handwriting to you today

Hi there, hi kin,

As you'll soon read in my handwritten note below, I consider you kin. You said yes to being here, I said yes to being here, and we're here together in these small moments of ebb and flow connections.

In anthropology, kinship is the web of social relationships that form an important part of the lives of all humans in all societies, although its exact meanings even within this discipline are often debated.

This first sentence from the Wikipedia page on kinship gets at why I love the words kin and kinship – its exact meanings are often debated! Within kin(ship) exists a spaciousness of relational definability. We get to decide how we define our relations.

Read on for my note to you... I've typed it out below the images if that works better on your end. I felt the urge to edit as I typed up the note but no, I want to revel in the unedited expression and crossed out. I desire you to revel in it, too! In my uneditedness and in yours too!

Onward now and all aboard the kinship...

Hi kin,

I was going to write 'friend' yet 'kin' felt more accurate. We may very well call ourselves friends though 'kin' well it tugs at the reason why you continue reading and why I continue writing.

From my perspective, especially since I just departed a poetry reading that swiftly and softly caressed my heart, and now sit at a worn, heavy wooden table amongst oh so many books and people reading words or thinking about words, I can't but think of our connection and how very likely, our primary method of connecting is through words, and written words to be more specific.

But what, I wonder gets lost when the primary vehicle is ^the written word? And- and what gets found?

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I've been milling about in the feeling of all that gets lost – feeling like so much of what I want to share with you doesn't yet know what words it all wants to become.

And I do want to share it with you – because I call you kin, and I mean it.

So, I thought perhaps if I were to put pen to paper you could find something here within my handwriting, within the pen color [it's dark dark blue], paper from my notebook, from the phrase "come closer" that's the title of one of the books of poetry I earlier got a glimpse into when the poet with her round glasses and oddly ^simultaneously familiar and foreign mannerisms read her selected collection. You could find something here and come closer, we could come closer.

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I've been dancing with enoughness recently. I wonder if is there any human – no, any creature – who hasn't at one point danced with enoughness? And all the other faces – not enough, lack, scarcity, abundance, too much, right sized, overflow, and all the unnamed cousins of enough.

But The first question is "is this enough?" This moment. This note to you. But the question inside of those is "am I enough?"

It's oddly delightful to feel, right in this very moment, no – not "yes, I am enough" but instead, "how could I – and this – not be enough? How could we not be enough?" Even though I wish I had said more earlier to one of

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the poets. I didn't say thank you to the third poet and how his poems felt harsh and how I liked it but I wasn't ready? available?

I didn't think to ask the first poet if she could sign her book, ruminating on whether the poet I call aunt would like receiving a book of another's poems.

The smallness of these moments of lack is just as real as the clarity of being so enough that the oddly delightful and delightfully odd question – HOW COULD WE NOT BE ENOUGH?

Likely, lack, overflow, and all the cousins all live within enough(ness). It's like enough is the ocean and all of enough's relations swim, sleep, surf, kill, eat, cling, procreate, and die – and birth within

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the ocean of enough.

Well, the bookshop is closing soon so this is a good time to bring this to a close.

I'll write again soon, as I do. You can write back if that feels good. Or we I can write and you can read. Our kinship through this wordy way feels enough, it feels enough.

May we feel the ebb and flow of enough each day,

Cassandra

04.05.23

full moon!

P.S. Thanks to dear reader and kinfriend, Nicole, for inviting me to the poetry reading. Thanks to the dear poets, Abigail Prout, author of Walk Deep; Laurie Blauner, author of Come Closer; and Richard Robbins, author of The Oratory of Souls.