Light and Shade

Some brief-ish thoughts on perspective

Hullo my lovely readers

A quick content note for brief – and general – references to grief.

Firstly, my heartfelt gratitude for your truly lovely and warm responses to last week’s letter and the poem it contained.

Secondly, this week, I’m endeavouring to practise what I wrote about in that poem, and continuing to pause on the letters I’d planned to be writing.

Partly practically and physically, by scheduling this letter in advance, because I’ll be at a gathering of theatre and arts folks this weekend and needed to save some spoons beforehand.

(More on that, along with the Musical Theatre Wellbeing Day just over a fortnight ago, as soon as my shoulder can manage – but, if any of you are also at Devoted and Disgruntled, hopefully we’ve crossed paths! Equally, if you couldn’t be there and want me to take anything into the room for the final day tomorrow [Monday], I will gladly. I’ve missed being there “live” so much in recent years, but I know not everyone is able, or safe, to attend in-person events, and acknowledge my gratitude for having the spoons, and the physical support to do so.)

There’s also emotion behind my pause, though. April is a tricky month for me. I’ve written, early on in this newsletter, about where I’m currently at in my journeys alongside grief. (Please mind the content note on that letter, if you click through to it.) I also, quite some years ago now, wrote an Instagram post¹ sharing some of the complex and contradictory feelings I’ve had about Eliot’s comments on April in The Waste Land since my undergraduate studies.

Feelings which seem to grow more complex and contradictory with each annual reappearance of a month which, aside from the multiple difficult dates it contains (even more dates now than when I wrote that post in 2019, which was another reason I elected to schedule this week’s letter), is characterised by so much light and shade for me.

Both literally and figuratively.

And it’s that characteristic contrast which inspired this week’s letter, in combination with a photo of the ways the blackout blind on my bedroom window reminded me of the beauty that can be found in it.

I’ll put an image description as well, but it shows how, because of the blackout blind, the sun against the window created a reflection on the wall; of the translucent sticker that’s otherwise entirely hidden behind the blind. I like it for the photographic effect, but it also feels like an appropriate analogy for the April Effect in my life.

And for how my perspective on it shifts.

I thought I’d share it as it might resonate with some of you as well.

Thank you so much for reading, and love and solidarity until next week,

Jx

Image description: A close-up photo of the blackout blind on Jessi’s bedroom window, which is a heavy dark material. It completely covers the window. However, on the lighter wall just next to the window, it is noticeable that a small sliver of sunshine has peeked through the side of the covering. The sunshine has created a reflection of the (admittedly rather blurry) translucent sticker of a blue dolphin that is featured on the window. There is also another reflection below it, which is even more blurry, and it is impossible to tell what it represents.

1. If you read the Instagram post, which was written before I came out as non-binary, you may note that I used “she” as a pronoun to refer to my younger self. If I were writing it now, though, I’d use “they” - because I was non-binary as a kid, I just didn’t yet have the language to articulate that, especially growing up in the 1990s and early 2000s. I’m mentioning that because, when I reread it, being misgendered even by myself was more dysphoric than I expected it to be. Yet more complexities, this time arising from the permanence of our online presences these days, something of which the youngest of those younger selves couldn’t even have dreamt…