We got baby chickens on Friday and to be honest that could be the entirety of this missive and it would feel complete, that’s how much space they have taken up in my heart and my brain over the past few days.
They are so small — just a few days old! Truly just barely born! — and so cute and so all encompassing, and yet also quite independent and low maintenance in terms of Living Creatures You Might Bring Into Your Home To Care For. They’re really Parker’s project — we both wanted chickens, but I probably would have waited until next year because at this point my entire motto is “After The Wedding,” but she’s less patient than I am and very capable of taking on a project solo, so here we are — and to be fair, we’re both enamored.
There are four chicks: a Novagen, an Easter Egger, a Blue Andalusian, and a Cuckoo Marans. (I can never remember this last one and am frequently saying “Catamaran” instead which is a funny bit but unfortunately has blocked my brain from ever getting this particular breed to stick in there.) Parker built a spacious box for them to spend their baby days, and is working on an equally spacious coop where they’ll eventually live outside when they’re old enough and it’s warm enough. She organized their food and their water, set them up with probiotics and this cool low-tech “fake hen” that is basically a heating pad on stilts, replicating the warmth and vibe that a mother hen would give to her babies but looking more like a spaceship than a mom. We check their buttholes (“they’re called vents,” Parker informed me this morning) every day to make sure they don’t have something called “pasty butt” which I think is self explanatory and which could make them sick. We gush over them. We watch them figure out life in the box. When they all started pecking at the walls trying to break free Parker decided they needed some enrichment and brought in a bunch of twigs and sticks from outside to create a jungle gym type structure for them; it worked. They poop all the time, everywhere. I’m obsessed with them.
We named them Simcha, Deetzah, Ora, and Chedva — four different Hebrew words that are all variations on “happiness.” At the end of most days, Parker sighs contentedly and says, “I’m happy.” Sometimes she says it out of the blue. She has said it a lot since bringing the chicks home on Friday. It’s so lovely, so simple; it reminds me that happiness is in my grasp, too.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the internal logic of things recently. It’s one of those phrases that gets thrown around a lot in writing workshops — “Tell me about the internal logic of the piece;” “I think it could work to include the talking tiger but let’s see how that works within the internal logic of the story;” “You can make your own grammatical rules but make sure you stick to the internal logic you create” — and some of those phrases are meaningless but this one really sticks for me.
Everything has its own internal logic, and I think the places where we feel most comfortable are those wherein we understand that logic, either innately or because we’ve worked at it or because we’ve helped create it.
Crossword puzzles are a thing that have their own internal logic, I’ve learned recently. I think I mentioned a couple of months ago that I was going to try to get into crossword puzzles this year, and I have been, slowly and gently, mostly because they remind me of my dad, who did them religiously and daily, and I like that. I can rarely finish them, but I like figuring out how they work. Parker started reading a lot about crossword puzzles (of course she did — ever the student, ever the nerd, my love, my love, my love) and she explained to me that many of them have their own individual internal logic quite purposefully. Like those clues that say “this is an example of 7, 14, and 22 across” and so you have to solve 7, 14, and 22 across before you can figure out 63 down. Or the puzzles that include a lot of animals, or a lot of celebrities from a specific time period. And then there’s the larger internal logic of crosswords as a genre, as a specific kind of game — if one solves a lot of crossword puzzles one knows about the little tricks, or the fantastical leaps that some editors make to create their specific hints. I wish I could talk to my dad about this; I bet he knew the internal logic of crossword puzzles so well.
The more time you spend on something, or in a place, or with a person, the more you become privy to that specific internal logic set. My cult (gym) uses specific language every workout — I now know to expect a coach to exclaim “empty the tank!” or “go from push to all out!” or “get that orange screen down to green!” over the course of our sixty minute workout, all phrases which sound lightly unhinged out of context but create the fibers that stitch each class together. What would the coaches yell if not those phrases? How confused would I be if they whipped out some unbranded, off-book exclamations? My favorite grocery store has an internal logic. My job at Autostraddle has an internal logic. Each of these essays I write and send to you have their own internal logic, and my writing as a whole over the course of my life has a larger more overarching internal logic.
What is internal logic? The rules. The set up. What you can expect. What we’ve created. A version of the truth.
Simcha, Deetzah, Ora, and Chedva chirp chirp chirp chirp, all day long: happiness, happiness, happiness, happiness, singing its song, over and over and over and over. The background music of our lives. The world Parker and I have built together. The internal logic of us.
Writing & Reading Updates:
+ I’ll be at AWP this week and I’d love to see you if you’re there. I’m reading with a bunch of other brilliant queer writers at The Wildrose on Thursday at 5pm to celebrate Marisa (Mac) Crane’s debut novel I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself, and I’ll be hanging out at the Sarah Lawrence College Writing Institute table (T640) on Friday at 1pm to talk about my upcoming classes and anything else that comes up! I’ll have my zine to sell at both locations. I have no idea where I’ll be the rest of the conference (do any of us?!) but if you’re in Seattle please text me — it will be fun to say hi if our paths cross.
+ There are still a few spots open in my upcoming Instant Feedback Workshop. If you have questions about it email me. I’d love to write together in the Zoom Room this spring.
+ I will be reading at Incite: Queer Writers Read in Portland on March 22 at 7pm. Details to come, but save the date for now. <3