Hello gentle-people,
I am always playing with phrases—maybe you’ve noticed.
Lately, I have been cracking myself up by dropping “don’t threaten me with a good time” into my conversations.1
Today I am playing with the phrase “I could care less.”
Because it’s true—I could give it my best try.
🐦⬛ Today’s post is in video format for listening and watching! Let me know what you think of this format.
water sign woman by Lucille Clifton
the woman who feels everything
sits in her new house
waiting for someone to come
who knows how to carry water
without spilling, who knows
why the desert is sprinkled
with salt, why tomorrow
is such a long and ominous word.
they say to the feel things woman
that little she dreams is possible,
that there is only so much
joy to go around, only so much
water. there are no questions
for this, no arguments. she has
to forget to remember the edge
of the sea, they say, to forget
how to swim to the edge, she has
to forget how to feel. the woman
who feels everything sits in her
new house retaining the secret
the desert knew when it walked
up from the ocean, the desert,
so beautiful in her eyes;
water will come again
if you can wait for it.
she feels what the desert feels.
she waits.
the troublesome work of defining care
Depending on how you read my intro letter, you might be thinking “I can’t believe Rose J. Percy, writer of A Gentle Landing, is saying she wants to lean into heartlessness! I’m unsubscribing IMMEDIATELY!”
I blame the ambiguous nature of the word “care” and its many definitions. I could do a whole series on these definitions and probably write a post a week for the rest of the year. Just look at how many interpretations we could delve into:
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Luckily, I have already written on some definitions of care I am partial to here. In one post I talked about the word “tender,” where we talked about a caring attention one might call “tenderness,” and the acceptance of ourselves as “tenders.”2
I have written on writing as a practice of care in my series delving into my writing praxis:
definitions I am fond of:
For the purposes of this post, I am looking at these understandings of care:
Care as a tending (or attending), once again, with particular emphasis on attention. Since we have been here before, let’s stick with “tending.”
Care as an attachment or interest. Let’s stick with the word “attachment.” It often feels like the things we care of are a part of us..sometimes we are indeed connected.
Care as avoidance of danger or risk. I will “caution,” instead here, since I also love the phrase “throw caution to the wind.” We can do some fun poetic things with that.
Care as a troubling, a feeling stirred up by what we brood over. I will use the word “burden” here, since there’s something about that definition reminds me to remember the weight.
I will also be playing with caring and carrying in order to drive home one central point: we all have a carrying capacity when it comes to care…even if we hate to admit it.
“you have to [learn to] turn it off”
I am trying harder to care less every day. By that I mean, as a child, I used to be overwhelmed by something one might be called “car[ry]ing too much.” Some might call it a sense of responsibility or conviction.
I read this book once in college, which was treated as the pinnacle of our general education curriculum. It was assigned as the last text in our ethics class (our capstone text), called Scandalous Obligation by Eric Severson.3 I remember reading that book, which talked about Christian responsibility and I thought, “this book is not for me.”
I am the girl who, upon seeing a commercial on food insecurity affecting children miles away,4 could not bring herself to enjoy a cookout. An auntie of mine gave me a speech that remains with me forever. The essence was “You can’t help the children if you cry. You have to learn how to suck it up and feed yourself so you can grow big and strong. Then you can be of much better use to them.” Through the years, I have either taken her advice or shaken it off. Her words led me to see my feelings as an inconvenience in the sphere of caring. And sometimes…I can’t help but feel she had a point:
when I find myself stirring in my worries—for myself and others. I was a cautious child and I grew into a cautious adult.
when I seem to “collect cares,” or grow a new interest in some injustice in the world, beyond my [individual] capability to respond or affect change.
when as a result of new interests and attachments, I feel scattered and overwhelmed by all there is to care about.
when it feels like I am failing—emotionally or through physical challenges I am still learning about—in my attempt to learn “how to carry water,” as it leaks out of the sides of my eyes, in a last ditch attempt to demonstrate how burdened I truly am.
As I considered her words, I felt like I had to learn how to turn something off…but back then, just barely a teen, I couldn’t name it. So I tried hard, when I was overwhelmed to shut off…everything.
something had to go
In the midst of what has been a hard couple of weeks,5 much of which was defined by embodied, mental/emotional and spiritual pain, I wanted to let something go. I had entertained many different ideas, but I was pretty certain I wanted to cut off my hair. In the past, going bald served as a foundation for embracing a shift in focus.6 But I didn’t want a new haircut. I wasn’t ready to let go of my locs, but something had to go. I could feel it.
