Cultivating Creative Persistence and Resistance
A new essay, Home and Garden, and a preview of the Mojave Zine Fest.
There’s a new ice cream shop in Yucca Valley, Mojave Freeze. I knew we needed an ice cream shop, but I didn’t know how much we needed an ice cream shop. It’s fun and unfussy, and the decor leans heavily into 90s kitsch that strikes the right level of nostalgia and delight. Quickly, it has become a new anchor, a social hub, a place to stop by and most likely run into someone I know if I linger long enough with my melting cone. The other Friday I met two friends, an artist and a writer, for a Friday evening ice cream. An ice cream happy hour if you will. A practice I will engage in more often.
The talk turned to how we were coping with these times. We circled around the difficulty to find joy in creativity and hope in the possibility of collectivity at this moment. It’s a conversation I’ve had often. It’s hard to believe that justice will be served, that we will come out of this stronger and more equal, with more possibilities available to all. We are being so flooded by manufactured crises, based on cruelty or ego or deeper issues, like white supremacy, that our ability to muster a meaningful, collective response feels overstretched, worn down. I know that this is by design. I know the key is to center our own values of empathy, inclusiveness, and justice, to de-center our egos, and to keep going.
Recently, my essay Home and Garden was published by the Santa Fe Writers Project Quarterly. It was an honor to be selected by guest editor Neala Claire Siegle for an issue with the theme of “rooted.” The piece explores adaption, resilience, and the power of time, as well as how we reflect the soil in which we grow. It’s a love letter to the native plants of California, who have taught me so much in these past six years of trying to understand and cultivate them in my garden, as well as the gardens (and parents) that raised me in my home state of Maine.
I began this essay four years ago, in 2022 when I was deep into my MFA program and a version of it appeared in my MFA thesis. I read snippets of it at public readings, one in my friend Aileen’s back garden in Brooklyn and at the Breadloaf Environmental Writer’s workshop, which helped me identify the strongest, most emotionally resonant parts of the essay. It was submitted (and rejected) 22 times before it found its home with the Santa Fe Writers Project.
Many of my plants were struggling transplants when I began the essay. Now, thanks to vigilant watering, pruning, weeding, and the passage of time, the ones that survived are well established and deeply rooted. I don’t need to belabor the metaphor here, but a garden needs time to come into its own and so does our writing.
The lessons my plants have taught me are an apt metaphor and also a way to survive these times. A garden is about patience, persistence, hope, and experimentation. It is an ecosystem. So is creativity and a creative life. So is organizing for social change and addressing injustice.
I had a full circle moment too with the essay. There’s a line, “I’m trying to cultivate my own patience while growing narrow leaf milkweed, in hopes that it will attract monarch butterflies in time.” The narrow leaf milkweed is still struggling, but the skeleton milkweed I planted a few years after it is thriving. The other day I was delighted to see a monarch flitting around it. It felt like a small victory, a hope and promise fulfilled. The flowers on the skeleton milkweed also seem to be a favorite of tarantula hawk wasps. I give them a wide berth.
I’m reminded of my theme of the year, “Magic through consistency.” While I’m finding that a consistent creative practice doesn’t need to mean a rigid one, it also means that effort over time will produce results, though we can’t anticipate exactly what those will be. It’s important to remember when the world feels so heavy.
Acts of collectivity, of community, and hope can be small and subversive. This to me is what publishing a zine feels like and I was excited to write about the new Mojave Zine Fest for the Coachella Valley Independent. The fest takes place May 15 and 16 here in the hi-desert. I will sadly miss it, but as my roots as a writer and media maker are firmly rooted in making zines, it felt gratifying to talk with zine makers and champions about why zines are so critical in this moment. To paraphrase the brilliant Brooke Palmieri who I interviewed for the article, zines are a way to seize the means of cultural production and directly tell your own story.
While we are being worn down, connecting with others can give us hope and help us persist. Two pieces of news have heartened me lately about the power of collective resistance. Locally, the controversial Ofland resort that would develop 152 acres of undeveloped land adjacent to Joshua Tree National Park was cancelled (I had the privilege of breaking the story for the Desert Trumpet). And a plan to extend the border wall through Big Bend National Park in Texas were also cancelled. While this is certainly not the end of these specific fights, or struggles over desert development and militarized borders, they are victories that were hard won by the communities they impacted and show the power of collective refusal.
So keep creating and cultivating what you want to see. I truly believe that those visions will flourish in time.
xox,
eleanor
Currently reading: Even the Good Girls Will Cry by Melissa Auf de Maur
PS. For those of you in NYC, Skirting will be releasing our EP “Wants and Needs” on 10” vinyl and we are so excited. I hope that you can come to our release show, Sunday, June 7, 4pm at Mama Tried with Neon Grlz, Gladys, and DJ Sue Problema. I hope you can join us!
