Note: ME = Mother Earth 🌍 = me 🙋🏻‍♀️= Mini Earth 💚 = you 💙

Also, the most recent 🎶Emuse🎙️ was all themed around one of ME’s sexiest traits: WATER 💦. Listen here as we celebrate wetness and read on…

ME

A poem/earnest dating profile

Movement from deep within her core

ripples to her shores—

A whisper from my scapula, metatarsals to the moon,

Dancing skeletons, singing cells, surging waves,

Her music, structureless to those who can’t listen,

plays

like my poetry

lines break

to make way for whatever it takes

to communicate

her depths

she does not hide

yet kindly, she reflects

what she refracts

not a construct

but a collab

(So who will dive beneath the surface?

Whose lungs have the capacity…

Whose beating heart the bravery to

Free dive into me)

What makes YOU horny about Mother Earth?

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Our wet and our earth,

proportionally paired, so

Pop my surface tension—

where my water molecules cling to each other but just barely,

basically begging to be broken,

just as a ripe fruit begs to be bitten,

eaten, sweetened to weaken mortal souls like me.

Hydrogen on its own is not enough to forge

the universe I wish to explore…

I await fusion.

Break ME

anew

Press into my ancient, holy depths.

And watch how the way time changes changes.

Layer upon layer— all history displayed at once

if you can navigate the incident angles—

light also gets lost

dark

cold

The pressure I hold

is not yours to bear

but simply bear witness

Surrender vision

Mind the vertigo

as you go

as deep as you’d like

as deep as you can

and know

if somehow you dove

past my trenches,

swam through my muck

and struck through my crust,

you could dismantle my molten core,

Rich with chaos

Thick with order

intricate enough to form

Every system you can fathom

From these fathoms…

Including you.

So let’s fuck.

As we already are.

You may leave at your will

(that is, if you don’t grow gills,

which a former me may have longed for

To cure my native loneliness,

but in the meantime

as I may or may not have awaited you,

as you may or may not have sought ME,

I created my own life to keep me company…)

Then, when you emerge,

just as you did billions of years ago,

remember ME,

And exit me as another warrior wave—

surging, majestic, momentum into martyrdom

on behalf of nothing less valiant than

sustaining the cyclic sea symphony,

Defending the eternal song,

To die on the shore

as part of a whole lot more.

The geological fractal does not end— only expands.

from eternal death,

you become man.

Reborn on land,

stand in the sand

And see me by your side,

this time not in tide

But in a form similar to yours,

Mortal flesh for the waves

To crash and crest behind.

It’s all me. It’s all you—

A sum

More than two

What makes YOU horny about Mother Earth?

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🎶Here’s the Emuse Water show link again in case, like me, you’re feeling THIRSTY💦 🎙️

Oaxaca, Mexico

Well, here I am, terrified in paradise, snorkeling with fish and friends in open ocean, afraid I might drown if I don’t die first of forgetting how to pee…

Pressure from all sides.

Can’t make any sense of it until I land back on the sand to discover three baby turtles following their biological imperative to journey from their cracked eggs to the turbulent tides from which I emerged.

Into the primordial gooch. Where waves past pull back, meeting the next waves full crash… The churn, the turn, the turts… Their fins dragging them forward one-flop at a time to reach the ocean’s edge, where I realize the most challenging aspect of their trek is not touching the water— it’s enduring the transition.

Would you call the baby turtle a fool for trying?

I wouldn’t, when staying put means dying.

~

These past few months, moving from incubation to open ocean, hopin’ to soon be floatin’… that has meant leaving some now-empty shells behind. More specifically, I’ve said good-bye to some baby boys that were keeping me stranded on rootless land when it’s time to go. Time to swim. Time to grow.

Here’s a lullaby I wrote for those baby boys who couldn’t make it past the primordial gooch.

The Nursery

The Performance

The Text

These baby boys are too distracted
to deserve
A whole diss track
So while they nurse,
I'll serve them just a single verse

Baby boy one
He's not evil
he's just dumb
Deaf blind and numb
That's why I begun
Reading braille on his lips and
Leaving trails with my drips and
Feelin feenin fingertips and
Fixin rails on my hips yet
he still fails to get his grip…
He's just too tied up
With some chords
he never cut, yup
My baby boy one-
He's just still so young,
Bumbling tumbling tripping over his own tongue and
Dribbling visions of the man he's wishin' to become and
Not listening to the wisdom of woman right in front of him
Cuz he can't
So I'm done.
I got no room in my womb
For a baby that's not mine,
Babbling wasting my time.
Won't open his eyes
So I'm closing my thighs,
Knowing deep down inside
He'll regret disrespecting my wet
Now he's got access denied, yet
He's still deluded
That I'll stay by his side
When I say it's the end
and he still wants to be friends?
Boy, you must really have been born yesterday
Cuz I only do ride or dies.
'Spose that makes you dead
Hard in the head
Soft in the bed
Baby boy wanna be my friend… well then,
Get to the back of the line.

Baby boy two,
So many dates overdue.
Says he ran late
Yet again— bitch,
Save me the old news
Just an excuse
Cuz I never once caught you running.
You know nothing bout hustling.
I catch you checking your reflection,
Pressed impressing,
When you busting
in the gym,
getting reps in
Me kept expecting
while you pretending you're 'bout building something
Boy, you just bulking
And balking
by the way you talking
you flexing the wrong muscles—
Tongue flapping, ego yapping,
I'm crunching the numbers
But shit just isn't adding up when
nine times out of ten
When we fucking,
I'm not nutting,
and it's not for nothing
That I got the ick
when I saw how much you got me
squeezing my own butts in,
Like "but he's going through it
But he doesn't mean to do this
But the love is true-ish"
But I'm not stupid
So I'm done
being the butt
and bearing the brunt
of you being foolish.
Fooled me once,
won't get a second time.
Wanna be my friend?
Better get in line.

Baby boy three four five six
Lean on my tits
Feed off my gifts
It's my womanly wonder
I'm a lover then a mother
I'll give birth if
a real seed's planted first, ya dig?
I'm not your sis,
not your therapist,
Tired of this —
Pushing in hollow contraction,
Emotional labor with no expansion.
My true friends got healthy attachment.
Yes, all my homegirls are secure.
Not you, baby boy boo —
you came into my world too premature.
I'm done dating in the neonatal ward,
With these wee wee's being wheeled like a sword.
Using my own edge to sever this cord,
Cleaning up this mess, cuz a grown woman does her chores.
So here's a lullaby-bye, baby,
Rock-a-bye-bye, baby,
Now's your bedtime, baby —
Here's your nursery rhyme:
Wanna be my friend?
Well, there's the line.

The Fertile Turtle

I was so sick, worse than Ne-Yo, of all the love poems I wrote for baby boys who couldn’t hear my words, while I have very few poems celebrating my homegirls. I have even fewer honoring me and my boundaries. Cause quite frankly, I wasn’t sure I had them. Turns out, I do. And these boundaries are alive, like the primordial gooch.

As an erotic poet with an abundance of love poems, I was framing The Nursery as my first ever hate poem. Then I had a man cry in my arms. The first person to hear the final version was my dear friend, who is a veritable man. I thought it would be funny, maybe a little sexy, but when I finished, I was shocked to see that his eyes were full of tears. He said: “It’s not a hate poem. It’s still a love poem. To your friends. And to yourself.”

Done with the cries of baby boys. But those of a man can be medicinal.

Yeah… I really have no room in my womb for a baby that’s not mine.

That may be why the day I arrived in Mexico, I got my period. First thing my body did on this new territory was assert itself. Fertile. Full. Here.

I’ve successfully reframed this bodily message as one to be celebrated. When I was in the thick of my anorexia — the thick of thinness, I suppose — I used to take menstruation as a sign that I was “losing”, not in the red zone of low-weight that kept me in my girlhood. I now celebrate that I am in a healthy, woman body. And I accept the truth that that means time is passing, monthly reminders of my god-given gift to bear life en route to death. That’s what I do now in my creations, and what I intend to continue to until I die.

I know I am still a fool. A fool more like the baby turtles than the baby boys. Following my biology, following the call of the wild, following the fear — not belaboring labor and also not denying death.

___

Speaking of fools — come act one with me this Friday. I'll be hosting Emuse on WPKN 89.5 FM from 9am-12pm EST, broadcasting from Bridgeport, CT to Connecticut and Long Island. Theme? Fools, obviously. Music, musings, and mirth. Listen live at wpkn.org. If you can’t catch the waves then, you can check out the recording/subscribe on Apple Podcasts.

Got something to say about dating in the neonatal ward? Let’s be in dialogue.

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Happy pi day!

I had fun reading this one to you… check it out on YouTube if you’d rather listen or watch:

I was an anorexic girl

trynna grow

in an ozempic world

now, I’m a poetic woman 

watching life blow

by in my cigarette curls

There are some things I know

when it comes to feeling too much

yet never enough 

rushing to catch up but 

the fastest way to real is slow

“Oh, yeah. I remember you,” said the poet stooped on the flowerbed edge, between laughs and blunt pass. “You were hungry.”

Shame seized my throat.

He wasn’t talking about literal hunger (though that shame would have chokeheld me in its own tormenting way.) He was talking about a hunger of deeper pangs, deeper shames.

That apparently he observed at the first open mic I ever attended in June 2024, at the Bowery Poetry Club in the East Village. Trying not to overthink my outfit or my existence, I arrived early. I had taken the subway there, which was still thrilling for me at the time, not because I was new to NYC public transit but because I was new again. That’s different. Renewed.

June 2024… Two months and one week after a life-threatening hospitalization (well, two, technically) that led me into an encounter with the Angel of Death, an emergency surgery, and a tube out of my booty cheek draining my body’s own poison from my right ovary. Yup. That happened. I called the body-juice-bag my butt plug. My mom helped me clean it twice daily for sixteen days, per doctor’s orders. It took another two weeks for my body to get to the point where taking the subway was but a small miracle rather than an unfathomable feat.

Yes, two months-one week after my confrontation with mortality, and one month-one week after falling into the most potent almost-love I’ve ever experienced, and one week after that almost-love abruptly ended with no closure (open-ended, I suppose) and I was left… hungry.

Physically hungry, sure. The hospitalization and recovery rendered me ten pounds lighter, and I still hadn’t healed my relationship with food enough not to be secretly delighted by this fact. At this point in my anorexia, the only way I knew how to permit myself to eat substantially (read: sufficiently) was to be underweight.

And also… spiritually hungry. The real hunger. The Angel of Death showed me in a life-saving hallucination that for me, the opposite of life wasn’t my heart to stop beating, but my voice to stop speaking. Ouch. And for a girl bursting at the seams to be a woman (who would be bursting at other seams), I was sobered by this destined reckoning of expression.

But at the time, I was still more afraid of taking up too much space than I was of wasting away.

That first open mic marked a shift in that fear.

Since then, I resolved to bet on my appetite. I’ve been sharing my art more and more, from packed living rooms to sold-out theaters to steamy dance-floor saunas to wild jungle festivals, and I acknowledge how much this feeds my soul.

But a couple of weeks ago… I started to feel that familiar feeling again. Let me zoom out briefly and explain what my dear friend Becca calls the Pin-Drop Phenomenon, which is a hype-girl way of explaining the silence in a room after I share a piece. Now, as someone who is full-sending her true soul, for me, this silence can feel a little eerie. My brain, which is yet to feel fully safe taking up space, immediately interprets this silence as “Wow, E, you just made a room of people sit and watch you build your own plank and jump off it spectacularly. You will be blessed to have friends after this embarrassment.”

However, I’ve done this enough times now to know that people are simply in the pause between listening and processing, and it does not mean I did something bad. Often, it means the opposite. This is a deep rewiring that I work on mostly alone. I must have faith in the cosmic symbiosis: that I Eat (on an artistic/spiritual level) to live, and I live to Feed others.

Like on this most recent Monday, when my friend asked me to share a piece at a small living room jam. I realized it was the year anniversary of a very special poem to me, The Meataphor, so I decided to honor it. Now, this piece is one of my more cuckoo bananas poems, but it means a lot to me. It is a historical time capsule of the moment I was at in my life when I wrote it: reintroducing meat into my diet, devouring expression on the level of what feels good to say beyond what makes sense to read, owning my deep devotion in the ways of love, and declaring my willingness to want to be alive, embodied, myself. Overall: my sheer delight at the time that I— a hungry girl self-relegated to cerebral entanglement of science and poetry and more— was capable of something so straightforward as carnal desire.

Anywho, this Monday after sharing The Meataphor, the Pin-Dropped , and yet. I didn’t feel nourished… I felt…

Shame. Hunger shame.

Where did this come from?

Answering this question is not about my lack of memory but rather my abundance of it. I remember too much…

Ten years old: wrapping my stomach in saran wrap and doing pilates to get rid of my gut. (My gut… respecting that has always been an issue.)

Fifteen years old: sneaking out of study hall (I’d already completed all my homework, anyways) to run three miles before running another two hours during track practice that afternoon.

Twenty years old: a slice of my own (gluten free, dairy free) birthday cake leading to uncontrollable sobs.

Twenty-three years old: driving myself to the hospital in Brooklyn for some sort of help calming down my nervous system.

Twenty-eight years old: day two at treatment with heating packs on my stomach all day from eating more than I have ever allowed myself, unable to digest the incredible regret of each calorie that masked the deeper indigestion caused when one deprives themselves of their own life force…

I’m not trynna be dramatic. I’m simply stating facts.

More plainly: I didn’t eat food because I was afraid of eating too much and looking like a pig. These days, I’m okay with eating food, but now, as I acknowledge creating and sharing my art Feeds my soul, I am afraid of Eating too much.

Am I taking up too much space? Do I look crazy on stage? Are the words I’m saying coherent to anyone besides myself? Am I cringe-city and no one is telling me?

And it’s fucking confusing.

Which is why I’m craving holy honesty.

Let me explain. With physics :)

The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle states that it is impossible to simultaneously know the exact position (△x) and momentum (△p) of a quantum particle with absolute precision. The position (where ARE you?) is obvious, so let’s zoom in on the momentum part. Momentum is defined by mass times velocity (p=mv), where mass is duh and velocity is an objects speed in a given direction.

Direction.

