💌august '23, #2, shrimp feelings
Dear Reader, I hope this email finds you near a box of tissues.
[knocks on your bedroom door holding several snacks and two fiji water bottles] hello i am just going to get into it tonight
i facilitated one of my most fave fave fave workshops so far earlier today—from earth, we read the stars—a workshop centred about feelings of awe & mystery in relation to our beautiful solar system, humanity, hope, etc. etc. etc. and i am feeling shrimp feelings!
and okay so maybe a quick google search will tell you that the whole “shrimp see dozens of additional colors humans can’t” has been debunked, but i think that the shrimp colors meme is too deeply embedded in modern online society to die
anyways, the workshop was one of my longest ones to date—we were on zoom for two hours, we laughed and cried and both at the same time. it went as perfect as i can imagine a workshop going (as each workshop has so far), which is always jarring because every time i’m setting up the zoom, in the minutes leading up to the hour, i feel a sense of embarrassment/dread because i fear that no one will show up or that there will be offensive discourse i can’t control. i don’t think it’s ever going to go away, but the nightmares i’d get the night before i have a workshop have long ceased!
my workshop was inspired by Ada Limón’s poem, In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa which you should go read now! i collected 9 poems—one for each planet including pluto who we [the workshop group] decided to be a planet again for the duration of the workshop—i jested and jested, but in all seriousness i almost published the workshop without any mention of uranus but a poem for pluto because humans are unfortunately a very deeply unserious breed and… yeah 😅😅
along with each poem, i write a prompt that riffs off of a line + concept from each poem, so we had nine prompts in total, with a fun fact about each planet included! here is the prompt, inspired by the line “Little cold one, blow your horn” from Maggie Dietz’s Pluto