Where I live it is already spring.
I grew up in the Midwest, where winter is winter and spring is a relief from months of cold and dark and isolation, from snow and ice, from chapped skin and the cling of static. Where I live currently, in Georgia, winter is a nonexperience but the symptoms of spring still bring relief; the rush of warmth and the daffodils, blooming since early in February, inappropriately, stir up a sensation of possibility, an unfolding, a chance to want more, to work harder, to dream bigger, to allow room for wildness and joy, to shed. Of course I am thinking about Sylvia Plath again: my selves dissolving, old whore petticoats; I am reexamining my selves in the sunlight, determining which pieces to nurture, which pieces to let dissolve. This is a slow process, but one that feels necessary in the beginnings of bloom.
We feel lately, too, working on The Champagne Room, a sense of necessity. There is so much creation occurring, more than even when we started working together on this project six months ago, and we are so eager to piece together all of these pieces we don’t know what to do with but can see, the possibility of transformation constantly hovering. There is a rush: to plant, to build, to tidy, to shed, to leap, to do, to do—so much to do—to celebrate. And right now we are only two people behind the scenes, two people with full-time jobs and full-time lives who also try, sometimes, to write. Trying to keep up is really hard—but the more work we do, the more ideas we have, and the more excited we become to witness their blossoming, to continue to throw ourselves into this project—and to believe in it—and do all we can to make it grow.
This month, please enjoy a conversation with The Champagne Room’s assistant editor and web designer—and past contributor—E.A. Midnight, formerly published as Emma Arlington M., as she muses on identity, dismemberment, and what it means to be a writer. Her conversation with herself will be published on our website on Tuesday, March 15th.
Love and Light,
Heather
(she/her)
Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief, The Champagne Room