So I chose to take some cuttings off of this beautiful monstera plant you see in these pictures. I kept the new cuttings and placed the large potted plant—which looked a bit too large on the bookshelf it lived on—out on the curb to be received by some happy stranger.
I first got my monstera in 2021, when I was nurturing a rather large houseplant collection.7 The room I was staying in had a beautiful big south facing window. My monstera lived with me through three homes and I have gifted cuttings from it and watched it grow to require two moss poles for support. I watched in surprised when it flourished at all in the last place I lived—a place where I struggled to flourish.
My room, small and dark, had a tiny window, taken up halfway by an A/C unit that was screwed in. I used grow lights to try to keep a few plants alive on my bookshelf. My efforts failed. Somehow though, new leaves kept coming up along the sides of my monstera’s potted home—
I wrote down my care instructions on an index card, complete with notes on the last time it was fertilized and how long ago it was repotted. I hoped the next person would not let her die, but I knew there was a chance I could’ve killed her myself. I worried about killing her constantly. Now, she would be somebody else’s concern.
I now have one less thing to care about.
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I could care less
“Rose, run that song back one more time! The one where you’re crying ‘help me, I’m dying!’ I love the melody!”
—me, in a conversation about how my work feels sometimes
When I consider that burnout produces apathy, it makes sense that so many people experience a fatigue around their ability to care. It has been awhile since I read “burnout: the secret to unlocking the stress cycle,” by Emily and Amelia Nagoski, but I hold onto one of my takeaways from the definition of burnout, outlined in 3 parts, the first being “Emotional exhaustion: the fatigue that comes from caring too much, for too long.” Many of us know this in a parallel term, “compassion fatigue,” which often applies to those who work in caring professions or hold domestic caregiving responsibilities.
Our society is continually reinforcing individualism that harms us all—and this definitely impacts what we think caring ought to look like:
“What does it mean to shift our ideas of access and care (whether it’s disability, childcare, economic access, or many more) from an individual chore, an unfortunate cost of having an unfortunate body, to a collective responsibility that’s maybe even deeply joyful?
What does it mean for our movements? Our communities/fam? Ourselves and our own lived experience of disability and chronic illness?
What does it mean to wrestle with these ideas of softness and strength, vulnerability, pride, asking for help, and not—all of which are so deeply raced and classed and gendered?”
—Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice8
These questions posed by Piepzna-Samarasinha serve as an inspiration for me as I write. An understanding that communal care makes a gentle landing possible undergirds all of this. Also true, is the understanding that falling, failing (and flailing) are often inevitable on this path.9
But what does that have to do with caring less? You tell me: how much can you actually hold? How much are you holding right now, in this breath, when you think of that question? Let’s break it down further, into questions through the definitions we’ve discussed:
What are you tending to in this season, really? Not what you say you are tending to, but what is actually possible within the time you have allotted? Are you committed to anything at present that requires more than your hands in order to be well taken care of?
Have you stumbled into new interests, or formed any new attachments? Are these new extremities splintering your capacity? Is there anything you can cut off so that water can flow to what is flourishing? Are there ways these new attachments can be nurtured through a network of care, versus in your individual care?
Perhaps you are now much more aware of all there is to be afraid of, the dangers and risks all around you. Has any of this fear contributed to loving yourself or others better? Where can you “throw caution to the wind,” in recognition that your worrying has its limits with forecasting?
I hope you are keeping track and have noticed that I left burden out of this last list. We will return to it soon enough. But how about we take a break here? I also included a Lucille Clifton poem here. You are free to take some time with it—we will come around to it again.
I am learning how to pace myself, as an act of care. I am taking time with my words, as you have seen from the “perching lines” series. I am trying to make these newsletters just a bit lighter. But trust—
We will come back to the burden.
I know because, well, the burden always finds its way back to me.
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I am learning “how to carry water”
I want to say this marvelous woman’s poetry has changed my life since the day I first heard “won’t you celebrate with me?” recited by the Dean of Students in seminary. I knew it was for me, somehow—in the way that I know so many Black women/femmes (& men, such as my brothers
and ) find themselves in her poetry.June 27th is her birthday (tomorrow, if you’re reading this on pub day).
I wanted to do something big. Have a conversation and read some poems and have folks listen. But as I planned it, the details I wanted to line up came with more questions. I keep searching for a way to really honor her birthday and to recognize how becoming a “Lucille Clifton scholar,” has shaped me: I want to honor her works like Alexis Pauline Gumbs honors the survival ethics of Audre Lorde or how adrienne maree brown devotes herself to worldbuilding of Octavia Butler. I would be satisfied to honor her works with just a 1/20th of the archival devotion professor Honoree Jeffers brought to the 3-hr class she taught on the sankofa of Lucille Clifton last month.
