“If writing is thinking and discovery and selection and order and meaning, it is also awe and reverence and mystery and magic,” writes Toni Morrison in her essay “The Site of Memory.”

Specifically, she’s exploring how she approached the balance of history and imagination, fact and fiction, omission and restoration, ancestral presence and ancestral unknowns, memory and imagination in her writing.

Discovery and selection. Order and meaning. Awe and reverence. Mystery and magic.

I’d like to tell you I had all of these grand ideas in mind upfront as I got started on an artistic collaboration with my brother Jay, sorting through my books and mementos for inspiration to start the first portion of our piece — my collage — but largely I was running on instinct, coupled with themes that would hold a shared meaning for us:

Hamlet. A letter from our maternal grandmother I’d saved, with a newspaper clipping about Mark Twain and mentions of our mother Rexanna, an English teacher. Book reviews. A poem by Yrsa Daley-Ward in Mother Tongue magazine. A photograph taken by our paternal grandmother. Pink and purple paper reminiscent of the summer sky over the fields at our dad’s house.

Not all of these materials were ultimately used in the collage, but I held on to my mood board for a couple of weeks, contemplating the possibilities. Then, new material, from the NYT Book Review once again: a cover story on Toni Morrison.

It was starting to come together.

As I wrote previously, the timing couldn’t have been better for Jay to have suggested this idea. I’d been in a bit of creative rut, mostly in terms of collage. Self-doubt was running rampant. By this I mean I’d been stuck, unable to start a new collage as of late, looking back at my old ones and wondering if this was all an incredibly embarrassing attempt at art I should have left quietly to myself and told no one about, let alone share them! What was I thinking?!

Then I told the mean girl who resides in my head to shut the fuck up. Instead I turned my thoughts to our mother, to our grandmothers. I thought about mom’s notebook where she had written down “ideas for a book” and about Grandma Eckhardt’s sewing projects and about Grandma Hamm’s photographs.

“On the basis of some information and a little bit of guesswork you journey to a site to see what remains were left behind and to reconstruct the world that these remains imply,” Morrison writes.

I didn’t have these words for it as I was working through the layers of my collage, for once taking my time, unhurried by any deadlines other than self-imposed ones. But each time I secured a new layer, swiping the brush across the canvas, and returning to it the next morning, I felt a new layer of reassurance — that my art mattered, that these stories mattered, that it was meaningful to see our mother’s name in her mother’s handwriting, glued to a canvas.

I sent Jay updates throughout the process, but never saying exactly what I was up to, what I was driving at, confident that he would inherently understand.

When it was ready, timed intentionally with a weekend trip home, I loaded the canvas in a garbage bag like a true professional and drove it to Indiana. I handed it to Jay in our father’s driveway.

He took it home and got to work, taking his own journey with the canvas, now the site of separate, but shared, memories and creation.

Here is the finished piece.

See more original art by Jay Hamm on Instagram.

… & previously, on Death & Spritzers!

“As the ground shifts and slides beneath us, and the world hardens around its particular views, I become increasingly uncertain and less self-assured. …

I have a devotional nature, and I see the world as broken but beautiful, believing that it is our urgent and moral duty to repair it where we can and not to cause further harm, or worse, willfully usher in its destruction. I think we consist of more than mere atoms crashing into each other, and that we are, instead, beings of vast potential, placed on this earth for a reason - to magnify, as best we can, that which is beautiful and true. I believe we have an obligation to assist those who are genuinely marginalised, oppressed, or sorrowful in a way that is helpful and constructive and not to exploit their suffering for our own professional advancement or personal survival. I have an acute and well-earned understanding of the nature of loss and know in my bones how easy it is for something to break, and how difficult it is to put it back together. Therefore, I am cautious with the world and try to treat all its inhabitants with care.”

— Nick Cave, The Red Hand Files, Issue #337, “Where Do You Stand?”

Kristi claims Chicago is
“a war zone”
& the BBC tells me “it’s unclear
whether troops have arrived”

in my old neighborhood
ICE tear-gassed a crowd
outside the grocery store,
by a school.

a week ago in Texas,
an older woman shook her fist at me
as I passed her in my shirt —
Abortion is healthcare –

“You’re wrong!
it’s murder!”
Inside I died,
but to her I smiled

my prettiest possible
& walked in the bakery,
bought a strawberry kolache,
my hand shaking, slightly

Back in Chicago
my aunt texts me to stay safe
meanwhile my neighbor is texting us
to help ourselves to their ripe tomatoes

on the vine
while they’re away.
Phil’s making pancakes.
Outside, it’s quiet.

