the color of there seen from here

a primer on this moment, dating comics, and the color blue

Mar 07, 2025

Greetings, earthlings!

This newsletter grew a bit this week after my butterfly zine popped off on Instagram.

If you’re new here, welcome!

I’ve been down with the flu since Monday. I write this between sniffles, eyes watering, head feeling like it’s going to pop off and float away at any moment.

Last night I slept straight through the whole night for the first time in days and I’m feeling just enough energy to get this dispatch out.

Here are three things I want to share this week:

1. A primer on this moment: Grace Oedel’s yes, we are in a stormy sea

My friend Grace’s most recent Substack is like the longform version of the butterfly zine. She defines terms we’re hearing a lot right now–movement, power, and organizing–and provides helpful (and humbling!) examples of what “doing the work” might look like in our lives (spoiler: it involves a lot of trying stuff, failing, and trying again):

“Unfortunately for those who like me long deeply for one clear plan to emerge: that’s not happening. There will not be one badass strategy that we all can just hop on the bandwagon of. There will not be one leader who we all adore.
There will instead just be us: showing up for each other’s actions, creating our own, gathering in rooms big and small. Trying some things, failing, trying other things again. As some strategies gain public traction, they will be more possible to replicate and gather force. Leaders will emerge in the doing. Trusted voices call out, and we will call back. A variety of strategies all are needed.

here we are

yes, we are in a stormy sea

The good news is that a lot of people are waking up to the fact that this is not good, and naming that we need to do something. But what, how…

4 months ago · 5 likes · 1 comment · Grace Oedel

2. Lisa Hanawalt’s comics about dating

I love Lisa Hanawalt’s work so much, I’m so excited she’s on Substack. And since I’ve spent so much of my 30s single and dating and feeling like a confused weird alien while doing so, I appreciate these dating comics.

Last weekend I went on an art-hanging spree around my house, framing things that needed framing and moving art around. Many years ago my friend Lauren gifted me this Lisa Hanawalt print. I hung it up in my reading nook:

A close-up of the print (please excuse the reflections/glares):

One of the things I admire most about Lisa Hanawalt is the way she shares her rough sketches and comics–words crossed out, lines running off the page–alongside her more polished paintings and illustrations. She reminds me to show my work without thinking too hard about it.

3. Why are we so obsessed with the color blue?

I love the color blue and according to this article I’m in good company.

Rebecca Solnit’s A Field Guide to Getting Lost gets a mention and I’ve had this excerpt from the book in my Notes app for a long time:

"For many years, I have been moved by the blue at the far edge of what can be seen, that color of horizons, of remote mountain ranges, of anything far away. The color of that distance is the color of an emotion, the color of solitude and of desire, the color of there seen from here, the color of where you are not. And the color of where you can never go. For the blue is not in the place those miles away at the horizon, but in the atmospheric distance between you and the mountains. “Longing,” says the poet Robert Hass, “because desire is full of endless distances.” Blue is the color of longing for the distances you never arrive in, for the blue world."

Right before I got sick, I started working on a show poster for a friend. I’ve been wanting to play with watercolor more, so I decided to watercolor some elements for the poster. I really like this trout lily: