Before we get to today’s essay, a few quick notes!
First, welcome new readers! This is Wild’s Falls, weekly (usually) essays around themes of finding home in body, place, and time. A trans man moves to a small village to start his life over and immediately gets his period back.
Longtime readers might have guessed that this theme might be in transition—the “small village” I moved to was Valatie, New York, where I had a five-month sublet that ended a month ago. I’ve since moved to Phoenicia, NY, a hamlet tucked away in the Catskills. I live amidst not-yet-unpacked moving boxes and glorious mountain views.
Within days of moving to Phoenicia, I released my essay collection, Even the Cemeteries Have Space Here. Thank you to all of you who have purchased it, and if you would still like to, it is available for sale here on my website or in person at Buffalo Street Books in Ithaca, NY, coming soon to a few other bookstores as well. (About half of the first printing has already sold; I do not yet know if I will do a second printing, so if you definitely want a copy, now might be the time.)
Photo from Katy Peplin of ThrivePhD (she helps grad students thrive both as humans and as scholars!) I love seeing pictures of this book out in the wild!
A few folks have asked me if I have any advice based on my self-publishing experience, and I am delighted to answer these questions—please do reach out if you have specific questions about this. But my number one suggestion would be to maybe not release a book at the exact same time you move to a new place! Initial order shipping took longer than expected due to moving-related constraints, and I appreciate your grace and patience. Order shipping is all caught up and proceeding smoothly now.
I took a few weeks away from these essays—and today’s essay shares a bit about why. I’m grateful for your readership and support, and happy to be back with a Saturday essay today. These past Saturdays just didn’t feel like Saturday without one.
Finn
Goodbye to the Valatie Essays
I’ve written a lot about grief. I’ve written about not being pregnant when I wanted to be, about the loss of old-growth forest, about losses to the AIDS epidemic. I’m especially interested in the grief we don’t notice, the erasures that live at the edges of our awareness, weighing on our hearts without being acknowledged.
In Valatie, I wrote an essay nearly every week. It started my second day there. I woke up in a still-unfamiliar bed with the start of an essay already in mind. About space, about how I felt like this new place was already helping me become a different person. I wrote it still in bed, with my coffee on the nightstand. I titled it, “Welcome to Valatie,” and posted it on Facebook. It just seemed like something to share with a few friends.
People liked it. I discovered I had more to say about Valatie. I started writing every Saturday.
In Valatie, when I felt stuck with my writing, I started with the place itself. There are essays that start with the name of the village, with a description of a local hiking trail, or with a litany of historical markers. That’s because the place itself offered concrete specifics: a way to begin writing, but also a place to jump off from—what did these make me consider, what metaphors did they open for me, what questions arose?
When I moved to Valatie, the tap opened.
There’s something about doing the same thing every week. Over time you develop the confidence that you can do it. When you’re stuck, you have memories you can draw on: The weekend you didn’t even start the essay until 4pm, the weekend you scrapped and rewrote everything just before you were about to put it up, the weekend you weren’t happy with what you wrote but it resonated with people anyway. You begin to feel that you can handle these things. The tap is open.
Like anything, there was beginner’s luck at first, then a dip, then for a while it got easier with practice. It was hardest when I was out of town. I’d procrastinate. Once or twice, I skipped a week.
But mostly, I trusted that I could do it. I trusted that I could open the tap and water would flow—maybe sputtering, maybe tinted with rust—but water.
Many writers and artists discuss the importance of constraints. That’s why writing prompts are so helpful. They offer something to hold onto, a way in.
For me, the Valatie essays were a deeply generative writing prompt. Each essay had to have something about the place, and something about me. It should be about 500 to 1,000 words. It should be written on a Saturday.
Before I started writing the Valatie essays, I used to labor for months over a single essay. Not even a long essay. I’d revise and revise and revise, send for feedback, revise based on feedback, send for more feedback, revise based on feedback, send to a few literary magazines (spending precious writing time trying to craft good cover letters for these submissions), wait a few months, get rejected, revise again.
I hadn’t learned the art of feeling like enough. Or maybe I didn’t know what I really wanted.
I thought that enoughness was something that would be bestowed on me, once I’d worked hard enough, taken enough classes, achieved a certain number of publications. I hadn’t learned that enough is a gift you give to yourself.
I thought I wanted to publish in more lit mags. But what I really wanted was to generate work I was proud of and to have it read by people who would feel nourished by it.
Writing the Valatie essays showed me I could do this.
The constraints of only on a Saturday kept me from being too precious about them.
I learned to trust myself that I could write a short essay that didn’t need to be perfect, but could be enough. Enough to connect. Enough to feel like an offering.
Since moving to Phoenicia a month ago, I’ve felt dried up. I haven’t known what to write here. I didn’t want to start over again with the same thing, Welcome to Phoenicia. But I didn’t know what I wanted instead.
Saturdays have slipped by without any writing, and it’s felt disorienting. Was there something magical about Valatie? Why couldn’t I write in Phoenicia?
When I lived in Valatie, it felt, at times, horrifically lonely and stressful and overwhelming.
And I miss it. I miss Valatie.
I’ll never feel that boost of “almost home!” when taking the Valatie exit off 9H, I’ll never walk two miles each way to Samascott just for an ice cream cone, I’ll never wonder if they’ll be friendly or standoffish at the post office today. Never sit and write on the bench at Pachaquack Preserve or walk the Albany-Hudson Electric Trail over to Kinderhook.
I wrote every word of Even the Cemeteries Have Space Here in that apartment in Valatie. I sent it to the printer the same day I moved.
In my essay, Waiting, which is the final essay of Even the Cemeteries Have Space Here, I wrote, “I’m waiting now. I’m waiting for my next shell.”
But I had forgotten there’s grief in leaving, even when it’s time.
I had forgotten that hermit crabs don’t change shells by magic. They have to leave one, scuttle, exposed, to another, awkwardly take it on, settle in.
I suppose it’s accurate to say that I’m between shells.
I’ve left Valatie, which means I’ve also left the Valatie essays, and the spacious and generative container they provided for me as a writer.
But I don’t yet know what the Phoenicia essays are.
I’m excited to find out.
❤️☮️💕😊
Your book arrived today and it is beautiful! My mother-in-law happened to be sitting across from me at my dining room table when I eagerly ripped open the envelope. I told her it was a book of essays from a friend in my writing class. The essays were about his time in Valatie… near where she lives in Ithaca. She picked up the book and read the first essay. “He is a wonderful writer,” she said. And I agreed. Congratulations on the book!