“Your Rights When It Comes To ICE: How To Protect Yourself, Your Neighbors As Federal Agents Arrive” | Block Club Chicago

previously:

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“The truth is
I’m not used to feeling good or even
just okay, and I’m frightened I’ll turn healthy
and boring.”
— Diannely Antigua, from “I Haven’t Been on a Plane Since the World Ended”

Welcome back to death & spritzers, your favorite nonsensical column! As I said to my friend Lindsay the other day, I’m still not entirely sure what we’re doing here, but here we are, regardless.

wtf is death & spritzers?

Last week, I stared into space, or more accurately, at a Google doc, for about an hour, in search of inspiration for my “overdue” column. (It’s been a minute.)

I felt so fucking boring. I thought about that Diannely Antigua line: “I’m frightened I’ll turn healthy and boring.”

Uh-oh, I considered, it’s happened. I’m healthy, and I’m boring.

Briefly, I considered the potential benefits of creating some chaos for the sake of the art, and then I realized I was being an idiot.

In The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron writes, “Your own healing is the greatest message of hope for others.” What a beautiful sentiment. But, being the asshole I am, I read that and still wondered, who cares? I believe she would say that’s my inner critic talking.

Anyway, it all made me think of this Frank O’Hara poem, and reminded me of these collages I made some time ago — Frank O’Hara inspired. I hope you enjoy.

“if you can’t be interesting at least you can be a legend
(but I hate all that crap")”

previously:

Welcome back to death & spritzers. Last month I made a big deal about how we’re just here to have fun and now I’m returning in April, ready to rage.

April really is the cruelest month!

Listen, I made little promises about this monthly column, other than it would involve collage, poetry, and depend upon my mood, which after all, changes constantly. As a refresher:

wtf is death & spritzers?

We’ll have fun again next month, probably. In the meantime, here’s a story for you.

Sick Bitch: Rage Report

I’d been glued to my heating pad in recent weeks, trying to find some relief. I’d wrap it around my right side, positioning myself just so on the couch, so the heat would hit my lower right front and my lower back.

It wasn’t working.

At first I thought to myself, “Well maybe it’s because I’m in this phase of my cycle,” and then I realized I had been using that rationale every week of the last six weeks.

I took Naproxen. I went to acupuncture. I took CBD/THC gummies. I did yoga. I went to sleep. I woke up. I used the heating pad.

It kept hurting.

Sometimes it felt like someone was squeezing me, hard, on the inside, like how my breast felt in the mammogram machine as the technologist said, “Don’t breathe.” Sometimes I felt like I’d been stabbed, shrieking out in a brief flash of pain and clutching my side. Then again I’ve never been stabbed, so I’m just guessing on that one.

But I also kept feeling this weird … pressure. Like when Peaches walks over my stomach and up my body when I’m in bed, squishing my body with his Garfield heft in an attempt to say hello, or perhaps to consider what it will be like when he inevitably eats my face.

It dawned on me one morning as Peaches was guarding the bathroom door as I peed that maybe I had a UTI. The lower right back pain had gotten worse; I really couldn’t take another date with my heating pad.

I tried making an appointment with my primary care doctor’s office, but there was nothing available. I texted my cousin Claire for advice, bought some AZO Maximum Strength tablets, and made an appointment with the CVS Minute Clinic for the following day. I went to another acupuncture appointment. That helped, briefly.

I came home and used the bathroom, and when I turned to flush, I yelped: My urine was blood orange, violent. That goddamn AZO.

Fast forward to the next day, and I’m sitting in the Emergency Department, having been advised to go there immediately for a suspected kidney infection. It was the first really warm day in Chicago of the year, that mid-March 70-degree weather that makes everyone lose their minds a little bit. I was supposed to be working from home, windows open.

But here I was at the hospital. My heart was racing and I felt stupid and scared.

Next to me, a small boy was trying not to sob as his mother did double duty soothing him and talking loudly on the phone. He had a pencil stuck in the palm of his hand. He was holding that hand with his other one and he kept staring at it like he couldn’t believe it was real. I guess he knows what being stabbed feels like.

Across from me, a man started scooting across the floor on his bare butt. His pants had fallen almost completely off and I could see the top of a diaper sticking over his waistband. He then started bouncing and farting on the floor. Soon, his pants would be at his ankles and he’d be darting across the room, but I didn’t know that yet.

I held my paperback copy of Girl, Interrupted higher over my face and tried to stop looking around.

