Welcome to my Moonbox: a gathering of musings, learnings, and aspirations held (perhaps, sometimes only briefly) by the many expressions of me, Sarita.

From the desk:

Lately, this introductory section has felt strange. Trivial. When I sit down to write it, I don't really have words. Just a gently radiating sense of my humanness. A quiet, yet very much felt wash of annoyance or sadness or, perhaps for a brief moment, an exceptional nothingness. My mind catapults from the self-driven urge to be forward thinking, back through to the shadowy hollows of memory and habit, and forth again into a dull sense of despair.

I become frustrated when I can't sit down and write about happy things. I admire those who speak so suredly about their bodies and their lives. I do have my moments. And I do have many, many words. But having a cancer-related genetic mutation isn't necesarilly conditional to societal fads or taboos or wokeness. There isn't really a, "Don't listen to them, you do you" manifesto. I suppose I could completely eschew science and math, simply pretend entropy and statistics aren't real, live out life until the cancer comes, then, simply (somehow), let it consume me. 

And I have contemplated that path. The one where I accept all that is to become of this body, do nothing about it, and face the death that I am dealt (whatever it ends up being). What a statement, when we all face death. When we can all be so close to it and far from it at any given point in time. When war and climate crisis and poverty and disease and hate crime are the very filaments that billions of people find their bodies in relationship with.

Obviously, I cannot hold myself within any other flesh-filled light. I belong as much to my mutation as I do to all that is healthy. But how to tend to it all? How to cater, compromise, acknowledge, uphold, mitigate, balance, relate in a way that doesn't also require me to lose pivotal pieces of my physical self? When I have my uterus, ovaries, and breasts removed, so as to prolong a cancer-free life, what does that mean? Am I, for instance, no longer in tune with established gender attributes? 

Obviously, my identity as a woman, as I see myself, will not change, but my body will, even when I don't want it to. I think it's easy to say that yes, having these surgeries won't affect my general, gendered appearance, but on an intellectual level I find that there is conflict. How sad is it that one can grant me such a privilege then deny a trans person the ability to self-identify or seek gender confirming care? I will have to be put on hormone therapy. I won't have a uterus. I will likely follow through with breast implants. This is all gender confirming care. And for me, most people won't bat an eye, but will for others.

I know, much of gender theory is steeped with religious colonialism. But this does not negate the dissociation many people experience, and what I will likely encounter myself post surgeries. Too, when I see the scars on trans men or non-binary chests, it reminds me of the scars my mother didn't ask for. And I know that I will one day bare them as well. Mastectomies are no small thing, so I respect those that willingly choose it to be all the more themselves. And I suppose that is what my mother did, too, just under different cicrumstances --as  for her it was (also) a kind of survival, and therefore, a prolonging of herself...Though, she didn't get to keep her nipples...though, I suppose it's hard to juxtapose other peoples' realities to mine or hers, so maybe I shouldn't. Maybe I'm just looking for someone to understand what I'm facing: that I'm afraid I will lose myself; that myself and my body will no longer match. I just don't quite know how to cross this boundary for myself yet, where surgery is akin to freedom. And there really is nothing but fear in these words.

These are thoughts that come and go throughout my days or weeks as I approach 35 years of age. And I'm sorry, to myself and whomever, that I often get stuck here. I know I am going to need help. I also know that there is time. I might delay surgeries for the end of 2024, depending on other life opportunities, but we'll see. So let's just let go for now. Let's sit at our desk and write the sad thing. Then eat the roast in the crockpot. Kiss Patrick on the lips. Stretch stiff muscles from a big week of running. Say thank you to the body that can run at all, this body that is so suredly mine.

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[Related: Moondbox Notes #12]

La Vida Mundial:

Merrell was recently accepting brief applications for their “Get FKT Challenge,” in which six people will be selected by a panel to participate in a FKT-inspired, custom race in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. The female winner and the male winner will receive sponsorship deals with Merrell for 2024. Those who know that I partake in attempting FKTs probably know where I’m going with this: I applied! It’s been a week since the application period closed and I can’t stop thinking about the opportunity…

Gear Junkie | Woman Breaks a 20-Year-Old Supported FKT on the 567-Mile Colorado Trail

NPR | Climate change made it in the GOP debate. Some young Republicans say that’s a win

NPR | Priceless connections to Hawaii’s ancient past were lost when cultural center burned

So.Informed roundup of U.S. news for the week of August 18th, which includes a Texas lawsuit aimed to bankrupt Planned Parenthood; firearms industry faces lawsuit in Illinois; government experts find ICE detention centers to harbor negligent conditions.

HBD to all August birthdays!

Recent Top Pick Reads:

+ “Carbon Offsets Don’t Work: The Problem With Paying Off Your Footprint,” by Andrew McLemore, GearJunkie, Aug 16, 2023. An interesting explanation on how carbon offsets actually work (or don’t), and why they are largely an ineffective approach to addressing climate change.

+ “‘Not just a problem of science’: how the environmental crisis is also cultural,” by Veronica Esposito, The Guardian, Art and Design, May 1, 2023. A really great article written about a recent art installation in New York that juxtaposed paintings from 19th-century American naturalism with artwork from the people these romanticized landscapes omitted, such as Chinese railroad workers and of course the Indigenous People of the land itself, or, for example, the Black community that was once thriving where Central Park is now located.

+ “Hike to the Gamnyie Valley,” by Eric Olson-Getty, Substack, Aug 14, 2023. I’ve been enjoying Eric’s sharing of excerpts from his fiction projects, and this one is no exception. CW: suicidal behavior, war trauma.

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Books/Mags in progress:

+ Women in the Wild: True Stories of Adventure and Connection, edited by Lucy McCauley

Recent Listens/Watchings:

+ “Caleb Robinson on Race and Racism in America,” Wilder Mind Podcast with Cody Kaemmerlen, Aug 25, 2023. Kaemmerlen and Robinson discuss numerous instances of racism that Robinson has experienced or witnessed while traveling the country to rock climb, and, of course, exist.

+ “952: Failed Essay on Privilege,” The Slowdown Show by American Public Media with Major Jackson, Aug 28, 2023. Jackson briefly discusses a recent Supreme Court decision and our (detrimental) relationship to success, with the day’s poem by Elisa Gonzalez.

+ “La Gara with Hillary Gerardi,” Black Diamond, YouTube, Aug 7, 2023. A showcase of one of the most technical mountain races, Trofeo Kima, in Italy, with a highlight on Hillary Gerardi who set a course record in 2022.

+ “The Seven Summits of My Neighborhood,” Arc’Teryx x Semi-Rad, YouTube, Aug 10, 2023. A feel-good and brief documentary of Brendan Leonard summiting 7 peaks that surround his home in Missoula, MT; an homage to self-propelled adventure.

Writing/Projects: (updates are highlighted)

+The hybrid essay I wrote in 2021, “Chuckwalla,” still needs some major revision before I consider submitting again. I’ve begun another research/writing phase as well.

+I currently have one general submission in the ether. I’ve submitted a previously-published essay to an essay contest (where this is allowed). The purse is $3k! The winner and runners-up will be announced in October.

+I’ve begun a new short fiction piece with a temporary title of, “How I Came To Be.”

+An online writing course with Orion Magazine, “Writing Resilience through Our Relationship with Wildness,” that I signed up for has been postponed until October 2023 due to the instructor having a family emergency.

+I have a Science Fiction novella that I’ve been slowly working on since 2017.

MISC/Brags:

• My most recent mammogram came back normal!

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Thanks for tuning in to Sarita’s Moonbox.

Happy End of Summer!