steeped by samia no.39 | 06.16.25
There’s nowhere to go but simultaneously forward and upside-down.
My day doesn’t start until I’ve taken Zayn outside. With summer heat creeping in by mid-morning, we’ve formed a new routine of sitting in a patch of shade, nestled between the backyard gate and the frontyard hedge. It feels several degrees cooler here—and the perfect place for Zayn to crouch and keep an eye out for a particular neighborhood cat (frenemy?) who we call Rat Cat. I love zoning out with Zayn, plugged into a podcast. Lately, it’s Hidden Brain (“ur listening to Hidden Brain, I’m Shankar Vedantam,,,”). I take deep breaths of morning air and tune into the subtleties of nature, like a small red bug on a swaying leaf less than a foot away.
The Summer Solstice is just around the corner.
Star jasmine flowers around the city are drying out. I catch whiffs of their transportive perfume from my neighbor’s fence across from the kitchen window. The jacaranda trees are in full bloom scattering delightful blue-lavender petals everywhere. Yesterday, I spotted our first fully grown blackberry of the season, surrounded by small green ones. These are the sights of early summer that compelled me to rewatch Ghibli’s Whisper of the Heart on a random weekday afternoon.
Writing in my journal and in draft mode has been refreshing.
I talk about this with writer friends, but sometimes we don’t know what we want to say, so we don’t post on our respective newsletters, blogs, or Substacks. Or we get tired of the current narratives cycling through our heads and need to live a little (or a lot) to piece together new stories. I was going to say that writing has felt like an uphill battle lately, but really, it’s felt kind of flat.
There was a Hidden Brain episode about human potential and how to reach your goals when you face roadblocks. Along our journeys, there’ll come a time where you’ll need to: a.) go back to the basics and relearn your craft from the beginning or b.) develop new methods to get to where you want to be—sometimes the most unexpected thing works best.
In the beginning of May, I found myself picking up Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style, the holy grail of university English classes. It’s one that was tucked somewhere in my freshmen English class’s syllabus as recommended reading. I wanted refresh myself on grammar rules, which if I’m being honest, I haven’t deliberately learned. I opened the slim, red-covered grammar bible at the library on a weekday afternoon. I read a few pages and stopped. It’s not that I needed to learn grammar rules, I just needed to do the writing. Class is officially in session.
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Here and there, I’ve seen the phrase “a glitch in the simulation” on the internet.
A breaking of the fourth wall. A ripple of pixels in the sky. Looking straight into the invisible camera. These things show up as bizarre coincidences, brushes with the uncanny valley, or more intangibly as out-of-body moments of discerning what reality is v. what we want to see.
My bestie Renuka writes this so poignantly in a recent Substack post:
“I believe that we all wish to improve our lives, to feel freedom, to experience rest. But so few of us feel the agency to choose to do so. Not even necessarily just because we have circumstantial limitations to contend with (a mortgage, kids, etc.), but perhaps because we believe that comfort is all we deserve.
And yet, we are restless. I would argue we are becoming bored of not being challenged.”
From: The terror of Choosing freedom in warmly, renuka Substack by Renuka
A significant part of this reassessment of writing, for me, is taking time to develop my perspective and continue to learn, read, write, and experience. And to confront the difficulty and weight of what it means to live in limbo—in reckoning—and observe this current world unfold, brittle yet paper-cut sharp.
A few weeks ago, I reread bell hooks’ essay titled “Women Artists: The Creative Process”.
I’ve read this particular essay at least three times. I remember reading this book through different stretches of time in 2022 seated in liminal places like the doctor’s office lobby. Reading and diving into craft was grounding. This essay starts off with the feather lightness of “a revery” of a “girl who dreams of leisure”, which then dissipates as bell hooks’ walks us through her development as a writer and both the structural and personal circumstances of women artists coming into themselves. This passage, in this reread, hit me hard:
“If we write, we are encouraged to write in the same manner as those who have made the big money and achieved the big success. If, say, we take photographs, we are encouraged to keep producing the image that folks most want to see and buy. This commodification for an undiscerning marketplace seeks to confine, limit, and even destroy our artistic freedom and practice. We must be wary of seduction by the superficial and rare possibility of gaining immediate recognition and regard that may grant us some measure of attention in a manner that continues to marginalize us and set us apart. Women must dare to remain vigilant, preserving the integrity of self and of the work.”
From: Women Artists: The Creative Process in Art On My Mind by bell hooks
🔗 Related Reading: A Syllabus of Sorts—
- Azadi: Freedom, Fascism, Fiction by Arundhati Roy
- Black Women Writers at Work edited by Claudia Tate
- Light in Gaza edited by Jehad Abusalim, Michael Merryman-Lotze and Jennifer Bing
- The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates
- The Selected Works of Audre Lorde edited by Roxane Gay
- The Source of Self-Regard by Toni Morrison
Throughout the day, I find myself drifting to the sunroom, a new addition to our house.
Right now, it’s dim recessed lights, transient cats, and the stars beyond twelve double-paned windows.
It’s so quiet and calm in here. A contrast to the TV constantly on in the living room, and the loudness of, well, everything, because the walls are so thin in this house built in 1961. The noises are softened, but they’re still there. Even so, the tranquility of this space seems to muffle it all, to filter it further into the background.
And, as I look up at the dim recessed lights, the wooden ceiling fan, the lovely skylight windows, and the freshly painted angled roof, I’m reminded:
I’m incredibly grateful and privileged that I get to wake up and show up, to try and try, and to do it all over again.
—S.A.
💫 Catch Up:
03.24.25 | March came in like a lion
steeped by samia no.38: an examination of anxiety, spring, and the lions in our heads.
✉️ About This Blog:
Steeped by Samia is a space where I can simmer on thoughts & curiosities about life, liminal spaces, digital culture, & more. Far too often, my writing ideas fizzle out in energy; I never get to see them to their full potential. While building my rhythm with writing, I want to share these stories with you.
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