“Was insanity just a matter of dropping the act?” Susanna Kaysen had written.

I was sweating. I could feel it beading on my lower back, where it hurt the most.

A woman came in holding a mop bucket. I gave up the pretense and openly stared. She said hello to the receptionist and puked, the most horrifying sound I have perhaps ever heard come out of another human woman. “I’m pregnant,” she said, and started to cry. She puked, again, into the red bucket. I looked away.

Another man strode through the waiting room, in a hospital gown and tall socks with sandals. He walked right around the puking woman and the man bouncing and farting on the floor like they were audience members at fashion week.

The woman puked, again. I’d been clutching the urine sample cup they’d given me during my intake and thought now was as good of a time as ever to get it over with.

I had to walk back through the waiting room with my blood orange pee, past the bare ass bouncing, past the puking woman, past the pencil boy. An old man made eye contact with me and looked away, quickly.

I felt like an absolute idiot as I handed my sample across the desk. The impossibly petite, cute younger woman with her bouncy curls and sunglasses improbably still on top of her head who had done my intake took my terrifying urine from me and said “Good job!” then continued talking to her colleague like I didn’t exist.

Earlier, she had held my bag while I got on the scale and then cheerfully announced my weight in kilograms. Fortunately, I didn’t know what the fuck that meant in terms of pounds, and I wasn’t about to ask. When she took my temperature, she said, “99.8, normal!” in a sing-songy tone.

“Is it, though?” I asked. That was my temperature about an hour earlier and I was told I had a low-grade fever.

“Well, you did take acetaminophen earlier, so there’s that.”

There’s that.

“Mental illness seems to be a communication problem between interpreters one and two. An exemplary piece of confusion,” Susanna Kaysen wrote in Girl, Interrupted.

Fast forward 10 hours later – yes, 10 – and I had been cleared of a UTI, kidney infection, gallstones, appendicitis, and probably other terrifying possibilities that I missed along the way. At some point I’d given in to the offer of morphine. Six different people had asked me to rate my pain on a scale of 1-10, and I had begun to feel like it was a trick:

“I was trying to explain my situation to myself. My situation was that I was in pain and nobody knew it, even I had trouble knowing it. So I told myself, over and over, You are in pain. It was the only way I could get through to myself. I was demonstrating externally and irrefutably an inward condition.”

— Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted

They decided it was time for pelvic and transvaginal ultrasounds.

Ta-dah, they found an answer. Apparently I had polyps and fibroids on my uterus.

Shortly after midnight, I drove myself home.

The rest happens about a week later, when I’m at the OB-GYN – as I’d been instructed to do. After what felt like a 45-minute interview with a kind but nervous resident about my complete medical history, I waited for the attending doctor to come in for what I assumed would be an exam and more consultation.

I had requested a woman doctor on the phone when I made the appointment. I had requested a woman doctor again when I rescheduled the appointment after they had scheduled and then canceled a biopsy. I confirmed at the front desk I would be seeing a woman doctor. I confirmed again with the nurse who took my blood pressure that I would be seeing a woman doctor.

After waiting another 22 minutes — yes, 22 — following my interview with the resident, in walks the next doctor. A man. Without making eye contact with me, he sat down, legs spread, on a stool in front of me.

“So what are we doing here, Alison?”

I repeated my story. He looked at me this time.

“Point to where it hurts,” he said. I pointed.

“Uterine fibroids don’t cause pain,” he said. He then told me I should get a follow-up ultrasound in two months.

I asked a few questions.

“Fibroids don’t cause pain,” he repeated. “Are you sure you’re not having menstrual cramps? When was your last period? Have you gone to the bathroom today?”

My face turned the color of my post-AZO urine sample. I told him when my last period had started. I confirmed that, yes, I had gone to the bathroom today. He shrugged, and said, “Okay, I guess I can do a pelvic exam if that would make you feel better.”

Absolutely fucking not, I thought.

“No,” I said, out loud. “I’ll take the ultrasound order for now.”

He shrugged, again! and stood up from his stool. The kind but nervous resident had been standing in the corner, silent, throughout this entire interaction. He started to walk out the door with her.

“Excuse me? Do I just leave now?” I asked.

“Oh, right,” he said, pausing at the half-open door. “The nurse will come back with the ultrasound order and then you’re done.”

He left. I look forward to never, ever seeing him again.

Fortunately, I had an acupuncture appointment scheduled that same evening. “He doesn’t get to tell you if you’re in pain or not,” she reminded me.

