clarifying anger & Crowd Source

tiny ritual & poetry review, on each full moon

Mar 13, 2025

hello.

Let’s pause and think real quick about thinking, how we take input into the bodymind, process it, and potentially create a different output. I love the sensation of clarifying thoughts, like butter. Separating out the water from the milk. Understanding that any given thought can be detrimental, or not detrimental. The mind endlessly fluctuates, according to Patanjali, through five states: right knowledge, error, imagination, sleep, and memory. When we sit, draw our focus in, and concentrate on one point, we aim to still the mind. Each of our mind’s fluctuations are 90% (or more) the same today as they were yesterday. A record, on repeat. The body is processing as well, often by following the grooves of conditioned tendencies and cultural or social programming. Stilling the mind’s fluctuations brings us into deep contact with our true nature. Expanding and centering the body’s shape, intentionally, brings us in contact with our own aliveness and into radical presence with what is. We can sit, and we can center, not only in calmness, but also in rage, in grief, in confusion, in anxiety. In my experience, that’s when transformation happens.

tiny review

Cecily Nicholson’s “CROWD SOURCE a poem” published in a limited edition chapbook by Spiral Editions (pictured below), and forthcoming in a full-length version from Talon Books, is a true meditation—a sustained single-pointed focus from the opening words (“hollow bones descend / on grain”), on the daily migratory patterns of blackbirds (“rarely conspicuously alone across open country / rarely flapping in particularly straight lines // maneuvering as the fray demands”). I read it in January, and liked it alot. And then kept thinking about it. And read it again. And again. I’m astonished by the truly radical witnessing, attending to, the lives of crows (“all songbirds are land birds gathering all this time / how have you been // here all this time on this land and not noticed”), and their connection to the Black diaspora. Nicholson pushes towards a mode of thought outside of capital’s ways of knowing (“pulling at the pulp / in the left passing lane / on the Trans-Canada highway // you swerve / to miss them at great risk”) towards a different, more expansive, aspect of our nature. Here, we attune to blackbirds breaking shells, to the details and patterns of the nonhuman world, and with awareness that this world is in turn witnessing us humans. Nicholson observes the gorgeous community and independence of the birds, and their striking communication patterns. Her way of seeing so clearly is an alternate paradigm of attention, one that reaches beyond the realm of human folly (“purposeful vocal control is the aim of communication / speech uses the tongue to count numbers and transmit // articulate quantities // seven caws just now, followed by two crrricks / seven again then two distant, singular notes from afar // call home”). The sparse lines and precise uncanny diction call us to read slowly and to reread – inviting the same attentiveness in us that the poet gives her subject. A true gem.

tiny ritual

Wait for a moment when you feel activated (angry, upset, anxious…) for this ritual, and then try, for just 2 minutes, to either sit or center. Two quick examples: Not long ago, I was filled with rage at something someone did that felt real shitty. I invited in curiosity and sat, legs crossed, spine straight, breath steady, and let the rage rattle around my body and let my mind’s eye see red, and I found, like this, I could watch the rage move through me, I could feel its heat and motion, and it felt extremely alive, intense, and oddly clarifying. Minutes fell away. I felt immense love for the experience, and ultimately, real clarity as to what was needed to move forward well. Another time, recently, I was panicking in an elevator (for the millionth time in my life, claustrophobia is a challenge for me). I dropped from my panicked mind into my body, widening out my arms, lengthening my spine from pole to pole, leaning gently back and keeping my heart open. The pulse of anxiety suddenly had more space to travel (I’d unknowingly been drawing my whole body in towards center), suddenly became easier and lighter. I even laughed kindly at my fear.

If ritual is a portal to transformation, this is your invitation to take a next time you’re irritated, angry, scared, and welcome a new experience. Perhaps you choose to sit in stillness, find your breath, bear witness to the emotion running its course, its desires. Or maybe you’d rather move your body – make yourself taller and wider, and follow how the sensation wants to travel, moving your body with it. See where it takes you if you collaborate with it conscientiously. Even just for a few minutes, building your capacity to stay longer. What does it want? If it wants to get bigger, can you expand your body wider, taller? If it wants to be held, can you hold yourself? Where will it lead you? What’s its wisdom? Trust that the rage, the grief, the anger, the fear, have wisdom, if we can pause with it, and not be run by it. We don’t need to tame or calm or exile the sensations. We can learn to witness and communicate, to invite in and trust the teachings of our own experiences, wisdom that is right there, on the other side of the alarms these emotions first set off. I’d love to hear about times you’ve sat in discomfort in this way, and what insights emerged.

upcoming workshops & offerings

Looking for generative writing space? Gather for MAKE time each Wednesday morning in April. Write from the soft space of mornings, in good company, with prompts that nurture and engage mind & body, and find inspiration in works by other artists. A gentle & process-oriented time to write, with optional sharing.
Give yourself the intentional space, attention, and support you need to move forward well on your creative projects. Using somatic coaching practices, I help private clients—primarily writers, artists, scholars, teachers, activists, and healers— listen more deeply to your intuition and desires, and take steps towards meaningful internal and external change, resulting in profound progress towards your goals. Learn more about somatic creative coaching with me here.
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news & upcoming events

Detroit friends, I read TONIGHT (3/13) at Book Suey!
I’m also reading on March 27 and March 29 in Los Angeles:
And I’m thrilled to invite you to a very special No, Dear event on April 6
My friends are up to good things:
- New issue alert: of zoos presents SAND THE GEARS, the issue that asks the question: What would it look like if we used our art to throw sand—instead of oil—into the gears of the machine? With eyes on the machines that run our world, this issue, writers, makers, creators, and disrupters have shared works that attempt to accumulate into larger movements of interruption, including self-interruption. The result, among others: Sunday school blues. Persian–Armenian wordplay. Ancient Egyptian funerary rites in conversation with capital punishment. A performance of unperformable pieces. A writer’s labor.
- Monica Ong Reed’s stunning new collection of visual poetry, Planetaria, is now available for pre-order. Ong uses the visual language of astronomy to explore the precarious territories of motherhood, women in science, and diaspora identity. This collection examines the power struggles that myth-making elicits through the alchemy of text and image hybrids.
- My sister gave a brilliant, necessary speech at Washington Square Park: “This war against trans people is a carefully calculated strategy.” Listen, learn, follow closely, support trans rights!