First of all, wow. I cannot believe it has been a year since I updated this blog. It has honestly been a wild one, filled with adventures. If you want to know more about what I’ve been up to, you should check out Reckoning.press where I’ve been editing these past few years. Maybe I’ll get to update y’all on that in the next post. Maybe I’ll even make that post later this month. (who knows?!)
For those of you who may be new here, hello! I’m C.G. Aubrey, nature photographer, writer, editor over at Reckoning, and AuDHDer. I was diagnosed with ADHD as a child, but didn’t receive an Autism diagnosis until college (some twenty-six years ago). I am passionate about neurodivergent representation in the creative arts. Just as neurodivergent folks are not some new, modern invention, neurodivergent folks have been creating poetry, prose, and art for as long as we’ve existed.
American Caesar’s Amanita, Wake County, NC
Photograph by C.G. Aubrey
This past week I attended the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference and Bookfair in Baltimore. Baltimore is a salty, Southern city and except for my skin and the driving conditions, I felt incredibly at home. I exchanged recipes with the ladies at Dancing Potatoes at Lexington Market, petted ever pretty pittie possible, and found no shortage of spice and seasonings in the food (a real travel hazard in parts of the US).
The conference itself had amazing programming, of which I managed to attend a single panel. (Something to change for next year). I spent most of my time at the bookfair where Reckoning (and some thousand other college programs, literary magazines, authors, printers) was tabling. We nearly sold out of our stock, ran out of flyers, business cards, and stickers. We spoke with so many of our wonderful readers and submitters, but also a lot of new folks. For my part, I was delighted with how many neurodivergent writers and readers I was able to connect with (and this after missing the neurodivergent caucus; something else to do better about next year).
Yellow Swallowtail, Wake County, NC.
Photograph by C.G. Aubrey
Of course, for my brand of neurodivergence at least, these kinds of events – even at a much smaller scale – are difficult. I travel often, but never to such a populated space. Cities don’t usually bother me, but if the AWP stats are correct, there were ten thousand additional people in downtown Baltimore. Convention center noise was unreal. Because we were tabling, I couldn’t really wear my sound suppressing ear plugs; I needed to be able to hear and speak at an elevated volume. The lighting was conference center lighting – the wrong color, the wrong frequency, and somehow and omnipresent buzz that wove in and out of thousands of human voices. The center and city both were full of smells, most that I do not find pleasant, and the salt dried out my skin, which made me want to rip it open and crawl out of it.
Socially, it was the most awkward I can remember feeling since I graduated with my second masters degree in 2012. On my drive up, I learned that something horrible happened to someone I love very much when she was a child. My femme readers don’t need more than that to figure out what occurred. I was four states and too many days away from her, shocked, and grieving that very particular form of grief, all the while being bombarded with the new adventure I’d chosen to inflict upon myself. I have rarely felt so lost, so out of control of my masks, my emotions, and my environment.
Most of the trip is a blur. I walked over twenty miles and changed accommodations twice. I didn’t take the time to eat, check my phone, connect with anyone or any media outside of the conference crush. I was pulled constantly between rage/sorrow/survivor’s guilt and the high of the biggest book fair I’ve ever seen, the excitement of connecting with submitters past, present, and future, of putting issues of Reckoning into new hands, and the deep fortification of meeting so many like-minded people (including meeting, in person for the first time, my wonderful fellow staff members).
Then I came home, to my partner, to my haven, to our brightly colored, quiet apartment, only to discover all the world news I’d missed. It’s all just too damned much, too much to hope for peace, for calm, for victory over evil, for any respite from ever-increasing sorrow.
Lonely Mushroom, Wake County, NC
Photograph by C.G. Aubrey
And yet. And still. I was reminded in Baltimore that there are people doing their best to take care of each other, that there have always been people doing their best to take care of each other. People, especially those with little to give, have always found a way of manifesting miracles. Brittle, brilliant miracles, bright enough and sharp enough to cut through the dark.
During one of the hardest weeks I can remember, I was treated with unfailing compassion by folks who too often see little themselves. There was the lady at the wholesale coffee place that I mistook for a coffeeshop who wouldn’t let me leave without a cup of (free) coffee, because “you don’t need to be driving all over.” There was the bellhop of an overpriced historic hotel who spoke little English, but treated my exhausted and falling apart self as if I were a beloved aunt, and who tried to refuse my tip until I said, “get lunch on me.” There was the Black homeless gentleman who asked if I could spare any change and as we were talking, saw my hands trembling as I scrounged up what I had. He was somehow able to see that this middle-aged white lady wasn’t afraid or uncomfortable with him, and how I’ll never know, but he placed his hands gently on mine to steady them, and amazingly, like some kind of blessing that is both divine and profoundly human, had the space within him to say to me “you look you’ve had a rough day too.”
I was reminded too, that I have been my own kind of miracle to others, even when I did not think I could do, or be, anything like enough, and I remain forever grateful for the kindnesses of so many strangers this past week. For the folks who gave me directions when my normally infallible sense of direction failed me. For the colleagues who listened when I couldn’t contain my grief another day. For the other neurodivergent folks I met who stumbled through their own awkwardness to make real connections, to say I see you, and I am glad to be seen by you, and I will see you again. For the neurotypical folks who met me with patience, if not necessarily understanding.
Maybe these are small miracles you need too.
CG Aubrey 