A few days later, Claire texted:

“OK I’ve taken a poll here at work and all the nurses say ‘hell yes fibroids cause pain’ and ‘get a second opinion.’”

I’m working on it. When I can get an appointment, of course.

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“Uterine fibroids can cause a variety of symptoms like pain and heavy, irregular vaginal bleeding. Sometimes, a person has no symptoms and is unaware they have fibroids. Treatment for fibroids typically depends on your symptoms.”

— Source: Cleveland Clinic

81% of women aged 18-24 have had their pain dismissed by a healthcare professional.

Not just limited to young women, this treatment also applies to women over 45 living with pain, as 56% felt they had been ignored or dismissed, versus 49% of men. All these discrepancies are part of the gender pain gap, a long-standing issue where women’s pain is not taken as seriously compared to men’s because of systemic biases.

— Women’s Health Magazine; Nurofen Gender Pain Gap Report, October 2024

previously:

Listen, I think we all need a little joy to kick off March. Some days I feel like Laura Ingalls over here trying to make it through The Long Winter.

Winter aside, it seems every day something happens that can steal your joy, throw you into a deep pit of despair, or just otherwise be a god-damn bummer. For instance — Roberta Flack died. Then last Friday we witnessed the national disgrace of our rapist baboon-in-chief and his lackey-in-eyeliner yell at and bully a hero, to name only one extremely terrible thing they got up to in the last week alone. Angie Stone died. Colman Domingo was robbed of his Best Actor award at the Oscars.

Shall I continue?

Nah — we’re here to have fun, after all. Welcome back to death & spritzers!

wtf is death & spritzers?

On a recent trip to New York, my friend Andrea gave me her copy of The Cut’s Spring 2025 issue, which I had in fact earlier that day debated buying at Books Are Magic. After staring at the pictures of Doechii in sheer awe as I flipped through it at the airport, I texted Andrea: “This magazine is a collage goldmine.”

The next day, back in Chicago, I spent a lovely afternoon at my friends’ Greg and Aaron’s, cutting up that very magazine, piecing together what would become the above collage, as Beth was working on a painting project at the other end of the table. I finished the collage the next day here at ARH HQ — hahaha, HQ = my apartment! — listening to Alligator Bites Never Heal at the loudest acceptable volume for 10 am.

So consider this one a tribute to The Cut, Richie Shazam’s incredible photography, friends who give you magazines to cut up and friends who organize and host art afternoons, and above all, to DOECHII for being an ongoing source of joy and inspiration in this cruel-as-hell world we’re living in.

When she was in the sixth grade, she says God told her to write down the phrase “I am Doechii.” The decision saved her life. “I don’t want to get super-dark,” she says, raising her eyebrows when she looks at me. “I was getting bullied so bad that I was thinking about killing myself. I realized, Oh, fuck, I’m gonna kill myself and then I’m gonna be the only one dead. The bullies aren’t gonna be with me, and everything they said is not coming with me either. I would just be gone,” she says matter-of-factly before cracking a half-mouthed grin. “And then I was like, Fuck that!” She’s almost yelling now, leaning back into the couch and waving her hands playfully. “Fuck that shit! I’m not going for that! And this wash of peace came over me, and I received ‘I am Doechii.’ But it was more like this feeling of — I made a choice, a decision. I am the most important character in this movie. This is my motherfucking movie.”

— “Bow Down to Doechii: Her Grammy Win is Just the Beginning” | The Cut

A few days after working on these Doechii collages, I stumbled across this clip from her interview on The Breakfast Club and her saying, “bada bing bada boom, now I’m in an adidas suit!” now lives rent-free in my brain forever.

(You can check out the full interview here; my other favorite moment is when she says, “I think that sexuality is fluid and I really don’t give a damn.”)

What an absolute badass. I love her.

The best and only thing to do from here is to watch Doechii’s Tiny Desk Concert again. I dare you to be in a bad mood after.

Winter’s almost over. Doechii is in bloom.

related:

Welcome back to death & spritzers!

wtf is death & spritzers?

In this month’s edition, I’m sharing a collage series I made last fall, which I originally shared on Instagram as a reel.

Different format, same sentiment.

Have you read Intimacy by Hanif Kureishi? That book fucked me all the way up when I read it, and it’s the inspiration behind all this.

When I was revisiting Intimacy and working on this collage last fall, I was completely oblivious that Kureishi had lost the use of his limbs due to catastrophic spinal injuries from a fall in 2022. He’s featured in the Winter 2024 edition of The Paris Review, and last Sunday I also read his interview with The New York Times, in which he says blogging helped him survive. (He’s big here on Substack. Check him out.)

