Ruminations turns 2!! {& tangible}

celebrating, reflecting, and looking ahead

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Thank you <3

Earlier this week, Ruminations celebrated 2 years of me sharing letters, poems, interviews, dreams, and ongoing existential crises with you—and my heart is so. damn. full.

I never imagined that starting a newsletter would connect me to so many interesting and inspiring people, or lead to me starting an interview series I’d become so incredibly proud of, or that 2 years on, I would be just shy of 3000 readers. Three. Thousand. It’s an insane number of people reading my work to even comprehend. Not a day goes by when I don’t consider how best to serve you all and satiate your beautiful, curious, and kind minds.

When the enormity of life feels heavy on my shoulders, someone sending me a sweet message, or restacking a letter, or telling me that what I wrote resonated with them, always brings me back to why I write. Time and time again, I am reminded that my love for language lies not only in its remarkable plasticity and beauty, but also in its ability to consecrate even the smallest, most human things so that we might understand each other even just a little more.

So: thank you, thank you, thank you.

To celebrate two years of writing on Substack, I wanted to look to the future (instead of the past, as we so often do in this newsletter) and share something exciting.

The future is tangible

This past year marked a significant shift in my direction as a writer and creative towards a growing fascination with spaces and places as both philosophical concepts and embodied, uniquely experienced entities. It’s what inspired Altars & Artists, after all. Although I haven’t really spoken about it here, my master’s research fuels this interest. My work is situated within topopoetics—a field of study that recognises poems as places with spatial qualities—and understanding poetry from this angle has deepened my appreciation for place and the ways one can find, or create, tangibility.

The monthly Altars & Artists interviews have transformed into a beautiful commemoration of artists’ spaces and have become indelibly etched into the cycle of this newsletter. In the same way that the series has featured artists’ spaces, I would love for it to be featured in artists’ spaces—your spaces. So, to close this first season of interviews, I’m working on something palpable. Think pages you can flick through; corners you can touch; wisdom you can hold…

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You’ve got mail

On a related but slightly different note, I wanted to bring us back to the very beginning, when Ruminations began as numbered letters.

I never really saw this platform as an open diary in the way that many others do. I saw it more as an epistolary exchange between kindred spirits; reflections and ideas and stories shared between a collective of similarly lost and curious artists. Substack has been an incredible platform for helping me build such a collective, but emails don't quite satisfy that longing for something slower, something held—something you open with your hands rather than your phone.

A letter club, however, just might.

In the coming months, you will be able to have Ruminations dispatched to your mailbox, wherever you are in the world. It’s my way of reaching out to you with something tender and tactile—oh! And with a return address, of course.

It’s safe to say that I am very excited!

If you would like to register your interest, please submit your email below:

Ruminations is softly expanding into its third chapter. Times are hard, scary, and devastating, even, but I will always be here, at my desk, carving out a space for us all to retreat to—even if just to witness it all together.

Thank you endlessly, my loves. We’ll speak again very soon.

Caitlin xx

If you’d like to stay especially close as these new ventures unfold, do consider becoming a paid subscriber. It makes everything on Ruminations possible and keeps this little writer at her desk!

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