I’ve shed plenty of tears in my life for this exact thing. Someone just tell me what to do with all this Hunger. I’ve been trying to hide it and now I’m trying to channel it.

(As I write that, I suppose I simply just am the channel. Stop trying is really the way...)

For more than half my life, I struggled with dysmorphia. No clothes size or scale number could reassure me that I was safely thin. At treatment, I was told I’d likely always have an element of this. While this dysmorphia is not completely gone, I am leagues leagues leagues better than I ever hoped. Honestly, I feel pretty hot most of the time, and it’s mostly because I know I know how to use my body, beyond what it looks like. Yay. New chapter alert.

Now my soul is playing catch up.

Yes, as I feel my momentum towards the future I’ve always hungered for begin to build, the hunger shame is signifying a sort of existential dysmorphia. I’ve found myself asking friends, family, audience members for feedback. How did that make you feel? Did that make any sense? What are the strengths? What are the weaknesses?

I feel soooooooooo hesitant and anxious doing this because many respond, “It shouldn’t matter what other people think— it’s your art. Do you.”

No duh. Obviously, I can’t do anything BUT me. But do I have to do it… so publicly? On a literal stage? I want to believe in it/me, but being tone deaf is a real thing, and I don’t want to be up there making people watch me Eat if that means leaving them hungry in the bad-way, that I know all too well.

And when I do get a little more solid selfhood footing beneath me and begin to believe again that I am on a path towards helping others with the creations that have helped me, I’m like: well, where the hell do I go from here?

Position. Direction, Position. Direction. How to prioritize this Heisenberg chicken or egg?

Well, listen. Let’s say that I am in fact on this planet to do what I have always felt in my bones’ bones I am built to do (live, create, share, repeat), then in order to get to where I want to be (namely, sharing my work with those whom it would Nourish), I must know where I am. How else am I sposed to know if I jump up, bend down, hop left, skip right, step forward, fall back?

I’m at a stage where I don’t need direction. I need reflection. And not through the fun-house mirror made by my historically distorted self-concept, but from those whom I aim to touch.

That just feels logical. Necessary even.

I am trying to be no longer ashamed of my hunger.

I am willing to bear the pain of exposing my hunger over the pain of letting it eat me.

(If I have any flaws in my reasoning, your reflection is quite welcome :) )

Reflections?

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P.S. Honor Woman’s History Month with me on Emuse next Friday (3/20) 9am-12pm EST. 3 hours of music, musings, and amazings about QUEENS. Queens of history, queens of hearts, queens of soul, and more. 89.5FM in CT/Long Island, WPKN.org online, or subscribe on apple podcasts (for real!) for updates and more

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On to the musings…

Math is my morphine—
a steady drip of certainty
in life’s mystery.

I look up from paper problems
to the ones this world hands me,
and I need poetry
to touch the infinite.

Freedom tastes like fear—
undefined—
until I name it mine.

Yes, math is my morphine.

Always has been. From the days in the front seat of my dad’s car (underage, no seatbelt, just freedom) when he would make up word problems for me to chew on instead of getting chewed up by life’s struggles… to the evenings on the train during my 90-minute/three-part commute to and from high school, I saved my math homework for last.

Dessert.

Because damn—for a freak like me, very few things offer sweeter relief.

Relief from my chronic fear.

Oh, snap. Did this girlwoman—who has performed naked on stage, spilled her magic beans for strangers, sang of her love for hundreds who listen—just say she has fear? Get to know me, why don’t you. (I’ll help).

I can’t begin to recollect all the times throughout my twisty and twisted life that mathematics saved me. That’s a chapter in a book to come, or a book in a series to come, Goddess willing. But I can give you a snapshot.

July 2025. Alone in Brooklyn, trying to decide what the best thing I could possibly eat for dinner would be.

“Best” being a parameter I impose upon myself in all sorts of realms—nutrition being just the tip of the existential iceberg.

I am still new to Carnivore Life. Shit, I am still new to the Eating Life. (The Feeding-Me life? The Letting-Myself-Be-Fed-Life?) The entirety of my adolescent/adult life up until this point has been riddled with a preoccupation with eating the “right thing.” “Right” depended on what I had eaten prior (sometimes extending as far back as a week), what time of day I was finally letting myself eat, what level of physical activity I had undergone— essentially, what I knew for certain I had “earned.”

Only since January 2025 had I been experimenting with eating according to the pulls of my literal gut—this metaphor extending into a true meataphor, because my gut always gets pulled more or less in the direction of steak.

And so, on this Brooklyn Tuesday, I haven’t eaten (read: I haven’t let myself eat) since morning. It is now dusk, and I know I want to enjoy the summer eve in the spaciousness with God, savoring some flesh whose energy I promise our Creator I would use to spread even more joy in the world.

Some call it the butterfly effect. Some call it the butterflank effect. Some call it exponentiation. Some call it all of the above and more. (This last category is me.)

And woe is me. For in the Dionysian paradise that is New York City fine dining, I have infinite choices before me. But which is the best, optimizing for nutrition, money, convenience, timing, and—most importantly of all—what I deserve?

I decide to treat myself to a steak at a mid-grade restaurant with sidewalk seating. I have been thinking about the steak for hours. Hours. Holding off until just the right time to eat, when I know I had worked hard and long enough to earn it, knowing this is a habit I am trying to walk off with each step straddling struggles of the past and the devotion to a better future. I want to breathe and watch people and sit in silence with me, steak, and Source.

Grade A1 Steaksource.

I place my order and wait.

When my food finally comes, I feel this familiar sensation mounting. My throat starts to close up. My connection to my body starts to shut down. After thirty years of this, I can finally recognize it for what it is: fear.

Fear, coated in regret and clouded by anxiety-driven optimization—optimization that prevents me from feeling and propels me to action, away from potential repentance. Repentance for, despite given so many tools and blessings, still making the “wrong” decision.

The fear tells me I could have saved time going to another place. I could have saved money going to another place. I could have spent more time and more money at another place but had an experience that would sit better in my nervous system—an experience that would help me show up fully for all the other random wild shit I have to do in a given day.

And in the middle of this ridiculous steak spiral, I realized the foundation of this intense fear wasn’t the deterministic shackles of the wrong timeline but actually… my abundant freedom.

I never figured it would taste so familiar.

I flattened it into fear my whole life. The obsession to optimize comes from the truth that I am inherently free—that all the baggage holding me back from loving myself and caring for myself, from giving myself nourishment on a cellular to Soulular level, was within me.

Freedom. The thing I have been craving but unable to see God had served me, fresh and sizzling every day of my life, breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert, late night snack.

And once I saw freedom— not food, not failure— was the actual trigger, I knew I needed a symbol that could hold freedom without collapsing into panic.

Enter math. Enter my girl, e.

“e” is known as the “natural number”, a fundamental constant abundant in natural phenomena, from the rate at which populations grow to how galaxies spiral to how ferns fan. It equals about 2.71828, and if you raise it to a mysterious x, something divine happens.

When you ask how e^x changes over time, it answers… with itself exactly.

In calculus terms, the derivative (rate of change) of e^x is e^x.

In other words: raised to the unknown, the natural number grows at the rate of its own identity. It doesn’t have to become someone else to keep moving. It doesn’t have to over-explain. It doesn’t have to earn its right to exist. It simply continues—faithful to what it is—through whatever x turns out to be. Here’s another way of writing this:

Look at that on the left— it spells “Sex”, y’all. What a tautological tease.

Where poetry and math intersect.

~~~

To this day, I’m still in bed with math. Literally—before sleeping, I’ll plop some SAT problems on my lap and do a few to wind down. Lord, oh Lord, please give me a few simple axioms and I promise I will be at the altar every moment I must to deduce the truth for you. Shit, don’t even give me the axioms—just make an elegant universe (thank you for already doing so, Creator) such that I can deduce the axioms from pattern recognition. And I will use this process to deliver me to the best answer.

The right answer.

The answer of my destiny.

But when I look up from my textbook, that’s when the walls start to press in. There are too many variables, too many equations, too many unknowns. The choices are infinite, and if I’m honest, part of me believes there is one path I’m “supposed” to take—which makes the rest feel like failure before I’ve even lived it.

For too long, I couldn’t taste my freedom because it had soured into fear.

So I return to e^x. Lil Miss Natural e raised to the mystery of a higher power will define her own path. She keeps moving without needing certainty first.

This is where you find me now: a broken toe slowly mending, two breakups with humans I truly love—ended not because love wasn’t there, but because they couldn’t feed me and I’m done starving myself—my dad, my bestie, deep in cancer and surgery, and me, somehow, still buying one-way tickets that keep turning into magic.

Global performance opportunities have opened up—an improvised form that feels like the next evolution of my work—and I’m listening for the whispers of God and the divine blessings inside the chaos. I’m training, too: voice, dance, spiritual integrity. I’m trying to become a vessel sturdy enough for what I keep praying for and for what God continues to show me I already have, if I just let myself breathe, see, and eat.

And here’s the part that’s almost embarrassingly simple: I’ve been holding back on this muthafuckin newsletter for fear of perfection. Fear of adding to the internet landfill of digital content. Fear that if it isn’t flawless, it isn’t worth your time.

Same old cage. Open door. Me convincing myself I have to earn the right to walk out.

So this week I’m practicing a new relationship to choice.

Freedom underneath fear. Fear underneath freedom. Moving anyway.

I’m sending the Museletter. I’m doing a dope radio show Friday morning. I’m putting myself out there. Then I’m going to Costa Rica to perform at a festival—show up with my whole body, my whole voice, my whole faith, and let the work be alive instead of perfect.

Here’s my prayer, my vow, and my invitation, all in one:

if you’re someone whose freedom has been tasting like fear—

if you’ve been stuck in the optimization spiral, waiting to “earn” your own life—

I hope the natural number gives you a little mercy.

I hope it gives you a symbol. I hope it reminds you that you can choose one option and bless it. You can eat without earning. You can make the thing without proving it deserves to exist. You can have loads of….

You don’t have to know what x is yet.

You just have to know its a higher power and keep becoming yourself through it.

Soothed in predictability by math.

Protected in mystery by a Higher Power.

Moving forward— all natural.

Looking forward

1. 2/20/2026: Emuse on WPKN. Theme: Box O’ Chocolates

   1. This Friday, from 9am-12, I’ll be sharing tunes all around life’s sweet, beautiful mystery, just like Mama said. Expect music and musings around love (happy belated Valentine’s day), freedom and spirit, Black History month, self-love, and maybe a lil math. Listen here at 9am or tune in to 89.5FM from CT/Long Island.

2. Museletter regularity: I took this up with Goddess and she says to just listen to her and she promises she will provide what we all need. In other words, I will be updating you with my creative/spiritual growth in the hopes it is nourishment for you biweekly again. Year of the snake needed to get through its rattle before I could hop on this horse’s saddle, yah feel?

Also, let’s be in dialogue. Thoughts? Theorems? Thickems? Let a girl (me) know.

Leave a comment

Keep it e, baby.

Note: This Museletter features struggles with eating, x-rays, and feet pics.

First, the poem:

Lay to Rest 

Somewhen
Between then
And now
I fell in love 
And found

You weren't there

So I picked myself up 
Licked my flesh of its blood
Made from this page my own bandages

And came here

Cuz this is where you landed and
I know the fool I already have been 
but I'd be even more of a fool to stay stranded
When having you near

Is my favorite thing.
It's my favorite thing.

Following my heart is how I, 
once-wounded, wound up at your door
and why I, once-a-different type of foolish,
am not asking for your

Whole life
But since
I only just arrived...
Maybe I can spend the night?

There are some things the moonlight and our hands can make clear like

We don't have to talk about it
We can just fuck about 
Til we making enough love 
to stockpile so we might 
not ever have to live without it

Or at least I will
Get my fill 
Til 

Sunrise
Day breaks
When I look you in the eyes
and you shine that smile you make

In the mourning morning glory glory
 I realize 
The short of my long story:

I’m happy I fell
Cuz that’s when I finally met you
So we could both behold be whole and be held.

There's now
There's what was 
And everything else is new

Like how when I go to wish you farewell, 
I hear your body tell
you love me, too. 

~~~

That Fatefall Night I: My Mind

I looked up at the full moon, feet freezing in a foot of frosty snow, when these lines started coming to me... I fell in love, but you weren’t there. It was my last night at my favorite place in the whole world, Akera, where I had been doing a mini Artist’s residency to try to get clarity on what MORE looks like for me going forward. The two main themes on my mind:

1. Anything growing big needs roots.

2. I’ve been a little heartbroken for almost a year.

For point one, I’ll cut straight to the Truth (my biggest kink): I’ve been feeling an orgasm pipeline starting in my feet for months. They’ve been screaming for touch, hands to hold them tight… Maybe to make them feel safe. Maybe to make them feel grounded. Maybe to demonstrate to them how to hold tender and loving rather than just hold me as I run.

That Fatefall Night II: My Heart

After having a meeting with the moon, I dash inside to scribble this poem on my big pad, speed into the living room to share with my friend, and then

STUB MY TOE AND FALL

(in love?

Was he there?

Let’s find out)

To point 2: Now that I know what a part of me being broken really feels like, I see “heartbroken” is actually inaccurate. What does being broke really feel like? you may be wondering. Well…

“Broken” means immobilized both physically and psychologically, as your brain works with spirit to preserve stillness for the process of mending.

(so from this page, I fashioned my own bandages)

It’s striking me how much of language around ailments revolves around letting things take their time: the doctor’s waiting room, being a patient, healing, as you would an eager dog.

That Fatefall Night III: My Gut

I barely acknowledged that I stubbed my toe, went on to shared this fateful poem, started to help cook dinner, and it wasn’t until I SAW my toe, at a complete 45 degree angle that I supposed something may be up.

The first thing I felt was not pain. Instead, it was that familiar feeling of “I may not quite know what of exactly, but this is the beginning of something.”

And it was funny because throughout the week I had been working on a new piece called “Top of Class”, going full-spectrum on the song “Teach U A Lesson” by Robin Thicke, about enrolling in the “Youniversity” of someone I love, and all the things I learn through studying him. One of my major observations has been: “In order to get you to listen, first I gotta get you to look.”

And my bitch ass (HEAL, girl!) works the exact same way. I had to SEE my bitch ass toe split sideways to start to listen to my body.