I had big plans to make February all about Frank O’Hara, but here we are and I can’t stop thinking about Hanif Kureishi, so without further ado, here is a collage essay that I share now in tribute to his writing, to intimacy — and to surviving.

All excerpts below are from Intimacy, by Hanif Kureishi.

intimacy /\ interiors

“Without love, most of life remains concealed. Nothing is as fascinating as love, unfortunately.

I know love is dark work; you have to get your hands dirty. If you hold back, nothing interesting happens. At the same time, you have to find the right distance between people. Too close, and they overwhelm you; too far and they abandon you. How to hold them in the right relation?”

“‘I’ve never understood all this fuss you straights make about infidelity,’ he’d say. ‘It’s only fucking.’

‘Fucking means something,’ I’d reply. But what? I’d add, ‘Surely, for there to be beauty there must be mystery too.’

‘When there are other people there is always mystery,’ was his answer.”

“It wasn’t her wit or beauty that fascinated me. There was never great passion — perhaps that was the point. But there was enjoyment. Mostly I liked her humdrum dexterity and ability to cope. She wasn’t helpless before the world, as I felt myself to be. She was straightforward and firm; she knew how to get things done.”

“How disturbing it is that our illusions are often our most important beliefs.”

“What is wrong with maturity? Think about the conversations I could have — about literature and bitterness — with a forty-year old!

…

I know a place where I could meet some middle-aged women, if they are up so late! Once I level out they will be grateful for my company! They are a larger cause!

I will seek some out!”

related:

“if I had a column called ‘death & spritzers,’
would you read it?”

I’ve been reflecting on what’s next for the ARH Substack in 2025, and realized that as much fun as we’ve been having here on this corner of the internet in the last year, that I haven’t spent quite as much time as I’d intended sharing poetry and collage.

Digging deep in the archives, I found that old poem, which I actually wrote and published before moving my blog over to Substack. I re-read that opening: “if I had a column called ‘death & spritzers,’ would you read it?”

Well, would you? Let’s find out, shall we? Introducing “death & spritzers,” a new column coming your way in 2025.

wtf is death & spritzers?

“death & spritzers” will be a monthly column dedicated to poetry and collage. I will be testing out some different formats, but the general idea is that I will be using this as a space to share:

• Original poetry, like our namesake “death & spritzers”

• Poetry excerpts + accompanying original collages inspired by said poem or poet

• Collage essays, like this one (“listening to GARBAGE again”)

• All of the above!

• But what does this have to do with death and/or spritzers? Nothing, probably! That really depends on my mood, which after all, changes constantly.

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Stay tuned! Or don’t! Either way, the first edition of “death & spritzers” is coming soon.

Don’t worry; I’m going to continue sorting through all kinds of things in 2025, and also plan to return to the “Discovering …” series. Holy shit I am well rested and full of ambition. This is what happens when a person finally finishes reading War & Peace, I suppose.

See you in 2025.

related:

‘When I Grow Up’ is a 1998 song written, recorded and produced by alternative rock band Garbage. The song was released as the fourth international single to be taken from the band's multi-platinum second album Version 2.0 over the course of the following year.

— Wikipedia entry, “When I Grow Up (Garbage song)”

Have you met anyone you think is a grown up yet?

Totally. I’m constantly patronised by people who think they’re really mature and have their life in order and are really together. That’s so small-minded. I would hate to think I got to a certain age and decided, ‘OK, that’s it, I’ve now grown completely.’ You can’t think of it in terms of physical growth, or physical decline. Growing up never ends. That’s what’s so fucking amazing. Do you ever want to be sitting with nothing to do? I don’t.

— Shirley Manson, interviewed for “Trash Therapy,” Juice Magazine, Australia, June 1998

The men who rule the world
Have made a fucking mess
The history of power
The worship of success
The king is in the counting house
He's chairman of the board
The women who crowd the courtrooms
All accused of being whores

— “The Men Who Rule the World,” Garbage

“I think in indignance you can still carry humor with you, as well as softness, kindness, and love in your heart. I just felt it would be inauthentic to say anything other than what I was saying in my daily life across the dinner table from my friends and my family. I think as you get older as an artist, the challenge is, ‘How I can be my most authentic self?’ because that’s the most unique story I can tell.”

— Garbage’s Shirley Manson Interview, Rolling Stone, July 6, 2021

“Anyway, moving on, what was your fucking moronic question?” — Shirley Manson, in an interview for VICE, June 29, 2017

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