3 min read travel

It's 2024 And I'm Asking What's Good

So many things have happened since we last talked.
A woman in a crowd of people trying to see the Monna Lisa is turned in the opposite direction, looking at her phone.
My own Monna Lisa

So many things have happened since we last talked.

Some good things have happened or are about to happen. I'm currently sitting in Brussels, and it's the New Year. I'm a week out from my 45th birthday. We've been traveling around the world for over seven months and I've spent that time writing poetry and taking photographs. As of last night, I had written 66 poems since June 2023. Two were published in smaller journals. I consider this a pretty good success since I came in cold after not writing for 20 years.

A view of Santiago, Chile, against the Andes mountains in August, 2023
Santiago, Chile

It's easy for me to drown in the bad things. All the poetry journal rejections. Being a bit homesick. Tired of being in winter-ish weather since last August, when we got to Santiago, Chile. The world is on fire with war and genocide. I've been dealing with some things on a personal and family level. It's now officially an election year in the United States with the most unhinged candidate lineup of all time. The US Supreme Court is on deck to do some truly heinous shit. And out of all the people I know, only one single person has said "2024 is my year".

It used to bother me when everyone used to say shit like that every January. But now that it's gone, I kind of miss it. Hope springing eternal. Looking forward to a bright future. Manifesting good things happening to you. Nothing bad happened to me, not really, in 2023. But it feels like I escaped bad things happening by the skin of my teeth and now I have to watch bad things happen to everyone else.

A mural of Frida in Bacalar, Mexico
A mural of Frida in Bacalar, Mexico

Anyway, I have a favor to ask. If you have something good happening for you in 2024, I'd like to hear about it. I think it's important to remind ourselves what's good. To celebrate those things. Manifest them, even. That's the second time I've used that word, I know.

I've been doing a lot of thinking about poems being incantations. That the act of writing words, and saying words with intention or sacredness, is an act of casting a spell. It's an act of prayer, yes, and maybe I don't believe in prayer, but I do believe that words are powerful. Stories, songs, books, poems, all these things have a say in where the universe goes and what it does. And it's never going to be the exact thing we want, but the collectiveness of it, the heartbeat of it, I think our words poured out have stemmed some truly heinous shit from happening in the world. Our words poured out cause good things to happen. So if you have something you want the world to hear, write it down. Speak the words. Or just email me and I'll do it. If you want, I'll even put them in the next post on this here website.

Writing poetry again was my goal for last year and this year, I want to add writing on this website. Writing to you. I'm sorry I've let it drop off into nothing.

Happy New Year. If you missed my poetry publications, you can find them here and here. I've also put together a new poem on TikTok that I like a lot. I hope you do too.

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