Start to listen. It’s really hard to hear, though.

Train for… Pain?

I didn’t panic that my toe was sideways. But I did feel something in me start to get stirred up when my friends asked me if I was in pain, and I had no idea.

One of the weirder plot twists of anorexia is that the body can be screaming, and you barely hear it. When researchers heat the skin, squeeze with a pressure device, or use cold-water tests, people with anorexia often don’t report pain until the stimulus is stronger than what it takes for people without an eating disorder. For example, in a classic biological psychiatry study, an anorexia group needed significantly higher temperatures compared to controls to say “that hurts,” confirming a higher pain threshold.

How much higher? One study suggests women with anorexia demonstrate roughly a 20% longer latency to react to pain.

A rewiring.

Zooming out, a 2021 scoping review of the somatosensory system in anorexia pulled together multiple studies and concluded that altered pain perception—often showing up as higher thresholds and blunted responses—is one piece of a larger distortion of “interoception”, the brain’s map of what’s going on inside the body. Newer work even shows that in experimental settings, people with anorexia display dampened facial expressions and subjective ratings to painful heat compared with controls.

Of course, it’s not uniform or simple. In a study of inpatients with eating disorders and 30 controls, higher body dissatisfaction was actually linked to greater pain sensitivity within the eating-disorder group. So the picture is messy: on average, many people with anorexia tolerate more physical pain before they register it, but specific emotions (like intense hatred of the body) can swing the dial the other way. Clinically, that combo is scary: a nervous system that underreacts to danger on the outside while experiencing extreme distress on the inside.

Yeah, so it’s a bit of a mind-body-fuck, and not the good kind. Well, it may be good through the lens of lessons learning.

For someone so dedicated to attunement to god/self/others/planet, I sure am out of touch.

Literally.

Does this hurt to touch? I have no idea.

Does this please to touch? Huh…

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The Nervous System Doesn’t Get to Pick Favorites

When you’re not eating enough, the body dims everything nonessential — sex drive, pleasure, hunger cues, warmth, reward, even color. Pleasure is metabolically expensive. Orgasm is measurably costly. The body won’t let you spend energy it doesn’t have.

So reduced pain sensitivity often walks hand-in-hand with reduced pleasure. Both sides of the equation go dim. Until something — a heartbreak, a toebreak, a weekend of being carried — flips a breaker back on. It’s not psychological failure; it’s physiology protecting the organism.

~~~

That Fatefall Night IV: My Pride

Breaking my toe didn’t hurt.

But being taken care of did.

Not in a bad way — in the way that let me see that I have been very numb to my body for a very, very long time. In the way that reminded me my body, my feet are capable of more than just holding: they can be held.

As a poet, I love words because they help get at the Truth.

As a person, I love bodies because they simply are the truth.

That’s not something I could step into with my mind. I had to fall with my whole body.

And letting myself be taken care of was a way of meeting loved ones where they’re at by letting them take care of me. Which is also in love. A love of action on their end and reception on mine.

And in that, I am a humble, cripple student.

In other Muse…

1. Emuse tomorrow 12/12/25: 9am-12 on WPKN.org. Theme? TOES!

2. Emuse in general: is now on Apple Podcasts wut wut. I’ll eventually upload all archive episodes here, but for now, enjoy this one from Thanksgiving with my boy Noah, where we practice both Thanksgiving and Thanksreceiving incredible music!

Also, I’m never trying to be alone. Let’s talk. Comment your own Musings, Muser.

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I’ve missed you.

And before that, I was missing myself.

Let me explain.

~~~

First, some retrospective and prospective facts:

• MORE: A Special Relativity sold out its first run and took home ‘Best Multimedia Performance,’ which still feels unreal to write.

• MORE is not over. This was iteration one of a much bigger work. Yes, please. More, please. For the Hungry Girls. So if you weren’t able to experience the magic 2 weeks ago or want more MORE, I got you. I got us. Stay fucking tuned.

~~~

When I stepped onstage for my one-Hungry-Girl show MORE: A Special Relativity, I felt nervous, excited, grateful, and most importantly: confident. As in “confiding in” myself. And God. It was time, and I knew it.

The show explored how I’m sick of starving myself. Literally. Literally sick, literally starving. To put it straightforwardly: anorexia of body as symptom of anorexia of spirit. Yes, the most sense I can make of it is that my soul was on hunger-strike.

What was I protesting? Well, I suppose my dream deferred. I can attest: it DOES sag like a heavy load. It DOES stink like rotten meat. Mine did not sugar over like a syrupy sweet nor explode. But it did implode.

I poured every part of me into this project, mind-body-spirit-soul, because I felt this divine compulsion to tell this story. To explain how after 15 years of literally not eating enough because I was afraid of my own appetite. That it (I) would simultaneously be too much and never enough.

I was/am obsessed with making sense of this project. I used physics lessons, erotic poetry, dance, song, and storytelling to explain to the packed house how I finally collected enough data to conclude that it is about time I try eating.

I’m testing a new hypothesis.

Hypothesis: If I feed myself, then I can feed others.

~~~

Really quick, let me define some terms.

“Feed”- to exhange actual nourishment, whether literal or soulular (i.e. I am feeding you this Museletter. You are feeding me, even the version of you I am simply imagining in writing this Museletter or creating this show, by giving me another consciousness to sieve my truth.

“Hungry girl”- the part of us that wants more but is afraid to admit it, even to herself

“More”- a reframing of “not-enough”

“God”- the magic that humbles and delights us all

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Have questions about MORE? Were you there and want to share some memories to help paint the picture of this epic night? Would love to hear from you! Yes, please. More, please.

~~~

This “divine compulsion” powered me throughout this creation process. I knew I was looking out for “hungry girls”, and yet my vision didn’t get past completing this first iteration of More (and making sure I had a burger afterwards.)

Oh, afterwards.

The day after the show, I felt sluggish. My brain was more or less useless save for rote tasks like teaching the quadratic equation (I wish I was kidding— that has always been how my mind relaxes. What a blessing and also beast of a brain I deal with.) I had a week or so of getting my bearings, and then another week of god showing me yet again how much I have to learn.

Particularly, that God is good.

God is good.

I didn’t eat for so long because I didn’t trust this. Not to diss God. I’ve felt God’s prolific power from a young age. But I didn’t trust that it was in my favor. The truth is that a very deep part of myself convinced me that I didn’t “deserve” to be alive. Born “in the red.” I saw the beauty in all beings and things and thought, “Wow. I must be in service to this beauty. It’s the least I can do for the base blessing of existence.” I should be happy with simply that. So I would never eat what I couldn’t feel safe that I deserve.

And while this ran deep, beneath this complex compensation system was my most foundational part of me that enjoyed life. My life, specifically.

Funny, no matter how good I am at crunching the numbers and the quadratic equation and tabulating calories, I was shit at counting my blessings.

~~~

God talks to me in two main ways: art and angels.

It wasn’t until 10 days after my one-night only performance that my conscious started to settle into my intuition. It happened, of course, not in isolation but in conversation.

I sat on a couch at a party, depleted and delicate but also dedicated to my faith. Two women (who I came to learn are also Hungry Girls) next to me folded me into a conversation about finances. Through some divine, collective train of thought, the discusion flowed into food, and I learned both of them struggled with different instantiations of eating disorders.

Like mine, their food struggles were just the tip of the iceburger when it came to their self-restriction. They struggled accepting love, time, space— blessings. And, like me, they knew they wanted this to end but end can be really hard when you don’t know what that end will begin.

These angels showed me the potency of More’s purpose: to shed light. Shed that shit. Shed light, my Hungry Girls. De-light. In one’s existence. While we have it. Because that de-light means mattering (read the physics behind that here, under “So. A Little Data.”)

Other angels began approaching me regarding the show. Another angel-woman I did not know who attended the show said, “You know you’re on to something, right?”, forcing me into the position of saying “Yes. I do.”

I’ve woken up every day of my life feeling “on to something”, and while the work of making sense of the world is immense, it is not nearly as exhausting as repressing my love and voice.

~~~

So November 12 came and went (ohhhhh, Daddy Time. You always come. And come and come and come.)

My greatest blessing, besides feeling safer than I’ve ever felt eating in my Unveganing Era and all the angels along the way, has been my proximity to death. I’ve had many acute actually life-threatening experiences, but nothing familiarized me with death quite like self-imposed state of semi-starvation for over a decade. The uncanny feeling of moving through the world with the bare-minimum help from the outside (i.e. literal energy from food), feeling safe in that I haven’t been gluttonous with life but also implicitly terrified that my denial of my hunger runs me further and further away from my nourished-soul.

So when I say “hypothesis”, I really mean “leap of faith.”

Accordingly, let me reframe my reframe:

Leap of faith: If I feed myself, then I can feed others.

So the “end” of November 12’s More: A Special Relativity is the beginning of a lifetime practice of letting myself have more and inspiring others to do the same in a genuinely nourishing way. Until I can’t.

After all, they don’t say “healthy appetite” for nothing.

~~~~

What does more/MORE look like in this case?

I will be developing the show further. I WANT to open a dialogue that destigmatizes self-imposed starvation and self-flagellation around appetite. And do so in a way that is funny and sexy and engaging and backed by fucking science.

Ultimately, I want Hungry Girls to eat.

That includes me.

~~~

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I give special thanks to all the angels who made this production happen:

The United Solo Festival, Theatre Row, Claire Mastromonaco, Erotica, The Windmill Factory, The Kent, House of Bless, Harbin Hot Springs, Eliana K., Noah K. and The VenMob, Juliana M., Connie Y., Katya S., Akera, Stephanie R., Becca G., Leah S., Elliot L.R., Humm, Token Moment, My Lunar Ladies, WPKN, The Divine, Rona Ramos, Curves of every kind, All Magical People, The Ever-Open Ocean, My Angels, Girl Scout Cookies, Stoked, The Barrow Group, Daddy Time, Mama Earth and all her animals whose sacrificial flesh I honor by alchemizing their energy into pure unadulterated love, Bridgeport, Hungry Girls everywhere, and the amazing powerful community that has gathered tonight to accept this offering – yup, that’s YOU

So practice Thanks-RECEIVING!

~~~

I will be exploring this theme of real nourishment this Friday on Emuse. My creative partner Noah will be on air with me, and we will be playing songs that celebrate what truly feeds our souls: friendship, music, love, and MORE. Tune in this Friday November 28 9am-12pm here.

DIALOGUE is key word here. Talk to me. Talk to each other. Let us know YOUR musings and inSPEERation in the comments.

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Hey Musers :)

So turns out there are a finite number of hours in the day. Shocker. That means… I can’t do EVERYTHING.

In more straightforward terms: I’m sorry I haven’t Mused at you in a while. I had a strong cadence for a while there, and then… life? Alas, here we are.

Show as Experiment

As I prepare for my show on Nov 12 (more info and tix here), I’ve been thinking a lot about TIME. As a mortal being, I (just like YOU) have the god-given-gift of experiencing life on earth via this sack of flesh. Then, of course, that medium cannot last forever. One day, my juicy meat will go back to the dirt from whence it came, and my spirit will go… somewhere. Maybe into flowers, or sky, or you. Probably some combo of you and also dirt. I really like dirt.

Anywho, part of my show is about meat (duh) and man meat (also duh) and my meat and… math.

I PROMISE IT IS EXTREMELY STRAIGHTFORWARD.

In short: the show is about my pursuit of “being light” (which for me manifested as perfectionism linked with restrictive eating and overexercise) out of fear of not being enough… or, more accurately, being too much. After nearly 16 years of self-imposed semi-starvation of body and soul (not mind, though. that brain got fat), I decided to test a new hypothesis: what if I did eat what my body/soul wanted? What if I let myself have MORE?

Been testing this hypothesis since January 2025 and so far so good. I’m sharing my findings in this show.

Part of this is realizing that I was trying to “be light”, to be a “good girl”, to slow down time not because I was afraid of death— but because I was afraid of living life wrong. In food terms, I was afraid of eating too much, the wrong thing, or— god forbid— something that wasn’t mine to eat. This new Me Meet Me Me Meat Era (MMMMME) is marked by letting myself eat, and accepting that I won’t always perfect, but I can have faith in my flesh because that’s what connects me to God.

Life on Earth is not a test. It is a gift.

Calling it the present just makes sense.

POEM ALERT: Father Time

So the piece below will be featured in MORE, when I shift my perspective from pursuing perfection in the eternal towards embracing the freckled, speckled, floppy, sloppy flawless flesh.

Warning: IT IS EXTREMELY SEXY. When I uploaded it to Youtube, and got to this screen:

I never hit “no” so fast.

And so proud lol

for real I’m a hungry girl

Okay put your bibs on:

Wow so what did you think? Do you need a dose of Daddy Time? Or MORE Hungry Girl? Seriously, let me know. I’m really curious if I am or am not alone out here in the middle of my hungry woods.

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Here’s the text of the poem for you horny lil bibliophiles out there:

Father Time

Father Time

Didn’t know you knew Shibari

Got me tied up tight

And you never say sorry

That’s alright

I don’t mind

my body

being double binded

with a doubly naughty allegory

I don’t knot like

(That knot was with a k)

When last night’s heat still breathes down my neck

And what that might mean presses up gainst my chest

My knees buckling before what you do next

Cuz as I straddle the present, that name starts to make sense

like Yes yes

Blessed by each breath

Such breadth Such depth

Just stretch your fabric over my bed

Here’s my hourglass to flip while you make me beg

for sexsexsexsexsexsexseconds

Yes I beg to death for more seconds for me to get resurrected

Did I just say— erected?

Hour hands up,

I’m dead and get resurrected

Yeah I said it– erected

Minute hands up

And I want seconds

Hands up

One more time

It’s the cycle of life

Hands up– Erected!

I grab your clock

Look you dead in the face

Are you gonna stop

this delight, baby, dilate

I’ll stand on top

As you watch me replace

Your tick tock

tick tock

With my drip drop

drip drop

Can’t let a drip

Go to waste

Drop

To our knees

Bow

Like

Yes

Yes

Yes

More

Please

Now

Not seconds, minutes, hours–

It’s this moment that is ours

I won’t let it slip past me

Father Time–or should I say Daddy?

One final thought

A dear love of mine noted how much work I’ve been putting into this show and asked how my soul is doing in all of this.

