Licking a Volcano

Almost optimistic words and pictures for the struggle.

Mar 15, 2025

∙ Paid

Sylvia Plath, from The Collected Poems of Sylvia Plath; "*On The Difficulty of Conjuring Up a Dryad,*"

The Moon tonight is warm tinted and full and circled by a buttery light against the cool grey sky of the city and I am so sleepy because of strange nightmares political and violent and dark that kept waking me up early this morning and some part of me just wants a good night’s rest. And what can I tell you anyway? I promised myself I would write something that is both true and not depressing and what was really on my mind. O but there is so much for so many people that is so hard now all over the world the voice that wants me to not write anything is saying. But I have not given up.

I met two Mainecoon cats today I think they were kittens or at least teenagers and one named Moss and the other was named Chicory, siblings that roll around hugging eachother so softly that it is almost painfully joyful to watch. Almost like they don’t come from our world. We were drinking complicated loose tea kind of minty and my friend was growing a passionfruit vine which looked magical and a bit sad. We talked about how some words and plants and things of world have become demystified by the words we bind them too. Vanilla, chocolate. Invasive. We talked about the word happiness which my friend said comes from the same root as happening more like a changing set of circumstances good and bad than some final goal. My friend wondering if there is something in this idea that so many people are chasing an ideal that could be more of an action, a what’s going on rather than a good or bad. I had to run home to get a teenager to the doctor and he was late and the app to send him there want working but the idea stayed with me and the healing tea. And the idea that maybe I should just write to you about happen-ness rather than happiness. I was was going to just write that but then I found some images that fit. So I want to send you some things that make me feel like life if not exactly good is definitely on now. Good or bad I hope something I send might rock you awake for the struggle of the now.