I have been trying to find a way to study the poetics Lucille Clifton in some official capacity, other than this newsletter. But maybe, this is it. If that is the case, I am thankful to reflect on her poetry here. I am thankful for the people it has brought close to me. I am thankful for “the light that came to lucille clifton,” and so glad it seems to have found its way to me.
Or maybe…this is my burden: To do as my favs mentioned above do, in bringing the words they love into the worlds they love. Perhaps that is why it doesn’t feel like enough to just do an event, read some poems, and call it a day.
I need to write about “the light that came to Rose J. Percy.”
I keep wondering if I am meant to carry it all myself. As I sat in my sorrows about this “event that never was,” I realized I overlooked a very important Cliftonian idea—the event was her life:
“won’t you celebrate with me what i have shaped into
a kind of life?”
—Lucille Clifton
*deep breath*
So I sent some brave emails. I applied for a job I feel too afraid to hope I might get. I shared a burden with my closest friends. I am taking steps to learn to live and love better.10 I am leaning into my dreams, because I must do something with this “kind of life,” I keep surviving. In her invitation, is the audacity to believe there is something worth celebrating about being here.
I will celebrate her life by living my own more deeply. If you are reading (or watching/listening), then you are bearing witness and thus, attending an event I could never plan out my wildest dreams. Thank you for being here with me. Let’s keep seeing where this goes.
🐦⬛ landing tracks
There are reflection questions in the “I could care less” portion of this post. I admonish you to sit with them, for as long as you need. Lean into exploring their answers—or maybe more questions—with the people you care for & with.
In the spirit of care…can I share a burden with you? I finished up my term at the part-time job that sustained me this past year. A friend of mine recently asked me how I am, and I can honestly say, despite being poor, I feel pretty good. I face a bit of anxiety every day about this, but I am taking care of myself. If you feel inspired to alleviate some of my burdens, consider subscribing or feel free to hit my buy me a coffee link.
The limited time for receiving a 20% off for one year wish to enjoy A Gentle Landing “At Your Leisure” ends tomorrow!
🐦⬛ A Community of Care: Locked In
Locked In is private community for Black, Indigenous, and Writers of Color/the global majority on Substack. We currently write together on Fridays at 9am EST, with new times rolling out as our community grows. Another meeting time will soon be announced!
We also have the public facing publication, Unlocked | BIPOC Reads, where we share curated posts featuring work from members of our community to a wider audience.
The cackling that ensues might not match the picture of me some of y’all have in your heads.
No relation to the ones made of chicken.
You can read it if you want, but this is not a recommendation. I was in community with the author, in a distant way through membership at the same church. He seemed like a genuinely kind fellow. If given the chance to talk about this book and critique it, I would say its very white-centering, to say the least. This series, in some way, my attempt to give language to my critiques of this book, though indirectly.
I am from a country that is often used to make rhetorical statements about starving children. So excuse me for refusing to truncate our imaginations here. Food insecurity is everywhere…and also specifically somewhere. So I am intentional here about language. Where your imagination goes matters.
I started this piece months ago and I am in a better place now.
I decided not to cut my hair because every other day, I love having locs. I also have a poet-friend who helped me think of my hair as an archive and testimonial of what I’ve been through. Thank you, DIA!
I started an IG page for it called “@plantsermons,” where I shared intersection between plant care, self-care and spirituality. Some element of that page continues in this newsletter. See this post for more:
This is an affiliate link. This post will feature a bunch. Check out my bookshop for my curated lists.
This is a framework I get from my time in seminary learning about disability theology, through the work of Sharon Betcher, who’s book Spirit and the Politics of Disablement inspired some part of my arrival to naming this newsletter A Gentle Landing. Last week, I got to be on a panel for the Institute on Theology and Disability, and I got to name that intersection and it felt good to reflect on what that work has meant to me. It is very dense, might I add, but a good read. Betcher’s humor is refreshing as she brings in so much pop culture for analysis.
This is my way of saying (in part) ya girl is reading bell hooks and crying daily.
Your words really touched me. Thank you. I hope you get that job. I loved the video and seeing your silliness and light-heartedness too! Now I’m going to read some Lucille Clifton.
You have such a presence! It felt so warm. It’s making me rethink my thoughts on Substack adding video, I’m all for it if you’re doing it 🖤