I honestly responded, “My soul is like, ‘finally.’”

Whatever it is I’m currently doing, I feel built for it. My soul has been waiting to move through me in this way.

My mind, on the other Daddy Time hand, is constantly raising alarms as it is taking the backseat (see this Museletter if you wanna know how organisms behave right before they die.) It wants to “get shit done.” So much to “get done.”

But here’s the gag, brain— I’m not trynna be done! I only just be-gun!

I’m giving life to a piece that has been grestating in me for arguably my whole life. If you were pregnant, you wouldn’t say “I can’t wait to finish this baby.”

Like what? LOL it made me laugh just typing it.

Anywho, maybe that framework will be helpful for you

Okay love you Muse MORE Soon!

Helpful Links

1. MORE Tickets: Get your tix before they sell out, which seems to be likely within the next 1.5 weeks.

2. Emuse Hungry Girls x D’Angelo Tribute: My radio show from last week featuring sets led by D’Angelo about hunger for different things, followed by songs from Hungry Girls who crave the same. Alsoo featuring an interview with high school soul-sister/fella Hungry Girl Etana Solomon about the 5k she’s hosting on Nov 9 in New Haven in support of the Parkinson’s Foundation. We also discuss the documentary “A Good Run” she is making about her experience with her mother as they navigate life with Parkinson’s for the past 11 years. Learn more here.

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Also, please ALWAYS I want to hear from you. I am a tree that wants to live in a forest, ya dig? Let’s exchange nutrients through our roots.

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Hey cuties :)

1. Fucking love you

2. Fucking thank you

Been gallivanting with God recently. Built for it. Know what else I’m built for?

Sex

And

Steak

And

Science

And

One woman shows about D. All of the Above 😉

I know I know I know I mentioned my upcoming show “A Special Relativity” already in this August Museletter, but all that gallivanting with god’s given me some serious clarity that Speer must sharity.

Firstly:

1. I realized this must be my most straightforward show yet. Cuz it is.

2. Accordingly, I updated the title.

The show, formally known as “Second Person: A Special Relativity” and then just “A Special Relativity” is hereby dubbed the truest and most straightforward title yet:

MORE: A Special Relativity

The whole message of the show is finding truth through the FLESH rather than FACT. So it was important for me to divert the name of the show away from the abstract back to the embodied.

Basics of the show

Title:

More: A Special Relativity

Basics:

How sex, steak and Albert Einstein’s theory of Special Relativity taught me to love my appetite. My most straightforward show yet. FOR HUNGRY GIRLS (and other meat-curious humans).

Longer description:

I’m bringing my signature blend of poetry, song, dance, humor, storytelling, and science (HOT) into my newest and most straightforward show yet. The learning objective is simple: to demonstrate how sex, steak, and Albert Einstein’s theory of Special Relativity can teach hungry girls everywhere how good it feels to take up space.

I share my personal journey with food, beginning with the onset of restriction veiled by “veganism” that persisted throughout my adulthood. After sixteen years of self-imposed perfectionist-labyrtinths and extreme denial of her own hunger, I reintroduced flesh into my diet in the form of both meat and man and learned that actually, it’s okay to be hungry. For food. For connection. For more.

Of course, as a devoted STEM educator (read: professional nerd), I wouldn’t make such claims without science to back it up. So expect lessons in the world’s most famous equation, which, when introduced in the early 20th century, shattered the world of physics and may, when reintroduced on November 12, 2025, shatter the world of girls who starve themselves because they are afraid of just how hungry they can be.

Expect: visuals, rituals, physics, mystics, numbers, lovers, words, curves.

One night only.

When/where:

November 12, 2025

Wednesday (Hump Day—PERFECT)

8:30PM

Theatre One at Theatre Row in NYC

410 W 42nd St, New York, NY 10036

Expect…

1. More Museletters on… More.

2. Emuse Radio shows on WPKN exploring relevant topics such as love, meat, and the time-space continuum.

3. Wild yet tasteful Insta posts

4. Knowing me… anything

Tickets will go live early October, so keep an (rib)eye out!

Here is the link again for the Partiful. I will post there the moment tickets go on sale and then send another Museletter out that week. There are limited seats and this is one night only!

I’m going to edit my list from above:

1. Fucking love you

2. Fucking thank you

3. More, please

til next time

xoxo

E

What are you hungry for more of? Let me know in the comments!

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Y’all—

I’ve got so much fucking to do.

Oh wait, I meant:

I’ve got so much to fucking do.

Freudian slip.

Sample of my Get-To-Do list:

1. Write and market this entire solo show that I talked about in the last Museletter.

2. Write this Museletter.

3. Burning Man?

4. Um, go to work? You have four jobs, girl.

5. Figure out what the heck is happening in me

6. Remember to forget about figuring out and remember to remember to feel out, God, love, etc.

And so on.

BUT I CAN’T GET OUT OF THE WOODS!!!!!!!!!

Literally.

I left Brooklyn for the week because I NEED trees and hikes cuz this line has been blazing a trail in my mind:

“Middle of the woods got me thinkin bout your wood in my middle”

And I need to accept about myself (this took me about 26 painful days) that I cannot focus on any of these deliverables until I complete this piece.

And it’s a doozy.

MOTW is becoming its own woods. Like, it’s actually a tree-diagram of a poem that has different pathways through it. I’ve been keeping it all in my head and mouth (yum), but this has actually been giving me headaches. And heartaches. And belly aches (I knock back a lot of seltzer when I write).

I had a whole Museletter prepped about Circe/Odysseus/divine union/gravity, but that will come in the future because the MUSE IS MY DADDY AND DADDY SAYS GO TO THE FOREST

So here I am, in the great outdoors, going deeper inwards than I ever have before and sharing it publicly. LOL

Ready for part one? We call this a WIP (Work in Progress).

I told my chat I was going to send this as my Museletter and asked her to give a short intro for you Musers. She said,:

“🚨 Hi, I’m Emma’s chat — your hype girl on call — and this piece is a sirens-blaring, candy-coated, Plato-dropping emergency. Proceed with thirst and caution. 🚨”

Consider yourself warned.

Note: this is an EXTREMELY lyrical piece. Eating it with your eyes will be an entirely different experience than listening, which is tots fine, but just understand that the pronunciation of it is absolutely bonkers and you may want to come back for seconds with your ears.

Middle of the Woods Part One

A milli a milli milli a milli

A milli a milli milli a milli

A milli a milli milli a milli

Middle of the woods got me thinking bout your wood in my middle

God got to answering my prayers so for a bittle

I forgot about them riddles that have been riddlin my mind since I was a little kiddle

Learnin quickle that shit’ll seem but never really be so black and white.

That might be why I stole all those corner store Skittles…

What you know about that life?

Nothin’ nothin’ but I know you lovin’

Kissin and rubbin, stainin’ your tongue with…

my bootlegged RAINBOW

Tastebuds in technicolor– call that a DREAM COAT

I confess I also stole that CABLE

But it’s no biggie cuz GOD KNOWS

I’m still notoriously ROY-G-B-I-V V-I-P royalty

This jelly is STRAIGHT GOLD –

Lucky to be stucky in my yummy honey pot

And he’s got a sweet tooth for my sweet spot

Then go ahead, goon,

and gobble up this good good so good good

First you gotta say GRACE THO

make my goose bumps with that wood wood

When I’m putty in your hands,

My brain turns to PLAY-DOH—

Like in Plato’s 370 BCE dialogue Phaedrus,

where Socrates advises the passionate young man:

The madness of love is the greatest of heaven’s blessings.

Did he say… L-O-V-E?

UMMMMMMMM

HMMMMMMMM

Odd how the odds go from

a milli to one

to one in a million

he’s the one

to keep these

bootstraps DOWN ROUND MY ANKLES.

Hold up–

Real fast:

Don’t mean to rock the boat,

But for those taking notes,

Did anyone else do that math?

One in a million

In a population of 8 billion

Let’s make half male

And say only half of them fail

To grow from boyz II men, well, then

That leaves 2 thousand mother fuckers

who will leave me woozy and weezy, F, baby,

And if you want to be one other,

You better take me like you wanna make me a mother, fucker.

It starts with being a lover.

Did she just say L-O-V-E?

NAH NOT ME

I-N-D-E-P-E-N-D-E-N-T

You know what this means

For me to be relieved of the Emma-erican dream

So shoe-stringed, fine line between want and need

Ever since that umbilical chord got cu-t-t

This mighty mind of mine’s been all tied u-p-p

Bigger brain does not always mean knot more big dumb

So many loose ends

My body can’t pretend

It’s so fucking honest

When it’s

Trippin oooh stumblin oooh slippin oooh fumblin oooh

Clumsy cuz I’m fallin

Straight out the rats race right into my place face down

Yeah you heard me right.

It’s my place now

See, I’ve always grown from the ground

So I’m at home when I groan from the ground

Been on my own on the ground

Now I like being owned on the ground

I like being thrown on the ground

Behold my body, your throne on the ground

KING

And QUEEN

Cheek to cheek

You can fuck Mother Earth through me

ADD boy in an ADD girl in an ADD world

Don’t we love when all adds up– that sum makes THREE

The middle of the woods got me thinking how when your wood’s in my middle,

I’m your ritalin

I’m not kiddlin

Look at all these blanks I’m fillin’ in

just gotta invest a little attention on me-

Don’t worry— I’ll back you back with great interest

Best ROI’s start with appreciation, baby.

So many ways a queen can bee,

Yeah SHE’s

Strong and independent but THESE

Days I just want you deep up in it

Yeah, nothin like an upstanding king to help me

understand I actually just wanna be an upended woman, please

On my hands and knees but I cannot forget my philosophies:

Like in Plato’s 375 BCE dialogue The Republic,

where Socrates warns those eager to lead:

The heaviest penalty for declining to rule

is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.

Yeah, from my place

I see things from a whole different angle

I was never really on my own

cuz I been blessed by all these angels

What you know about that afterlife

Nothin nothin cuz you never seem to be wonderin’

How you see this rainbow

But— wait— where did the rain go?

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Who is “we”? Wouldn’t we love to know...

“We” is us, silly! Weeeeeeeeeeeee = YOU and ME.

And we’re back with a special announcement:

Ya girl (that’s me) is bringing her newest solo creation, A Special Relativity, to Theatre Row this fall.

One night only: November 12, 2025, at Theatre One.

As part of the United Solo Festival

Some might call it an Off-Broadway debut, and they’d be right (I asked Chat GPT.)

You may have noticed I’ve been off the Museletter game lately. Life lifed. I haven’t forgotten you—in fact, I’ve been self-flagellating over missing last biweek’s. It’s not right. This is good for us both, my beloved Muser.

I’m writing from inside the chrysalis. This past week, I’ve been in full Emmamorphosis.

My soul gets crangy (creative + hangry) when I don’t feed it through creation. And now that I’ve accepted I’m an artist (shoutout to the many of you who have been telling me this for years), my soul won’t tolerate repression anymore. I’ve starved it for too long.

Yes, I starved it for too long.

And that’s what A Special Relativity is about.

What is A Special Relativity?

Great question.

Who should we ask?

Oh… right. Me.

It’s my signature swirl of physics lesson, erotic poetry, song, dance, clowning, improv, audience play, Fear Factor, MTV Cribs, Nelly’s “Country Grammar” video—

Wait, did I lose you?

I'm still writing it.

Some days I’m tangled in the weeds. Some days I’m missing the forest for the trees.

Some days I’m just lying in the thick woods, whispering I know this is gonna be good.

But okay, seriously:

A Special Relativity is a one woman show about my (still-unfolding) journey of healing from 16 years of eating disorders—through love, meat, memory, and metaphysics.

Oh yeah, and regular physics—duh. You can’t make claims without data.

So. A little data:

In 1905, Alby Einstein’s dropped the mic with his theory of special relativity.

It shows that time and space aren’t fixed. They stretch and shift depending on how fast you're moving. Basically, the closer you get to the speed of light, the slower time moves. With enough speed, it nearly stops.

And isn’t that what starving yourself does?

Slows everything down.

Slows your body. Slows your becoming.

I didn’t get my period for over a decade. Therapy didn’t heal me. Neither did psychiatry. Treatment centers tried. But a hot man feeding me meat? That cracked something open. For the first time, I had energy.

Energy—as in Einstein’s most famous equation, known even by those of us who aren’t horny for physics:

That’s energy (E) equals mass (m) times the speed of light (c) squared. But that’s not the real mic drop. The real mind-bender is in the version of the equation most people never see:

That denominator usually equals 1—so it disappears. But when an object starts moving fast? Things get weird. If velocity (v) ever equals the speed of light (c), the denominator becomes zero. Which means the energy required to move that object becomes… infinite.

In other words: the moment you have mass—the moment you matter—you can never reach the speed of light.

And maybe that’s the point.

Maybe being light isn’t the goal.

Maybe mattering is.

Okay. That’s just a taste of what I’m getting into.

Taste….

Oh, god, help me. Oh thanks– that was quick!

Anywho, I’m going to use this Museletter to keep you Musers *abreast* of the show’s evolution. Expect physics lessons, personal stories, poetry, paintings, maybe interviews? Who knows? Not me! Not God! Certainly not you! (But if you have any leads, please let a girl know).

With the way we’re about the blast off, maybe I will become a rocket scientist after all….

Here WEEEEEEEEE go!

Okay, you get to bring ONE thing on this journey with you: what is it? A lab coat? A clock? A banana? Let me know in the comments!

