always), planes, clouds, People Doing The Work, sidewalk trinkets, strangers who smile at you, friends arms that hold you, tears, belly laughs, family phone calls that are always right on time.

cheers to the new year and the things it will carry.

This is the urgency: Live!
and have your blooming in the noise of the whirlwind.

Gwendolyn Brooks