Saturday Substack
Composting Anger, Cultivating Care
Dear Substack Community,
The sun slipped behind McKinney Ridge last night leaving a smear of chartreuse and ember—summer solstice light, the kind that lingers like a hymn refusing benediction. We gathered in that glow, barefoot on the grass of Alfred, letting story and song braid us into one long strand of becoming. I stayed offline until this moment, choosing to rest in that hush where myth still crackles––the ancient magic that holds seeds for the worlds we’re daring to grow.
I’m late to my usual noon offering because this morning asked something different of me: slow coffee, a curl of sativa, and the kind of breathing that loosens what’s stuck in the rib cage. Yesterday’s Care Package wrestled with collapse; today I feel the bruise of that wrestling. So I come to you in raw notes, trusting the free-write to guide us.
Composting Anger, Cultivating Care
I keep circling Fred Moten’s insistence that we consent not to be a single being—a refusal that is also a tenderness. Refusal teaches me to compost my anger, not discard it. Anger is heat; compost needs heat to turn scraps into soil. The state tells Trans kids their bodies are wrong, legislators dream up borders around care, and somewhere a finger keeps hovering over a nuclear button. My rage could calcify. Instead I break it down with breath, prayer, and sweat until it’s rich enough to grow tomatoes and resistance side-by-side.
This is slow gospel work. The old carceral grammar disciplines care into clinics, checklists, gate-kept insurance codes. But Moten reminds us that real care is fugitive—it slips past the guard and hums under the floorboards, a bass note you feel before you hear. It is the potluck where no one asks your papers, the back-porch story circle, the neighbor’s porch light left on like an altar-candle. Care is how we govern one another once we have refused the governance that cages us.
Practices for the Long Becoming
I’m apprenticing myself to small liturgies:
Eating with people. To break bread is to break the spell of isolation. Every shared bite rewrites the myth of scarcity.
Walking with people. Feet on soil recalibrate the nervous system; conversation in motion reminds us that thought has a gait, not just a grammar.
Writing every day. Even three lines. Words are mycelium, stitching interior worlds to the commons.
Dreaming aloud. We name the world we long for until it recognizes itself in us.
These are sacraments of the undercommons, modest enough to survive any empire’s fall and potent enough to midwife what comes next.
Turning Toward Magic
The Irish poet John O’Donohue said, “The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.” I believe the solstice sharpened our sight for a moment; now we practice staying awake. Magic is not escapism—it is that shimmer at the edge of perception telling us matter is more porous than power admits. The divine spark Moten calls “fugitivity’s vibration” is humming in each marrow. To listen is to risk being changed by what we hear.
So I invite you: breathe deep, feel where anger smolders, and imagine it as fertile heat. Picture the table you will set this week, the story you will tell, the walk you will take. Let those gestures be spells—quiet, stubborn acts of repair.
We live inside collapsing architectures, yes, but collapse clears space for improbable rooms. If we tend ourselves with the patience of compost and the audacity of myth, we will be ready to build when the dust settles.
Thank you for meeting me in this threshold hour, for trusting the half-stitched sentences and the sacred mess they hold. May your coffee be strong, your lungs expansive, your magic unashamed.
In fugitive solidarity and chartreuse hope,
— RCE+