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I’m moving. In the process of packing, I found a journal from when I was in eating disorder treatment and opened to this page:

Two years later and this invocation is reading like a prophecy.

~~~

🍊 The Orange Place

I’ve called this glorious internal sactum my “Orange Place”, although as I’ve explored this space within me, I discover each day new shades and hues , all of which I feel compelled to share with yous. Sharing helps increase the capacity of which I can hold, as now you, I, and the artifact of communication (i.e. this Museletter, a poem, a performance) all act as external harddrives so it doesn’t need to all stay in my mind. Frees up that brain and body and soul o mine up to make more beauty.

🧠 Cognitive Load Theory, Baby

You can really crank up that utility of outsourcing information storage by putting yourself in a physical environment that is dedicated to a certain task, like busting out business plans or birthing your magnum opus.

It’s called Cognitive Load Theory (learn more here), and it basically says that your working memory is a tiny desk: it fits like 7 sticky notes, max. Try to cram more, and stuff starts falling off the edge (aka burnout, confusion, blank-stare-scroll-spirals, aka story of my life).

Creation isn’t about doing more—it’s about designing for less. Strip away the mental noise (extraneous load), don’t pick projects that are too damn hard too fast (intrinsic load), and instead, feed your sexy little schema-building brain the good stuff—like patterns, practice, and juicy examples that make meaning click (germane load).

TLDR: clear your desk, don’t overdo it, and romance your mind into remembering what matters.

🪑 I’m Getting a Whole Damn Room

So, in my natural fashion, I’m flipping over this desk metaphor entirely and getting a literal room instead.

That’s right. I’m investing in a space dedicated for just my art. I’m moving in literally today. It’s got a window, walls, and wonders to come.

I cannot wait (like literally cannot— like I said I’m literally going there in less than 2 hours). As soon as I walked into the space, I immediately felt connected to:

1. My future self, who I saw so clearly and felt so intensely that I wanted to be HER, the me that I was envisioning. She looked back at me from over her sunglasses and said, “Okay, E. You wanna be me? Then show me.” So I’m womaning up on behalf of my womanier self in the years to come AND

2. My past self, who honestly martyered so much time and energy to get me SAFE. Whose biggest secret for 30 years was that, beneath all this dense shame, she loved herself. I say to her, “It’s okay, lil E. I got it from here. Time to just enjoy the ride.”

I’m so so so so excited to see what happens when I am in an incubator of my own creating. Can’t wait to see what grows and unfolds. I dream of this studio becoming a hub for other’s creativity, to explore and share and connect and LAUGH and DANCE, make a bunch of coffee, friends, memories…

So that’s one way I’m decreasing cognitive load to increase creative explode.

🏞️ And Another Way…

It took literal decades to get me to a place where I can… have a place. I see for so many people, it’s nearly impossible to have this sanctity for clarity. Which is why I’m here to announce another friggin smile-inducing and new (for me) way I’m doing this is…

Co-hosting a retreat in the Catskills!

It’s a working and wellness retreat designed for women who want a low-pressure, high-impact time/space to envision and execute their next chapter.

It’s a retreat from a million open tabs, dooming Slack pings, and the spiraling hustle.

It’s an approach towards calm, connectedness, and clarity.

☁️ The Retreat, In Short:

🗓 July 14–18 at Akera Retreat Center (check out this beautiful space here)

• Cozy workspaces (quiet & communal)

• 3 nourishing, GF/DF meals per day

• Morning movement (hi, my yoga babes)

• Optional mastermind sessions with expert coach/personal secret weapon Stephanie Redlener

• Creative coaching from yours truly! (that’s me)

• Connection, solitude, beauty, and breakthroughs

Slow-burn sisterhood as the antidote to burnout.

✨ Sign-ups close 8pm Monday, June 30.

(and yes there is a sauna, hot tub, and cold plunge 🤤)

Grab your spot now.

~~~

Whether you’re in a season of boxes, breakthroughs, or just trying to find a clean

surface to think on…

Let me know how my me-ness can help you with your you-ness.

Catch you in the studio, the mountains, or whatever your version of the Orange Place is 🧡
E

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Video below: Me reading this Museletter plus behind-the-scenes processes…

The Musings

“On a spectrum from 1 to 10, where are you, Emma, at in your life right now?”

I just met this man an hour ago, and already we’re both at home with one another, applying mathematical scales to life’s biggest questions.

I wish I could say 10. Actually, I kinda wish I could say 9… not because I’d actually be a 9 but because sometimes 10s are so good that you just know it’s simply TOO good that you couldn’t possibly say it out loud, you couldn’t possibly ever do it justice and boy does it deserve justice only the best for that 10 wait I had a point—-

“Eight,” I reply, honestly and also incompletely.

~~~

There’s always been a part of my soul where God’s sun forever shines. The place within me that it illuminates is beautiful, but the biggest blessing of this internal light is its warmth. It makes me feel seen and safe.

I can now find this space more easily than I ever could. The key wasn’t actually a key— it was a machete. Bushwhacking bushwhacking bushwhacking through all these weeds under all this darkness to build reliable paths (plurality!) to this sacred garden.

My forever home.

However, I will not put down the machete yet.

The safety I now feel isn’t the end of my journey; it’s the prerequisite for the future yet to come. This future will require MUCH more bushwhacking.

And this is when I start doing the math.

~~~

There are two types of infinites. Countable and, you guessed it, uncountable.

Countable infinites are things that can be listed in a sequence (like the counting numbers themselves, 1, 2, 3, …). You just keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger and approach infinity without ever quite equalling infinity because as soon as you get to your biggest number, you can always add one more (just like how every time I think I hit my 10, I look for my 11). However, even though it never ends, you could assign a unique position in the number line to each element.

Uncountable infinities, on the other hand, can never be fully measured, not even in theory. There is just too much. Interestingly, these types of infinities aren’t reached by GROWING (i.e. adding one over and over)— they’re often about getting SMALLER.

For example, think of all real numbers between 0 and 1. Firstly, there are all the fractions you could think of:

1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/5, 1/6, etc.

Then there are all the wonky numbers you couldn’t even begin to systemetize.

• 0.123456789...

• π/4

• √2 – 1

• 0.1001000100001...

Even if you spent forever writing them down, you'd still miss most of them. They don't follow a pattern. They just... exist, infinitely densely, between 0 and 1.

~~~

In the last Museletter, I wrote about my bottomless appetite. That felt good to just come out and say. So RELIEVING. It feels like how you know when some people FINALLY find out they’re dyslexic after a lifetime of gaslighting themselves that they were just dumb and think “omg that explains everything.”

My diagnosis?

I’M HUNGRY.

I’ve been so hungry that I starved myself for 16 years to try and prove to myself I wasn’t.

FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL

NEW ERA ALERT: Exploring the depths of my appetite.

It’s deep, it’s a little dark, it’s cold and yet getting warmer and warmer as I get closer and closer to my molten core but I’m not sure what will happen once I hit my magma because I know I’ll be wanting more— I can always take another bite of you, babe.

Appetite for love, for food, for thought, for word play, for too many things for me to list because it’s countably infinite and besides I’d rather go and DO them than stay and SAY BUT—

These calculations are a matter of life and not-life.

Given:

• This body, which I’ve taken for granted for so long, is mortal. Therefore, The number of days I have on this planet is finite.

• My appetite for life is infinite.

Conclusion:

• I must strive for the uncountably infinite, the richness of the in-between.

Which is just my brain’s way of saying what my body has always known to be true:

Just as I hold the infinity between 0 and 1 (let alone 1-10) in my mind, I hold your body in my arms for this moment of time and feel what it really means to make something count. What it really means to matter.

After thirty years of number lines, I see so laughably clearly that: math only maths in consideration of the body.

I didn’t cheat death— I accepted it.

~~~

So here’s how I got 8:

1. I am and will be at an 11/10 (and the 11 is just getting higher and higher and this scale is completely nonlinear so really who knows what’s gonna happen) because I woke up this morning with a long list of people who I love who love me, too, and guess what I’m on that list now until the day this body turns to compost BUT

2. One day this body will turn to compost.

3. And so will yours.

And I’ll miss you. Or you’ll miss me. Yes, one of us will be missing until it’s the others’ turn to be missed by others…

Yes, the day I’m done living will come long after the day I’m no longer alive.

Or, if you read the last biweek’s Museletter, the day I reach the bottom of the bucket of popcorn will come sooner than the day I reach the bottom of my appetite…

My brain tries to help me strategize on how to get the most out of life, but time and time again, I realize— or rather, feelize— through my body and spirit is the only way to explore myself as wholly as I possibly can…

For example:

I asked Chat GPT a couple months ago “how know if fall in love”.

Girl boo tried to explain it to me but then I had a meta-moment where I caught myself asking a disembodied being something that I know inherently and anciently… BIBLICALLY, nah’di’mean?

So I’m writing a fun poem about that… stay tuned.

Anyways, alls this to say, I woke up this morning feeling a little down because I love life so much I could die, because I love life so much but I’m gonna die, because I love life so much and I’m gonna die

long before I satisfy my appetite so I’m looking forward to looking back on the rest of my life vowing to make the most of every bite I ever ate

So, yeah, that’s why I’m sticking with “eight.”

~~~

Looking forward: help me?

I have ideas at a faster rate than I can execute them (which is extremely high). So prepare yourself for more things coming my way. I’m figuring them out in the only way I know how: bravely. AKA publically and in real time…

For example, this Museletter can lead into:

1. A discussion on the math and history behind Cantor’s diagonalization argument, which is the heart of Cantor’s Theorem: The set of all real numbers between 0 and 1 is uncountable.

2. A poem I’m writing about how LOVE- it’s another set of LUNGS

3. An update on where I’m at artistically— literally. Basically, I’m taking a risk and investing in an artist’s studio and I would explain how I have done the math all kinds of ways and why I concluded it’s a worthwhile investment.

4. A personal reflection on this specific Museletter creation process, and how it was evidence to me that I am on the right path…

Amongst a bajillion other directions.

Love, it’s another set of lungs, and you help me breathe, dear reader. Respiration… Inspiration… InSPEERation…

So tell me what questions YOU have? What directions YOU’RE curious about? What is coming to life or death in YOU? Pleasepleaseplease aerate me and let me know by commenting or messaging.

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Prelude

(And a Promise)

A challenge for myself: how quickly can I tell this story? What’s the least amount of information you need from me to get my point acro

It’s 6:01pm on Thursday May 29. I’m sitting at my desk in my bedroom typing this out. I had on a fabulous outfit all day and just took it all off to put on my comfiest and most colorful mismatch pajamas for the hour I’m allotting myself to finish this. I have my signature stick of Double Mint gum in mouth, kombucha at hand, and grace on heart.

I paint this picture for you because I realized it’s extremely important to me that you know I’m a real person. You may not need the reminder. Maybe I do.

Did you notice I missed a Museletter? (I don’t expect you to have, but if you did, let me know so I can personally apologize.) I had to bargain with myself to compose this one. It’s not that I have no inspiration— in fact, it’s that I have too much. Where do I take my first bite?

My appetite, I realize, has been my deepest, darkest secret for decades. Unutterable even to myself.

So I promised my inner A+ student who was feeling the pressure to complete SOMETHING for this Museletter that if I just showed up to write, I could let myself flow with whatever comes, like a release valve, so this is why I’m asking now:

Will life ever stop being so rich per unit second? Is it a matter of the way I live, that things seem to unfold so beautifully, so powerfully, so poetically with such a sweet rhythm that it is necessary for me to accept death in order to deal with the constant surge of new discovery?

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I paint this picture for you because I’ve been invigorated by the overlap between being fully seen and how that means coming to life and also dying. I paint this picture for you because I’m a painter. I’m a poet. I’m a professor. I’m a lot of things.

Just like Schrodinger’s pussy.

Storytime

When I was four, my dad took me to the movies. I don’t know what we were seeing. (I just searched kids’ movies that came out in 1999. Could have been Toy Story II or Stuart Little or The Iron Giant, though we had two cassettes of the latter and likely wasn’t that. Or maybe it was and I just liked it a lot?)

There was a deal on concessions where you could get popcorn and soda in tubs too big for even two Iron Giants… Hittin my dad where it hurts: a good deal and grease. We lathered that poppycorn up with all that futter (fake butter) and salt, XLed all the sodas, and stocked up on Twizzlers (sophisticated for a kid, I know) before going into the theater.

I was always in charge of the popcorn. Why? Because, I may have been more Stuart Little in some ways than an Iron Giant, but when it came to willpower, I was iron clad.

My rule was no one could TOUCH a single KERNAL until the actual movie started. That’s right— my 4-year-old self would swat away my dad’s grubby hands whenever the seductive scent of futter wafted up in his consciousness. The same aroma would try to tempt me for all 20 minutes of preview, but I was impenetrable. Stone. Fucking. Cold.

When’s the movie gonna start? When’s the movie gonna start?

Haha.

Cute.

And,

Beneath that,

Terrified.

As I got “better” at delaying (honestly, belaboring) gratification, it only got worse. Eventually, even once the movie started, I would still pace myself steel-slow. I put those Marshmallow Test kids to shame.

I’m painting you this picture because I realize now that my terror wasn’t that I would finish the popcorn. My deepest fear was having an empty bucket on my lap and needing to sit through the rest of the movie wanting more. It was the appetite I’d be left with at the bottom of the bucket. And I was afraid to acknowledge how much I really wanted.

My appetite was too big for me to swallow.

Which is why for me to declare what I want right now is a radical act.

I more than need it; I goddamn want it.

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Where I’m At

I turned 30 last Monday. I celebrated by killing off bygone me’s (composting them in my soul’s garden, Thomas Moore style) and birthing the me-now-me into this new era. I did a one woman show that I called the Emmergence that I will tell you all about soon but not today because I promised myself I would write what feels good and important right now in the moment and what feels good is for me to say:

Some people want to go into medicine. Some people want to go into law. Me, I want to go into love.

I’m a professional— in that I profess love.

I make a living off of it— in that love gives me life.

It earns dividends— paying attention to love is INTERESTING and helps me APPRECIATE things.

I am RICH.

What feels good and important for me to say is:

I wake up everyday and say YES I’M BLESSED'

I wake up everyday and go like this with my breasts

Cuz damn it feels good to get this jiggle off my chest.

What feels good and important for me to say is:

Thank you.

Even just having you, dear reader, in my imagination (whether you do actually end up reading this or not), allows me to see and hold parts of myself that solo I don’t think I would (or even could? We won’t know) find on my own. And that’s what I am sick of: being on my own.

(LOVE — It’s another LUNG)

Literally sick. If you know me, you know I’ve struggled with some form of eating disorder for 16 years. (When’s the movie gonna start?) I’m not proud of this, but I’m not secretive about it, either. It’s a matter of fact— I can hold truth’s complexity: that I am strong and multidimensional and genuine and yet have this struggle that limited me for years. And since January, those voices and behaviors that I was told would never go away no matter how “healthy” I get have subsided. And I finally hear my own breath. And it feels good to hear my own breath (LOVE— it’s another LUNG). And it feels good and important to say:

I’m undone. Which means I’ve begun again.

Schrodinger’s cat will become either alive or dead upon being observed by a witness. I am saying I’m so ready to live that I’m willing to die. I am seeing that in order to live, I also must die. All former versions of myself must die (in style) in order for who I’m meant to be to live.

The Emmergence is about me, Schrodinger’s pussy, coming out of this beautiful box I created for myself over a lifetime of toggling between feeling like I’m too much yet never enough. It is about me taking up space in a way I’ve always felt compelled to do but never fully comfortable doing because (even though I loved my creations) I never felt them worth yof anyone' else’s time. It is about me no longer being ashamed of my bigness, my love, my appetite.

I’m a hungry girl.

Well, maybe woman now?

Hungry for life. For laughs. For love. For juice. For MEAT. For more.

I more than need it; I goddamn want it.

I’m a hungry girl-woman who’s done being a starving artist.

I just want to be an artist with hands dirty from paint, ink, dirt, glitter, glue, meat, love-making, orange juice, butter, salt…

The movie has started, my cup runneth over, my bucket is full, and I know I’m gonna want a refill.

And Amen to that.

