count yer gosh darn blessings
It’s 11:11 as I type these First Words TM. Auspicious.
Angels. Choir songs. Big, giant ornate scrolly doors opening with light beaming through: BEAM BEAM BEAM. But I’m not writing about light today, just about numbers. I guess 11:11 is all about numbers, too.
I like counting things, I always have, ever since way back when I learned about Sesame Street’s The Count. He’s the cutest, queerest, donned with a perfect unibrow vampire who teaches us all about numbers with his little bat friends. Little me would put on my hooded bath towel and spread my towel wings out like a bat. One batty-bat, two batty-bat.
My mind still finds, all these years later, some numbers to be soothing. You already know my deep belief in the number 69, but it shows up other places too. When I can add up the numbers in an address in a “good” way (what is good? If numbers somehow add together. My house number, 5328, is a good number because 5-3=2 and 5+3=8. Following?) I know that things will be okay.
I like the phrase count your blessings. I like the idea that there’s peace in the practice of counting the good things or the soft things or the things that make me feel more alive than dead. A direct channel to the sparkle web that connects us all if we just slow the fuck down and count for a second. The last couple weeks were spent on the road, bopping coast to coast, driving through the middle seam of America, counting and counting and counting.
Too many for one silly Substack, but to name a few:
Seeing horses, three in a row, staring so focused at the same point on the horizon with their bodies in the exact same position, all the same size and color, that it looked like one horse got copy pasted three times, a delightful glitch in the matrix. What does it mean when we see things that don’t seem real? Who told us what real life is, anyways? What if someone did copy paste a whole horse across the pasture just to see if someone would notice? What if we noticed?
Having to google search “DJ Khaled saying” when trying to remember WE THE BEST and thinking about how DJ Khaled is now a figure whose sayings we forget and want to remember. Asking my parents about what Pokemons they remember (my favorite was Arnold). Forgetting the phrase “body doubling” and talking about parallel play at work all day. Mishearing the lyrics to Carly Rae Jepson’s “Run Away With Me” and asking my friend what a cinnamon secret is after she sings “I’ll be your sinner in secret” <insert hot panting emoji>.
Seeing some faces for the first time in years, faces I knew when I was shaving half my head and drinking jungle juice and faces now that have little smile lines, like me. The way we are young together and the way we are older together. Hugging. Hugging again. Hugging more because it really is so impossible to know when the next time will be, but this time is so sweet.
Watching Beyonce belt her beautiful perfect lungs out and make sounds I only knew humans could make because I saw her perform once live, before. Watching her wrap her arms around her two daughters while she sang songs about being a Black mom. Looking down to the row in front of me and watching three Black moms with their Black babies, their little toddler arms wrapped around the back of their mom’s shoulders, singing every song into their mom’s ears. The littlest babe gets tired from standing in his little boots on the back of the chair and falls asleep. His mom cradles him in his little Cowboy Carter hat and rocks him for the rest of the concert, doing what she does best. She woke him one more time when Beyonce got close. He waved and cried. We all waved and cried.
Following the growing up of the local goslings. Watching their fuzz, their legs, their swim, their waddles. The way they get braver, exploring away from their parents, sticking their heads into crevices to get the good stuff, napping in the sun with their legs and wings outstretched. It is a gift to watch life unfold. To watch babies grow. To get clear that we want to watch our own babies grow. To understand we are all living in the same loops. To find people we want to make those loops happen with, wings outstretched, protecting, sheltering, playing.
Learning from my mom that right now we are in the midst of a 10 day span where the dates are going to be the same, forwards and backwards. 5/10/25. 5/21/25. 5/22/25. 5/23/25. 5/24/25. 5/25/25 (this one is especially good). 5/26/25. 5/27/25. 5/28/25. 5/29/35. Learning that when she told me dad about this, his response was just “kelsey would love this.” Narrator voice: And kelsey does love this.
Getting excited to be in my own lil home, my own big bed, and getting excited to be able to welcome my people into this space where I am tending to my heart. Remembering that with the right people, it is easy, effortless even, to be heart wide open and to laugh til it’s hard the stay in an upright body formation. Where are the spaces you are tending to your heart? Who are you inviting in to tend to them alongside you?
I could keep going and going and going, swirling in and out of the little pockets of time that my heart screams out in delight, but for now I will end with this: we are watching the most horrific genocidal torture play out on our screens. We are watching it with our eyes, the same eyes that learn the shine of the eyes of another, the same eyes that watch the rain fall, the storm bring the night in the day and then the day in the night, the same eyes that look out, out ahead, for our bodies and the bodies of the people we love. We can see it all.
We are capable of looking out and seeing and remembering it all. We can hold onto our humanity, to our blessings, if we let ourselves see it all, count them all. Every child counts. Every Palestinian being starved counts. Every horse in the pasture counts. Every person who will no longer be able to access their lifesaving health care as Medicaid gets slashed counts. Every raindrop serving as the background noise to the realization that there’s always more to this life counts. It counts. We count.
This album keeps being the one my ears want to listen to all the way through when on morning walks. Light, dark, light again.
Missouri is trying to pull some bullshit and threaten access to abortion access again. Anti-abortion extremists won’t stop until abortion is impossible to access, no matter where we live. Want to know how to show up for community no matter the legal landscape? Join me on June 25 for a free training on Zoom about self managed abortion care.
See you in the grass, under the tree, in the rain, covered in the late spring dirt.