Dérive:
quite possibly my favorite reason for living in a city; especially in this city, in New Haven.
This is how I dérive:
I get dressed after breakfast & coffee. Put my onyx ring on my right hand. Bundle my hair into a clip. Tie a scarf round my neck. Open the door of my apartment & walk down the stairs & out onto the sidewalk.
It is on the sidewalk that I have fully entered into the stream, the current, in which I am to drift around the city.
I announce to myself (& to the city itself) that I will be taking a dérive & then, I do. I walk (intentionally yet openly) in the current towards wherever, whatever I am being led to.
In New Haven, there are many secrets to stumble into. Strange engravings on old stone walls. Gargoyles with chalices full of tumbling grapes. The dead end on Williams Street with its phantosmia of hyacinth. Empty windows & stained glass windows, & windows uncurtained, revealing an easel bathed in lamplight.
One time my dérive took me to get a scoop of an ice cream flavour I had never before in my life had a desire to try. Rum raisin. I ate it on a stone bench underneath an ornately sculpted eave & felt tipsy when I got up to walk again.
Another time my dérive brought me to a lone, fierce tuft of yarrow growing solitary green at the corner of Elm + York Streets, respectively. How did it get there? There was no other yarrow to be seen anywhere around.
I don’t do exactly as Debord tells me, because I do let chance be my current, but I also let myself be drawn into the sidewalks with intention, with an awareness, & I do make decisions. An interplay of destiny & freewill: purpose.
It is, as I read somewhere, “a moving interview” with the city itself: with all the contents of the city (nouns, adjectives, verbs), which in turn helps me to speak the language of this place. Slowly, I become more fluent.
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This is a secret of mine. It is a secret because it informs so much of the behind the scenes work of what I do. It gives me inspiration, it is a muse. It gives me material I use & share with you: I observe, collect, sort it later. It tells me how to pay attention, to learn a place. To be surprised (that I can still be so surprised: I don’t know nearly everything), to be guided/to let myself drift in the great tide of something larger than my own simplistic designs & all the same—to choose, to choose (to desire)…
This is a secret of mine: I unrivet.
I walk around the dreaming city, I enter into the city’s dream.
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My friend Lily walks, too. She long walks.
And Lily runs at dawn.
And Lily catches wild salmon in a place where the sun doesn’t set in summer.
And Lily writes: poems & love letters & essays about Lana del Rey.
And Lily & I were sitting on a sunny hill in Fort Greene Park. She had on blue jean overalls. We sat close like we had always known one another but it was really only our first day.
And Lily & I were sitting on a sunny hill in Fort Greene Park in spring probably, in 2008 most likely.
And she was telling me things about her brother & I was telling her things about my cousin. Curiously overlapping things. Including that they are both summer babies. Intense. And a cigarette passed between us, as they often did back then, & the sun was a bird on our backs: not too hot, but fluttering it felt good.
Ah, buddy.
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And so this is Lily, in a nutshell. And yet, this is only my Lily. There is a Lily you have yet to meet. And it is Lily’s Lily.
Lily’s Lily is this month’s interviewee & I am so glad you get to meet her now. Out of many favorite moments in her interview, I am limiting myself to sharing only one that I selfishly needed to hear right now:
When I’m stuck around work, I let myself be stuck. I know that's the worst possible approach for some people. But I think of any creative life as containing equally important phases of intake and output, and also genuine moments of rest, where you aren’t an animal poised toward production… I don’t really have a “sit down at the desk for x amount of hours every day” kind of practice. I walk, talk, eat, write, and do most other things quickly, really quickly, in sporadic bursts. So if an essay is really begging to be written, I tend to sit down until the draft is out. Ditto a poem. I can (and will) tinker endlessly after that, but the process of actual creation is still always a kind of weather event that just storms up all magical and unpredictable, and there can be long months in between.
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Lily’s interview can be read in full (a thing I highly recommend you do) via this link or by clicking on the photo of her & all that blue Southwestern sky below:
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I’ll be writing again next week to share the almanac for April, but in the meantime: I hope you find yourself on a walk, on a run, crossing paths with some yarrow, or sitting on a hill beside someone you will always love.
With fondness,
Chanelle
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PostScript: Alongside all the budding spring flowers have arrived some wonderful classes that I wanted to share with you.
First up:
A single spot has opened up in Sister Spinster’s 8 month flower essence immersion Flowering Round.
I absolutely love this series & have had the honor of being a guest instructor for the past two years. It is one of my favorite groups to be invited into! I’ll be back again this year, so snag this single spot while you can.
Contact Liz directly for more info via: liz@sisterspinster.net
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Also:
Leya Van Doren is former student of mine & she is teaching a lovely creative writing series soon. For those of you interested in the intersection between plants & poetry, this one is for you:
The Poetry of Plant Magic is a 4 week creative writing class focused on writing poetry inspired by plants. Learn about medicinal herbs, their folklore, & be guided through creative writing prompts. April 9th-30th—sign up: here.