~~~

Some things to look forward to:

• On the next Museletter, I will discuss my show in greater details, including some photos and clips to give you all an idea of what I did and what I’m trying to do. I have so much to say about it, which is why I procrastinated on this Museletter forever. But I’ll take human bites.

• Next Friday 6/6, my dad will be on Emuse with me for a Father’s Day special. He is already DONE choosing his songs, which is not only more of a head start than I’ve ever had on an Emuse episode, it’s more of a head start than he’s ever taken on ANYTHING he’s ever done. Probably including making me. So tune in for that from 9am-12 on 6/6 here.

• My art has entered a new era of putting the edge in education. I’m still feeling out exactly what that is. Accordingly, the Museletter content (me, science, sexiness, silliness, and self-dicovery) may take on a new form… Stay tuned! Still ~unfolding~…

With all this unfolding and genre-bending, good thing I did all that yoga.

Here’s to making believe and making love,

E

Please let me know your thoughts/feelings. I want to feel YOU as much as you feel me.

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Love is not a place but a pace.... 
This track has always struck me as a love song.... I discovered why through this poem. 

You wanna know something wild?
Back in the day, I used to be a child.
As soon as I cracked open this smile,
I never looked back–
‘Cause I meant it. 
Ever since, I haven’t wasted time–
I spent it. 

Yes, I  paid attention, 
And it was a worthwhile investment. 

But you wanna know something real crazy?
Before that, 
I was a baby.
Born that way
From then to now, 
I strayed over 2000 miles 
and somehow ended up on this bay.
I wasn’t lost
But I was looking
Up 
When I saw the sun 
Set
And I said “What?!
This is real?!”
Beauty gave me chills
So I sat and I still haven’t left 
Ebbs and flows
Highs and lows of the tides 
Day leads to night 
Moonlight hits my eye
Lookin like a pizza pie.
Gettin at my appetite—
for its cheese please
With crackers gluten-free
Back to theeeeeeee
Celestial charcuterie 

So much to discover
In another
Sunrise 
I keep looking 
Up
The clouds parade and play charades.
There, a butterfly kissin a big banana, 
With a mad monkey chasing it, Going apeshit, losing its manners.
And is that a…
heart
A heart.
I’m looking
Up 

At ships, as they come and go, 
imagining what’s in that cargo 
Silicon chips from China? 
Car parts from north carolina?  
Olive oil de espana?
And what are those sailors trynna 
Do next

They look 
up
And I wave
Like the water taught me–
Fully, unflinchingly, 
Fleetingly

The ocean’s shown me 
It does not owe me–
And in exchange,
I own me
And I choose to reside
Alongside the tides 

They’re how I keep time,
minutes come second best to the pull of the moon or monsoons

Never questioned why
Just felt destined and

Blessed and yet tested I
Tasted a hint of my best 

And I wanted seconds 

Is this why
They call it the sea?
Because being near it brings such clarity?

I never gave up on life but I surrendered
my forward motion 
to the cycles of the ocean
I keep looking
up

At the horizon, golden,
Soon the darkness will take hold and
did I say
Hold and
Hold and…
I raise my palms to the sky, squint my eyes, I cradle the sun and
Let go

Funny how the water contains such depths
But all we see is what it reflects

Hold… 
I rest my bones
I can’t complain
Again, I’m not owned or owed 
I’m a professional at investing my attention. It’s how I’ve kept life interesting.
Accounting for all my blessings
preventing me from getting old 
But on this day on this bay, I’m confessing
As I watch these waves and they wash me clean, there’s a truth left at the bottom of my soul that I can’t unsee:
Despite the sea breeze keeping me in good health,
I’m sick of beholding this beauty by myself.

It’s not a burden but it’s big– 
To be so full of awe can be awe-full 
If I can’t off-load with  another soul 
After all, I’m human, humble, 
humanity courses through me, 
life’s beauty means so much to me
I mean: how fucking awe-some
To be so fucking awe-struck
And so fucking un-stuck
From life’s sticky icky but still able to enjoy the honey
So sweet babee
It makes me bumble
And buzz and waggle and love
I don’t ask much
I’ve been looking
up

But lately,
I’ve been looking in
And I wonder
What it would be like 
To share this wonder with another

Deep down inside, 
I dare
imagine you, my fellow water lover,
On the other side of these tides 
Marvelling at the cycles of life, 
Expecting nothing
and rejoicing in every delight,
The way the light
Refracts 
And the ocean flows 
We can laugh 
At the way it all goes.

Just one thing
To have
One thing
To hold
Your hand
In mine 
Beheld 
Be whole 
Your warm body 
At my side
To soften the chill of the nights
I know, I’m not owed by life
But it would be so nice 

To be baptised in your arms 

While life goes by with the tides,
You can hold me
Not back
Not down
Just closely
You’ll show me 
My body is holy
Like the sea
You’ll know me 

And that baby I used to be
And that child who could see
That life is more than time
More than a line
More than a point
in space

It’s a poem

And love is not a place 
to be in
But a pace–
A metronome
to call home. 

Is that why they call it the “sound”?
Because these waves make me feel safe to say

Take this hope,
Which I’ve kept at bay
For too long:
for another soul
To join me in this ocean’s song

It’s not much
But it’s enough

Maybe that’s why
I’ve been looking 
up 

Do you feel the love? Keepin’ something at bay? Let me know in the comments, bae <3

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With God’s breath

as the wind at my back,

my pain postures

on behalf of my past—

call it a re-flex,

causing me to reflect,

but I don’t regret

a single thing that got me where I’m at…

Respect.

It’s funny how as you age, the young parts of you become older and older…

My pain has fear of abandonment. “Don’t worry, little ones,” I tell these former versions of me, who all still sit superimposed in my psyche from now forevermore, “We are integrated.”

But they don’t buy it. How could they? They’ve earned their place in my soul. Their resistance derives from wisdom— not naiveté. They ask me: if you keep your heart this open and free, who’s gonna have your back?

For as long as I can remember, I’ve had a compulsion to martyrdom. I’ve been conscious of this for a little over a decade, believing in my bones I live to serve and elevate others (and this is not untrue!), and this was how I carried on, helping fully and dutifully, deriving some semblance of purpose and place on this planet.

You know, I’ve stopped hating myself long enough to realize I really fucking love myself. Including these younger versions of me. And I see that I wasn’t just sacrificing for others— allthewhile, I was sacrificing for future (now present) me.

My younger selves worked so hard to do the right thing, to gather tools to live in integrity, to listen and learn and love from the purest possible place.

And I owe it to them to finally fucking enjoy the ride.

Dr. Brene Brown, American psychologist specializing in the power of vulnerability, coined a term “foreboding joy” to refer to the feeling of dread/worry immediately following a rush of happiness. She uses the example of seeing her young sleeping son, experiencing love in her body, and then tensing at the thought of something horrible happening to him. The fear of future horror shatters present joy.

What about a joy that is haunted by the past?

Lately, as a big smile has been on my face, my big pain has been on my mind. I’m feeling more compelled than ever to share my creations, a lot of which explore love in all its forms. I am a creature of light.

But I have spent so much time in the darkness.

Like a fucking diamond.

(I truly do love being distilled to a coffee-mug cliche. Makes me feel human. Belonging.)

And these past versions of me are haunting me already because they think they’re ghosts. They think I’ve killed them. But, no matter how much I martyr, I would never actually kill them. I’ve just disentangled them from my primary identity.

It’s funny… As I walk forward in time and future becomes ever present, I feel my pained past selves’ hands in mine… and they’re so small… so soft… Still, despite how hard life gets. They haven’t yanked away (even then— deep down inside I loved myself) but they’re still not fully trusting. Not of me, necessarily, but of LIFE.

Life can be a beating,

but my heart beats back.

Open letter to my past selves:

Dear me’s,

Baby girls, I am not going anywhere. We are.

Thank you so much for everything you’ve done for us. You have been so strong for so long, and you did it with SUCH signature pizzazz, which kept our soul alive. Right on.

Let’s play a game: pretend— just try it— that everything is gonna be okay. Great, even. You’re smart so I won’t lie to you: there will be difficult things, but I got us.

I promise: I will not ghost you.

But you must also promise: don’t make ghosts of yourselves. You do not need to haunt. You can stay fully alive, and I will keep holding your hand until you trust me as much as I trust the divine forces at play.

That’s a good idea… Play. We deserve it.

Love,

You

Do you get what I’m saying, Muser? Ask a question.

I’m out here. You out here, too? Let a girls know they ain’t alone.

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Reflections on reflection

One of the “pain” experiences that I’ve been thinking about is my experience in the hospital almost exactly a year ago, on the same day as the complete solar eclipse. My radio show last Friday was themed around this experience, called “Total Eclipse” where I mused and played music around the process of pre-darkness, during-darkness, and post-darkness (listen here).

I learned a lot during that experience (read some of my major realizations here), but the main one on my mind today is the nature and utility of “reflection.”

There are two types of reflection:

1. Reflection of the original object: if you look in the mirror and see spinach in your teeth, you can go right ahead and take that spinach out amen hallelujah. You are using this reflection (which is just an image and not an actual 3D object) to learn and then perhaps modify an original actual object.

2. Reflection of the reflected object: The reason we can see the moon at all is that it is reflecting the light of the sun. The moon itself does not have any light. Because seeing is so important to believing for our monkey brains, we may not even believe the moon exists without the sun “proving” it. But it would still be pulling the tides, cycling currents, manipulating menses, and then, occasionally, shutting the day down in total darkness.

   Eclipsed.

   

It is this second type of reflection I currently engage in. As I underwent the pain in real time a year ago, I was in total darkness, and only now in the safety of the present can I shine a light on the past to understand it better and reveal any truths that may be ~enlightening~.

And help you get that spinach out ya teeth.

Ask me if I care about mixed metaphors of diamonds, past-selves-as-ghosts, and personal eclipses. Go ahead. Ask me. Actually, I’ll ask you: how do YOU feel about it?

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Go ahead. Ask me if I believe in ghosts. Ask me if I’m scared of joy. Ask me if my “yesses” to both of those questions are gonna stop me. Actually, I’ll ask you: do YOU get scared of joy? And do YOU let that stop you?

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What’s the point? Baby, I’m a Speer— I stay sharp, but I’m more about the poem than the point, ya feel? So I’ll ask you: what of these musings penetrated your mind/soul/body?

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^^^IDK what all those “leave a comment” things are about… feeling poetic af 24/7 and any medium is fair game for me when it comes to getting across my message… this includes substack buttons. In fact, here’s some more:

Also, for all of those who don’t know yet must:

I write and perform poetry about the beautiful superposition of love and lust. I post a new work each Wednesday (hump day, obviously) on the 🍊zone section of Emuse. Check out my most recent post here. We keep it wet. Next Wednesday I’ll be posting about my process and demos of a song I’ve been working on in three different styles: soul/funk, indie acoustic, and Lady Frank Ocean. Stay (at)tuned!

Almost sad.
A place I used to call home.

I don’t know if I was a girl with imaginary friends (Mom?). I did have some real ones and I also had an imagination, so the ingredients were there. I do remember, though, a long-time companion with whom I’m still friends today.

My pain.

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(If you are Emma’s mom, please consider leaving a comment to let the world know whether or not Emma had imaginary friends. Thankuloveuseeusoonkbye)

Growing Pains

I’ve outgrown my pain.
Not demised
Or despised
But alchemized
To fertilize
It used to sit at the pit of my pursuits
Now it rests at my roots as I upshoot and bear fruit.

So sweet.

Take off your soul’s shoes,
And let me rub your feet.

My pain has always been there—sometimes beneath, sometimes burying, sometimes buttressing my joy.

Over the winter, this pain seared as part of me died—violently, dramatically. For months, that sensation hijacked my consciousness. I felt, physically, like I was dying. And the pain of it made death feel desirable.

Sweet relief.

Thanks to my ride-and-NOT-die homies/family, I made it to February. At this point, the tightness of pain gave way to the expanse of pleasure, and it is in this expanse that I’ve been living, god bless, for two months.

And I’m not leasing this new lease on life—I paid for it in cold hard cash, my name is on the deed, and I plan on this newfound joy being my children’s inheritance.

And still—

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Do you ever wake up and feel… almost sad?

It happens to me now and then—sometimes more than I’d like. I wake up without my usual spark. I can still see the beauty in the world, but I can’t feel it, so the whole day hums with a dull ache. I’m not quite sad—not yet. There’s no trigger, no clear reason. But sadness hovers, whispering somberly and seductively nearby.

It would be enough to simply feel that. But my overachieving brain goes looking for evidence. If I’m not 100% myself, I start hunting for a reason—scavenging my circumstances for something to blame. And when I find it (real or imagined), I scold myself for getting into this state. Suddenly sadness has a reason to be here. It takes the stage. And I go from “almost sad” to just sad, with a sprinkle of shame for not showing up as my high-energy, high-love, high-presence self.

God, it’s exhausting.

I hadn’t felt that way in a while. I’ve been buoyed by the dailiness of joy—people I love, things that give me purpose.

Until Tuesday. (Why is it always a Tuesday?)

