starting to write, writing again..
Water thoughts, a fluid space, a space always changing and about to change and about change. This is a space where I will try to write again. One of a few posts to introduce parts of myself that might be most relevant for subsequent posts.
This website is called water thoughts, a fluid space, a space always changing and about to change and about change. This is a space where I will try to write again.
welcome. come in. on. around. somewhere. or be wherever you are, and welcome.
finding words
I’ve described myself as a finder of words, and that is partly related to the difficulty I have in writing and communication following an injury. One of the ways I rebuild my capacity is through reading. I plan to share about both—reading and disability—and more. Right now, though, it feels like Adapt. Change. Replace. Resist. Modify. Try. So I'm trying.
I wish I could write about the horrifying fascism, antiblackness, Islamophobia, ableism, transphobia, white nationalism, and more that is growing, but I still don't have the words, so I will be doing what I can, from where I can, trying to write, to write again, or write finally.
starting again
I want to note that some of the first few posts will be from of a recently (now, mid-January) published post on another platform that I unpublished when I learned more about the platform, and have now had to edit to fit within how I might build out this. This now makes most of what I had written feel old to me, but so much had gone into it, then and since, that it is what it is.
I had to start again. It turns out this is better for me, gently pushing me into areas I hadn’t dealt with yet. I started writing this for the about page, before realizing most of it would be better as an introductory post. Even the about page itself is subject to change over a short time period.
Another way of putting it is I thought I might be able to adapt something to my needs, and now I feel mostly adapting and trying to fit, again, always. There may be some repetition. I have to start somewhere, and this is a beginning.
"Use real name so people can recognize you"
For this platform, I was required to list a name as an author, but what if I am without a name? I choose not to publish under my real name, not yet, not until it's another. My real name already feels like a dead name to me, as it has for too many years. I am still trying to find a name that feels better to me. The search is complicated by disability, smallness of community, and other factors.
For now, I'm using "Cead" pronounced like "seed," and still connected to the ocean, as a temporary, or perhaps longer term, name for me. It is still new to me, roughly as new as this publication. I am a disabled nonbinary queer person, a descendant of European settler-occupiers, finder of words and language, now living on Lenape land, in the belly of the beast, with my partner, and I am committed to trying to dismantle a world founded on genocide, enslavement, and antiblackness and build the world that we need.
read, seed, water, feed / repeat
I initially started this publication partly to have a way to support a reading challenge I am hosting on Storygraph this year, linked below.
Read, Seed, Water, Feed 2025 / Welcome to the Read, Seed, Water, Feed - 2025 Challenge! This challenge is designed to be intentionally reflective, however that shows up for you. The prompts were developed partly from my own reading and experiences, on topics very close to my heart, with a focus on authors who are Black, Indigenous, and/or part of the global majority. (caption & alt text for the image)
Both writing here and the reading challenge are experiments for me. It has been difficult for me to engage or share on social media, and I felt this might be a way to both share books I appreciate and support learning outside of the academy.
I believe the seeds we plant for ourselves and share with each other are plants we rarely see how they grow until we witness change in the world. For me, this is foundational to the reading challenge. I would not be able to write today without my belief in change.
From Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower, a book for our time:
All that you touch
You Change.
All that you Change
Changes you.
The only lasting truth
Is Change.
God Is Change.
EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING [1]
Earthseed is another foundation to all of this, and has been for me for years. I share the following passage, partly to share Lauren Oya Olamina's efforts to write, and what she found, as "lumpy, incoherent rewrites" would accurately describe my own efforts. But Earthseed is much more, and I believe both Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents are books for our time.
For whatever it’s worth, here’s what I believe. It took me a lot of time to understand it, then a lot more time with a dictionary and a thesaurus to say it just right—just the way it has to be. In the past year, it’s gone through twenty-five or thirty lumpy, incoherent rewrites. This is the right one, the true one. This is the one I keep coming back to:
God is Power—
Infinite,
Irresistible,
Inexorable,
Indifferent.
And yet, God is Pliable—
Trickster,
Teacher,
Chaos,
Clay.
God exists to be shaped.
God is Change.
This is the literal truth. [2]
I started out with the idea of sharing from an eddy downstream of an injury, and that no longer feels like where I am, that now it feels I've created a space, and I'm not sure if it's in an eddy, or even of this world, but it's somewhere, and maybe still in an eddy. My anxiety is part of the turbulence. It can change and create change, repeatedly. This is an attempt to introduce parts of myself and what might be most relevant for subsequent posts. I have a few other parts to share.
books
At the end of each post, I will share books I referenced and recommend unless the post itself already contains recommendations with book covers or the book is not part of recommendations, but was related to a quote or passage I shared. Some books, I will touch on again, but in case that doesn't happen, I will try to include each.
Parable of the Sower (2023), a book by Octavia E. Butler, published by Grand Central Publishing, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, original publication 1993.
Get this book wherever you get your books. Please support libraries however you can. Find out many ways to get involved in supporting libraries at Libraries for the People.
Thank you for reading.