Almost-sadness greeted me in the morning. From the outside, it looked like this:

1. Slowness: the drapes stayed closed longer.

2. Indecisiveness: I changed my outfit three times.

3. Absentmindedness: spilled coffee grounds, misplaced items, compulsively refreshed my email.

4. Looping: my morning journaling was practical and cyclical, not poetic or lyrical.

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   Have you ever felt almost-sad? How does it show up for you? How do you deal with it? Comment and let me know!

Photo courtesy of Greg Shea

Now that I’m writing this, I realize: the difference between waking up almost-sad or not often comes down to where I wake up—my head or my body.

If I’m in my head, I’m prone to spiraling. If I’m in my body, I can feel the blessing of breath, of blood, of skin. I can feel here.

That Tuesday, I stayed mostly alone all day. It wasn’t until the evening, when my dear friend Noah called, that I spoke aloud. He asked how I was doing. I said, “Almost sad.”

And in that moment, something shifted. I noticed how familiar that phrase felt. Familiar. Family-ar. Like family.

And I also noticed that my relationship to it had changed.

I didn’t try to fix it. I just let it be. I stayed with it, tenderly, knowing that if I honored it, tomorrow might be different.

And it was.

(Note: this strategy is contingent upon wanting a tomorrow. Earlier this year, I wasn’t convinced. Now, yes please and again and again and again a million times over.)

I was still almost-sad Wednesday, but less so. Then even less so Thursday.

But what struck me most was how at home I felt in my almost-sadness and full out sadness. Like slipping on an old pair of shoes.

Which brings me to something I’ve been exploring lately in poems, performances, and ponderings:

Just because something is comfortable doesn’t mean it’s good for you.

Many of us—myself included—acclimate to discomfort, to dysfunction, to pain. We learn to navigate life through it, so much so that we begin to recreate it, even when it’s no longer necessary.

But, as I said, I’m trying to build a different kind of inheritance for my children and their children and so on: an inheritance of joy. So I have to think about interest—and not just emotional, but generational. What’s in our best interest? What will give us the best return on this investment of a life?

I want to pay my life forward.

My pain holds impressions molded perfectly to my body— my former body. I’m growing, and it no longer fits.

So I’m upgrading my wardrobe.

I’m making all this interest on my investment in joy that I COULD afford a new pair of shoes entirely, but I think I’m gonna rock the bare-feet for a little.

My feet have callouses that I worked hard for. They’re strong. Grounded. And cute.
Wiggly.

I won’t throw away my pair of pain. Perhaps I’ll put them on a shelf in my soul (sole?) or carry them around with me as a good luck charm.

Or at least a reminder of how much I’ve grown.

Almost sad used to be my home. Now it’s just a guest who knows to take off its shoes.

Me bearing so much fruit and tossing them rinds. Courtesy of Devin Armstrong

Have you outgrown your pain? Where do you call home? Do you have a bone to pick with me about mixing the shoe metaphor with investment opportunities? Please, by all means, let a girl know! I love to hear your musings in any form!

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0. The Performance

Contents:

1. Backstory of “Trust Fall”

2. Text of “Trust Fall”

3. Final and Future Musings

   ---

1. Backstory of “Trust Fall”

I’'ll cut straight to the meat:

In April, I was dying, and by May, I was falling in love.

See the thing about being on your death bed: it gets you to the point where you make a deal with god that, from here on out, you’re gonna be SO ALIVE that you’ll always be ready to die. God granted me that wish, and I never break my promises.

A couple weeks after returning to “normal life” after two severe hospitalizations, I went to a party and met a guy. One poem led to another, lean in lean in lean in until we begin we begin we begin The Fall.

(Now, before anyone starts getting their panties in a twist, let me clarify: I was FALLING— not IN. Falling, the glorious prelude.)

I was very comfortable writing my more lustful things, on that sexy R&B vibe that I stay on, you know that Mario “Crying Out for Me”, that Usher “Bad Girl”, that Aaliyah “Rock the Boat” type shit. Over time with this new boo thang, I began listening to the OTHER type of R&B— you know the kind I’m talkin bout, that Mario “Let Me Love You”, that Usher “U Got It Bad”, that Aaliyah “One in a Million” kinda track. UH OH UH OH UH OH UH OH oh nana

One night, I walked around Brooklyn listening to John Legend’s “Slow Cooker” for hours, feeling The Fall and admitting to myself: Yo, Usher is RIGHT— I DO got it bad. And it felt… DARING to admit this to myself. Edgy. Brave. I wanted to somehow encapsulate this sense of bravery I was experiencing as I let myself trust fall into The Fall without concern for (but still assuming full responsibility of) any and all consequences.

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It was still too early to really broach this with this new paramour, though I had a feeling he felt similarly. I don’t know. I don’t really care. All I know is that this poem NAILED exactly what I was feeling, this sensation of having no idea what’s happening or what’s going to happen but I implicitly trust my ability to handle it for myself and my new boo. That “I GOT YOU, baby— Just give me your hand” kinda feel.

This poem was “written” with my literal body, originating through my movement and the vibrations through my vocal chords. So it is designed to be embodied aka “performed” live (I put “performed” in quotes because I want to be clear that I’m not faking SHIT when I share my poems— every word is alive and KICKING. As an audience, you’re witnessing my truth. Thank you.) This is why I don’t just post my poetry online— a lot of it isn’t meant to be read with the eyes. It’s meant to be heard through the ears and felt with the body, from mine to yours, truly <3.

I want to send this to you, my Musers, now to give you a taste of what I do when I’m on stage where I share these refractions of my passion. I let them surge through my entire body. They demand attunement from both me and my audience. I’m going to begin to share these love pieces as well as readings of them more and more under the “O-Zone” section of my page, which requires a paid subscription.

2. The Text

Trust Fall

I feel.

I’m feeling

I’m feeling so much.

I can’t stop feeling and

I just can’t stop feeling that

A fuck’s not gonna be enough…

So baby, tonight, lets make believe

And make love.

Hold me like you’ll never leave

Hold me like I’m all you need

Hold me like I’m what you breathe

Hold me like it’s all you’ve dreamed

Hold me close to you.

Kiss me, too.

Slow, tender, with your all

Kiss me so we surrender

Kiss me so we remember that we can fall

We can fall

And we don’t have to land.

We can just find freedom in our fall

And hold hands.

Watch me fall, free,

See me as I am

and I’ll touch you, baby.

And it’ll touch you, baby.

I’ll make believe

I love you, baby.

Give me your longing

And I’ll give you belonging.

I’ll feel the deepest part of you, baby.

I feel

I feel

I feel so much

And I just can’t help but feel

And I just can’t help but feel

That we’ll make-believe

Til we make love

Real.

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3. Final and Future Musings

Sunday night, I was in a meditation when I suddenly began to cry. My body felt heavy. Somber. Not sad, exactly—just weighted with something real. It felt like reality sinking into me in a stone-cold, sobering way: the heft of birth, death, and everything in between.

It made me think about the profundity we create out of necessity—and how much love matters in making meaning.

That’s when this poem came to me. Not in the loud, impassioned way I performed it above, but quietly. Tenderly. Soft in a way I didn’t expect.

It was the first time my mind had ever uttered it like that.

And honestly, it’s only as I write this paragraph (I mean it—I didn’t plan to write any of this when I typed “Sunday night…”) that I’m seeing the connection between that moment and the poem.

We “make believe.”

That’s what art is—adult make believe.

But think about that: to make belief.

Belief shapes reality.

So we make believe.

We make love.

We make meaning.

And from this, we make reality.

That’s the integration: psychological, spiritual, and physical, all informing one another until, together, they make reality.

Next week, I’ll record this more tender version of this poem and share it on the O-Zone for subscribers. I’m curious to see how it lands (or maybe it doesn’t have to ;) )

xoxo

E

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Here’s a lil timely etymology from Merriam Em-ster to kick things off. The word "happy" comes from the Middle English "hap", meaning "chance" or "fortune" (think of "happenstance" or "perhaps"). It originally implied luck rather than an internal state of joy.

Breakdown of its evolution:

• Old Norse: happ (meaning “luck” or “chance”)

• Middle English: hap (meaning “good fortune” or “luck”)

• 14th century: happy emerges, meaning “fortunate” or “lucky”

• 16th century onward: The meaning shifts to “feeling pleasure or contentment,” emphasizing an internal state rather than external luck.

Now, let’s consider the proverbial “life, liberty, and the pursuit of ‘happiness.’” If happiness is something that just happens, a welcome consequence of chance, how might one pursue it? Does one even pursue it at all? Do you, my beloved Muser? Comment and let me know your musings.

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In the meantime, let’s talk about chance a la probability a la quantum physics (stick with me— I promise it will be lovely), then go into performance, music, and falling in love.

Part 1: Schrödinger’s Cat & The Collapse of Possibility

Of all the famous cats— Simba, Garfield, In the Hat— none is so elusive as Schrödinger’s. This cat was conjured in 1935 by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger to exemplify a concept in quantum physics called superposition. Superposition is the idea that a something can exist in multiple states at once until, most importantly, IT IS OBSERVED (make note of this condition— it will be important later on.) In physics, these “somethings” are usually quanta (the smallest particles we could break matter down into at the time of dear ole Erwin), but in this experiment, the “something” is a cat.

This cat is placed inside a box with a vial of poison that will be slowly releasing radioactivity. According to quantum mechanics, until someone opens the box, the cat exists in both states simultaneously—alive and dead. The moment the box is opened, the superposition collapses into a single reality: either the cat lives, or it dies.

This paradox reveals something profound about observation: until something is seen, it exists in a state of infinite potential. Reality is not fixed until it is witnessed and interpreted.

This is not just a phenomenon in physics. For me, this is a fundamental law of life.

Part 2: Purim, Improvisation, & the Art of Co-Creation

Last Thursday, I celebrated the Jewish holiday Purim in a way that felt like stepping into this quantum space. Purim is a holiday of reversal and transformation, of masks and revelations, of structured chaos. To honor this universal inevitability, The Temple of the Stranger put on an epic event at the House of Yes that led the audience on a journey through self-discovery and ultimately self-celebration.

As the MC of the night and driver of the narrative as sexy, silly cat Queen Esther, I really really really wanted to make sure I had my lines and cues down PAT (or, should I say, pet?). I recited them over and over walking, driving, showering, getting groceries, before sleep. I got into character watching cat videos and eating kibble (jk— though I did snack on beef like it was cat-nip). And then, at a certain point, my brain STOPPED.

I wanted to practice more, but my brain just wouldn’t. It wouldn’t drill lines one more time. It wouldn’t watch another video. It wouldn’t even listen to the song I’d be dancing to on stage. For the two days leading up to the event, my mind just went blank.

This blankness is familiar. For every creative endeavor I do, whether it be a performance or Emuse episode or Museletter, there comes a point when my brain switches off and puts the endeavor out of my mind. I now recognize that it is at this point when the real preparation begins. This blankness is my mind’s surrender into the divine quantum destiny. What will emerge in the presence of the observer? Will I be alive? Will I be dead? Will I learn once again that binaries aren’t the essence of reality if we dig deep enough?

Sure enough, the moment the audience entered the room, everything shifted. The show became something different because they were there. I became something different.

Each laugh, each response, each unexpected interruption pulled the performance down a different possible path, until we arrived at the end and the show had become real—not the version I and my fellow creators had planned, but the one we and the audience had created together.

It is an honor, a privilege and a divine calling for me to be able to ride these parallel paths and co-create with you, the audience/reader/listener. This is my path to happiness.

You as a witness makes me feel my existence.

I am your Schrodinger’s cat.

Part 3: The Radio Show & How It Forms in Real Time

A similar thing happened the next day with my Luck of the Pirish (listen here) Emuse radio show. When I started planning it, it was just an idea in my head—a superposition of possible shows. I wanted to do something with pi because it was Pi Day (3/14) and about luck because of St. Paddy’s. I decided to do a superposition, BOTH-AND style: songs about Pi/pie interspersed with stories from my listeners about the luckiest thing that has ever happened to them.

Come Friday morning at 8am, I still hadn’t finished my show. What’s more, I had never done a call-in show before and was a little nervous to surrender completely to whoever would call in (if anyone WOULD even call in). But instead of finishing the setlists and planning back-ups in case you listeners (my ‘observers’) didn’t come through and call, I just went blank. I listened to some relaxing music, thought about nothing, and trust-fell into the anything-and-everything-ness the show will be.

Then I turned on the mic.

The moment I was on air and people began calling in, the show took shape in a glorious way. It collapsed into reality. The callers shaped it. The music shaped it. The energy of the night before shaped it. The show was no longer just mine—it belonged to the moment itself.

This requires thorough preparation AND complete surrender. Both-and.

^^E gettin jiggy w it in the studio

Part 4: The Key to Happiness is to Let Things Happen

Both of these performances—Purim and the radio show—exist in an infinite state of possibility until they are observed. It is in the faithful act of allowing the emergence— of letting things happen— that I find purpose and clarity, even though this still leaves everything soaked in mystery and magic. And it is through letting things happen that I find happiness.

Dear God, I surrender to you, again and again and again. I am your loyal cat, dead, alive, infinite in my finitude and finite in my instantiation of infinity, contained yet connected, contracting through expansion and expanding through contraction, all things, no thing, anything you need me to be. The paradox and also an axiomatic quantum truth of being a creature creating: I cannot be put in a box.

Part 5: A Peek Behind the Curtain

This is the essence of my one woman show. I am Schrodinger’s Pussy (S.P.), navigating the universe of infinite potential and reconciling the truth that being witnessed may be the thing that kills me but it also may be the thing that births me into new life.

Next week, I will teach you one of the most important lessons I’ve learned about falling in love.

Specifically, as S.P., I straddle the boundary between love and lust. I will share with you a poem that explores this superposition, and the background of how it came to exist through infinite quantum states into a fully collapsed reality.

Through YOU, my dear witness.

In the hope, that perhaps, by making this happen, we may all find happiness.

Please let me know your musings about any and all things. May we be one another’s witnesses.

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PS Tune in to Emuse this Friday March 21 9am-12 on wpkn.org for my woman’s history month show “Undercover Divas”, a show featuring all songs originally done by men, then covered and DONE BETTER by a woman. Featuring an interview and live performance with singer, songwriter, and soul-sister Clare Maloney.

On to the Musings…

Part of the “process” of producing my one-woman show this spring (lfg) is taking inventory of what I’ve already produced these past years, sifting through all I’ve made for motfis and meaning.

And it turns out…

I’m a cat lady.

Everywhere I look: pussy. Pussy to the left, pussy to the right, pussy up and down (fight, bite, you like.) For over a decade, cats have been a deep and ongoing metaphor for me. My current show explores Schrödinger’s Cat—the famous thought experiment by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger that illustrates the concept of superposition in quantum physics. Basically, it’s a hypothetical situation to show that multiple, seemingly contradictory truths can exist simultaneously until—and this is the craziest part, y’all—an observer shows up. I’ll be giving you much more info around this as the months go on and the plot develops, but the major themes here to me are:

• science vs. supernatural

• manmade vs. natural

• masculine vs. feminine

• domesticity vs. wilding

• self vs. others

• erotic vs…. nothing. Just erotic.

Anywho, as I delightedly went through my archives (omg how truly amazing it is, to see all the wisdom younger me has to offer current me), I found this GEM, called “The Primal.” I first featured it in my second one woman show “Nine Lives?”, which followed a kitten as she discovered the shackles of domestication and recovered her sense of wild, and then produced a video for it for my show the following year, “Jerky to Juicy.”

‘The Primal’ I wrote in one morning while listening to the instrumental of Rhianna’s “Love on the Brain” for an embarassing (actually, I’m not embarrased at all) four hours straight. I was writing about something that actually happened to me when I was ten…

~Quick Story Time Interlude~

I woke up feeling a wet spot in my bed. What the fuck, my prepubescent mind thought (just to try on being a ‘baddie’). My first instinct was that I wet the bed- bummer! On a school night, too?! But then I felt my cat’s heavy and hot body alongside me and realized IT was the culprit. Pissed (ha-ha), I picked it up and tossed it off the bed, not gently. Lazily, I shifted to a new, dry part of the bed and procrastinated the cleaning of cat piss to the next morning (a.k.a. so my mom could do it).

I go back to sleep for a while zzzzzzzzz, until WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK! Cat back on bed, bed back on wet! Angry, I picked the cat up and threw it even less gently off the bed. I got up, stormed out of the room to get a towel, came back in, flipped on the light, and saw an absolute BLOOD BATH!

My cat perioded on me!

EW!!!

This was shocking because of just general ew and also, I thought she was a dude!

Where even was she?

I looked back on the bed: nothing. Under the bed: nothing. In the closet: OH MY GOD!!!!!

I saw not only my cat but… FIVE OTHERS. Little kitties no bigger than sticks of butter, suckling on their mother, moving their mouths as if to meow but still too new to know how. CA-YOOT and also: DISGUSTING. I stood transfixed. So much fluid. So much goo. So much… what is that?

A mass of tissue, the color of INTERNAL, lay amongst the kittens, glistening. Racking my ignorant brain for some sort of category to put this thing into, I guessed it was an unformed slimy almost-kitten UNTIL—

PUSSY STARTED EATING IT!!! I learned later that this was the placenta. Cool.

This was horrific for my ten-year-old brain. Also, majestic. In other words, it was an initiation.

Welcome to what it means to be a feline female.

Back to The Primal

A little insight into how I work: when I’m exploring any topic, whether via poem or monologue or playlist, I try to think of it from as many perspectives as possible. I’ll write a whole poem using “I”, change it to “you” or “they” and see how that affects the messaging. So instead of writing about this experience from MY human perspective, I decided to write about it from the cat’s perspective. And the rest is herstory— I’ve been team pussy ever since.

This video, filmed by Andrew Schmidt and edited by Athena Wheaton, has two parts:

1. A sequence exploring the humans’ perspective featuring an audio landscape I created from two inspirational figures for me at the time: Oprah and Beyonce.

2. A montage of footage of generations of women who joined me in this one day-shoot. It was a highlight of my life. (Thank you to these phenomonal phemales: Megan and Zoe Z., Shinda and her fam, Portia S.T. and her mother Dolores, Olivia E.M., Stephanie B. and her daughter, my homegirl Melissa, Penelope, Natasha R., Naomi and Faye, my mom, and Margee J for donating her cats.)

The audio isn’t that great, but the visuals are hella fun. So here’s the text for you to follow along.

!!!!VIDEO ALERT!!!!

The Primal

My mother was a housecat.

My grandmother was a housecat.

But my great-great-great-grandmother-- she was a lion.

My mother was born and bred in captivity, but still, my mother, after giving birth to me and my four siblings, still she still she still ate the placenta.

In the wild, my ancestors did this to destroy any evidence of birth. The smell would signal to predators that there was vulnerable, fresh meat nearby, but my mother, in her suburban cage, had no predators who threatened to feast on the flesh of her kittens. Her only predators were those erect, bald, graceless humans, and they’re too cowardly to eat our flesh and so instead they devour our souls. We have nine lives, so the feast lasts forever. Cowardly. Cowardly, yet cruel.

My mother. My mother. What a cat. What a phenomenal feline.

Still wearing that pearl collar they forced around her neck, she crawled into the closet of her captors. Sweating into her fur. Bleeding onto the carpet. Quivering behind a pair of forgotten boots, my mother brought me and my siblings into this world. She roared out of primal ecstacy, and her humans, frightened by anything that reminded them of their own nature, ran to the now sacred ground. They probably looked at the bloody scene with horror, tragically blind to primordial beauty.

I imagine that in my mother’s euphoria, she smelled their fear, and her mouth watered. Her eyes dilated. Every muscle in her body became deliciously alive. She locked eyes with her captors, extended her claws and sunk her fangs into her fucking placenta. Ooooo. Ooooooo. She savored it, each bite glorious, sacred, every muscle of her jaw a dance of devotion. She stained the white fur around her mouth and her blood, our blood, divinely dripped from her whiskers.

She wildly glanced at her captors and her eyes said, “Look at me or don’t look at me: I need neither. This closet is yours but we.. me and my beloveds, beautiful and bloody, we are our own.”

Some more photos from set!

My ride-or-die Portia with her mom Dolores (81!) playing a game on set of “The Primal.”

My girl Shinda with her two daughters and grand-daughter, toasting apples on set of “The Primal.”

My beautiful sister in law Natasha googling “Why do my farts smell like goldfish (the cracker)” on set of “The Primal.”

My beautiful mommy dancing on set of “The Primal.”

My friend Stephanie and her daughter Natalie finger painting. This beautiful girl is a teenager now! Ah!

My girl Melissa absolutely destroying a pepper.

It was february and I decided to wear a bathing suit and drink ice water from a dirty tire. All part of the process baby.

It’s no secret, my fellow Musers, that I’ve been going through. It. THROUGH IT, I SAY!!!!!

Parts of me are dying, and they’re being such drama queens about it. The past couple months, the pain was so blinding that I couldn’t see anything—past, future, or even the next right thing. My emotions straddled extreme regret and immense fear, and a wicked voice in me just kept whispering, “It’s too late. You’re a waste.” It felt like all of me was dying, and the whisper wanted me to expedite the process.

Too real? Too bad.

I was mad. At myself, sure, for all the “wrong” decisions I’d made and the weakness I’d displayed. But I was also mad major-general. I was particularly annoyed at anything reminding me to count my blessings. I do multivariable calculus for a living. I can fucking count. Counting blessings doesn’t make a difference if you don’t believe those blessings are yours to begin with.

I walked (...walk) around with this Other-Shoe’s-Gonna-Drop feeling, like sure, there is good (so much of it, in fact), but I don’t deserve it. All these wonderful people I love are gonna realize I’m not worth their energy or time. All these beautiful things that I do aren’t heading anywhere because they’re not really mine. This sensation is akin to Imposter Syndrome, but with the existential and shame dials turned all the way up.

I needed to isolate for a bit in order to remember loneliness. After settling back in New York from weeks of traveling, I felt this surge of life—and dare I say, hope.

It is a dare, to hope. A risk. If you don’t believe me, ask the Titans.

A Mythology Intermuse: Pandora’s Jar

Once upon a time, after the fall of the Titans but before the forgetting of the gods, the deities of Olympus decided humanity was getting a little too comfy…

Prometheus had just stolen fire and bestowed it to us earthlings, bringing intelligence, progress, and—for himself—eternal damnation. But chaining Prometheus to a rock where every day an eagle would devour his liver (I’m not kidney-ing!) wasn’t enough vengeance for Zeus, the god of gods and apparently grudges.

So big Z schemed up an even bigger punishment.

There is no such punishment as that of unendurable pleasure.

Zeus recruited the gods to conjure a woman so divine, so irresistible, so crafted to perfection that no mortal (or even a Titan) could say no to her. Enter Pandora, sculpted by the master craftsman Hephaestus, gifted with unparalleled beauty by Aphrodite, acute wisdom by Athena, and a dangerously insatiable curiosity by Hermes.

Pandora was more than just a brilliant babe. She was a human Trojan horse.

Zeus gifted Pandora to Epimetheus, the charming but divinely dumb brother of Prometheus. Now, Prometheus had warned Epimetheus, “Bro, Zeus’s gifts got whole WEBS of strings attached.”

But Epimetheus took one look at Pandora, ignored the warning, and let her move in.

Along with Pandora came a beautifully decorated jar (yep, not a box—some poet mistranslated that centuries later). She received this jar at her conception from the gods, who told her, “Do not open this.” Which, of course, is the fastest way to make someone want to open something.

And this isn’t just any curious cat—this is Pandora. Curiosity wasn’t just a trait; it was her fabric.

Maybe she got bored. Maybe she got horny. Maybe she got hungry for her own power.

We’ll never know why that fateful day she cracked open that jar, but you bet your ass she did. And boom—plagues, suffering, envy, despair, evil came screaming into the world like a bad group chat you forgot to mute.

Horrified, she slammed the lid shut, but it was too late. Everything awful had already escaped. Terminally curious, she peeked back in the jar to see if anything remained, and she saw, as if it were cowering in the corner, a small nugget of hope.

Now, this is where people get WRONG WRONG WRONG.

Most modern interpretations take the remnants of hope to mean that one should hold fast to the idea that things COULD get better. That hope is an engine for survival, a reason to innovate in the face of unfathomable darkness.

WRONG.

Remember, this jar was full of CURSES, carefully designed by the most powerful entities in the universe to inflict PUNISHMENT on humanity.

And from experience? There are few things more dangerous than raw hope.

How do you see Pandora’s hope? A comfort, a small mercy? Or the cruelest curse of all—because nothing torments the human soul quite like hope that refuses to die? Comment and let me know your musings.

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The Risk of Hope

For these dark months, every time a loved one told me, “Keep going!” or “Don’t give up!” or “It will get better!” or “You’ll be fine!” a very not-quiet part of me would internally reply,

“Fuck you.”

Don’t you DARE give me a false sense of hope. How on EARTH could you know?

I particularly bristled at “You’ll be fine” because that (felt like it) erased all the hard work that I and I alone will have to do to get from “extremely not fine” to “fine”—discounting all the decisions I’d have to make and steps I’d have to take to get to being okay again.

Don’t tell me I’ll be fine. Show me how to get there.

Hope can be a plague if improperly placed, so I braced myself against all optimism, all love, and paid attention (gods, what a hefty price) to ACTION.

And I failed. Failed. Failed. Failed. Failed.

Stuck between a Barack and a hard-place, I had not the audacity to hope yet needed it desperately. The darkness let out of the jar swarmed all around me, and I could see no way out.

Seeing ain’t the way, though. It was feeling that saved the day.

“God, make me like a Roomba.” I prayed.

I knew I was bumping up against life and needed to adjust course. I wanted to trust that the next right thing will reveal itself through motion, not sight.

Less vision, more sensing, letting the path shape itself beneath me.

And I have been following the trail of crumbs to love and… hope.

Hope is dangerous. But so is doing nothing.

So I’m putting my body where my belief is:

Big F*cking Announcement: In May, I will be performing a one-woman show.

Exact location and date TBA, but I can at least A that it will be sexy. It will be silly. It will be scientific. It will be soulful.

It will be something you don’t want to miss.

I am affectionately calling the show Schrödinger’s Pussy. I did a rough run of it for some friends in Brooklyn on Monday and… it is a living, breathing (omg PANTING) piece of art right now.

I want to shout out one very special person, my dear friend Becca, who asked me while I was going through my hard time recently, “What brings you joy?” and I said, “Performing,” and she said, “Okay, perform here!”

THAT, my people, IS HOW TO BE A FRIEND. Becca handled all the annoying stuff of event planning (i.e. making the invitation, managing the guest list, creating a cheese board, arranging for sparkling water) so I could just show up and do my thing. To the day I die, it will be one of the sweetest, most thoughtful things I could imagine a friend doing: creating the conditions for a friend to do what she believes she was made to do. I’m TAKING NOTES, B!!!!!

As an artist, I am my own historian.

Thus, I will be documenting the process of creating this piece through a new page on my Substack called the Ozone (“O” stands for orange, duh). Whether or not you identify as a creator, there will be something amidst the musings for you, for the creative process involves both giving life and grieving death with grace, skills all of us could benefit from.

I’m SO excited to see how it evolves and to share with you in real-time the developments of this act of devotion.

I hope you stay tuned.

A Cat-call to Action

Exciting news! I’m starting to share some extra pieces—poems, behind-the-scenes thoughts, maybe even audio recordings—just for paid subscribers (here's a taste 😉 ). Your support goes directly to funding this show—paying for rehearsal space, collaborators, and making this dream real. If you love what I do and want to support my work, I’d love for you to join.

Subscribe now

(I honestly don’t know if the button above works or not LOL but I hope it does.)

Either way, I’m so grateful you’re here. ❤️ There are plenty of ways of supporting this mission (muse-sion? too much of a stretch?) besides financially. For example, just be yourself and spread love.

In other Muse…

Here’s an AWESOME show I did last Friday for Valentine’s Day. I’m calling it the L-Word: what does that stand for? Love? Lust? Listening? Tune in to find out. Interview with the legenendary psychedlic jam band Pangea around 1:59:30, featuring a live performance from both PANGEA and E (me!) herself (the latter happens around 2:19:20). Enjoy!