Cody Cook-Parrott's Blog, page 6

September 9, 2024

Cody's Dating Service

2020, Photo by Cody Sells

Dear reader,

Last night I’m spitballing with some friends about my lack of dating options in the rural North. Where is my wife? Doesn’t she know there are five acres here for her to tend to her flower farm? What song will they dedicate to me on Delilah? How do you say - Look at the life I have that we could weave together, without the destination of a pair bond as the goal?

I’m texting my ex girlfriend who suggests I come to visit upstate NY to find this person. Others suggest I try the apps, which I cannot do. The apps in Northern Michigan are scary but another friend tells the rare tale of meeting their now love on Tinder in these parts. Every gender holds a fish. I am not opposed to learning how to fish and I love to be on a boat in the water but the posing with the fish doesn’t quite send me in the way I imagined.

I try to stay curious about a casual lover but it remains friendly. I try to stay curious about the boy whose car I left a note on once at the trail head but never head from. I try to stay curious about the wind that whips on the hill.

I make a google form : Cody’s Dating Service. It’s a questionnaire for potential love. Name, age, pronouns. What will we do on our first date? I send it to my friends who are either in complete shock I would be open to sending this out to the masses or who encourage me to immediately share it far and wide.

I consider hyperlinking the google form here, mixing work and love in a chaotic and perhaps unthoughtful way. Nic helps me veto this, queen of work boundaries. We talk through other places for the google form to live. I could email it to my closest friends to pass along to their own single prospects, make a flyer to post on the bulletin board at the coffee shop, consider it as one part of the sorcery.

Fire of Love, 2022

I cast a love spell. It sits on my fireplace altar with a pink candle, vessel for cinnamon, a June Jordan poem, a photo of myself, and my objects of ceremony.

I am going to more events, ready to find my next lover in the parking lot of the food co op. Or the art opening. Or in a field somewhere.

I do not feel desperate or lost for love. I feel clear. I feel complete. I had my last partner send me a photo of themselves with their new partner. I thought I would feel sad. I just felt free. I said, ok I want to be free now. I want my imagination of what partnership could be to expand beyond the realm of what I have known.

In freedom is where I have found love before.

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is teaching a VERY COOL series of classes that starts this Saturday : History and Origins of Trauma-Informed Tattooing, Practical Skills and Applications, and Values Alignment and Resisting Cooptation.

This workshop isn’t just for tattoo artists and I highly recommend for anyone in an industry of body to body care, relational work, seeing clients of any kind!

September 7, 2024

Can I call myself queer?

photo source Things of note :

🪟 TOMORROW is Echoes of Self : Collecting research for personal essays and non fiction projects Sunday September 8 at 12pm EST - RECORDED! LIFETIME ACCESS!

We’re going to have a lot of fun playing with sticky notes and index cards and google drive and Notion and visioning all the ways to map out our projects

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🪞 Today at 11am EST in Landscapes : is hosting the BIPOC writers circle and next Saturday September 14 our guest writing teacher is

Landscapes is sliding scales and no one is turned away for lack of funds. Both events are recorded if you can’t make it live :)

LANDSCAPES

Welcome to Yes Yes - my advice column tucked into the Monday Monday newsletter.

The air is starting to get colder and I fear my hot swim days are lingering. I have spent more time at the beach this summer than the last two and it feels like a huge accomplishment that I prioritized rest, swimming, and community. My obsession with productivity, my hermit house mode, and my anxiety often keep me away from the things I love. Not this summer! I have prevailed.

My cosmos and zinnias are coming up and even some sunflowers I planted on the side of the house. Nothing is exactly thriving but, I love to see the flowers. I still need someone to come here and teach me to be a flower farmer. Teaching myself is proving unfruitful.

I love today’s question so much. I love exploring queerness outside of who we’re having sex with, and asking what it means to be a queer person who is having sex and being in a relationship with a straight person.

I am not a therapist and I have no training in advice giving. I am an artist, a writer, and a teacher of creative practice with a devotion to how we live. These are my opinions, my best shot at hope, and what I know from 36 years on the planet. As always, may you hold a gentle spirit while reading, take what you like, and leave the rest. Let’s dive in!

Hi Cody!

It’s my first time asking a question to a friendly stranger on the internet so it feels scary, but the nature of what I want to ask is calling me to do it, and you’re the only friendly stranger I feel can provide an answer regarding what’s on my mind. What’s on my mind is queerness, and how to practice it when you’re in a het relationship.

I grew up in a gossipy town and I guess because of this I never really pursued what I can felt was a clear and strong attraction to girls/non binary folks. I liked men and I was a woman so I thought I had to be straight because being bisexual just wasn’t an option that was considered in the discourse. When I moved to a bigger city I gave myself permission to pursue my interest for some people I met who didn’t fall into the cis straight men category and even though it was fun nothing came to fruition. I had many crushes and no action it’s how I’d explain it. I’m not the most sexually active person anyway so I didn’t see the point in forcing myself to lose my queer V-card with just anyone.

Cut to now, some years later, where I find myself in a relationship with a great cis straight guy. I’ve had relationships in the past but none of them compare to what I have now, and I do think he’s the one which is 99% of the time something that makes me so happy but, and I guess my question is whether you’d consider this a big or a small but, I am kind of sad over the possibility of never having a relationship with someone who’s not a man.

For extra context I don’t see myself ever having an open relationship and I am excited to spend my life with him. My question is not “should I leave the first person I have ever truly loved so I can have a hypothetical rendezvous with a hot girl/they when I’ve already tried it and I didn’t make it past the crush stage”.

It’s more: how can I practice my queerness, something I kept inside all my life, while prioritising a heterosexual relationship? Is it possible? Can I even call myself queer?

Yours, Confused

Dearest Confused,

The thing about being queer is we don’t get to choose it. We just … are it. It is a feeling that happens from the inside out. So yes dear reader, you do get to call yourself queer. Who you have sex with does not define your level of queerness.

‘Queer' not as being about who you're having sex with (that can be a dimension of it); but 'queer' as being about the self that is at odds with everything around it and that has to invent and create and find a place to speak and to thrive and to live.

bell hooks

Another question I am often asked is - is it a queer relationship if one person is queer? Does that inherently shape the relationship as a queer relationship? Otherwise it’s what - a half queer half straight relationship. Queerness wins, it’s queer!

Or … is it?

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Published on September 07, 2024 05:37

September 3, 2024

The crazy room

Solon Township, Photo by Cody Sells

Dear reader,

I have three bedrooms in my home and two of them are neutral so that when guests come they have a place to stay. I use one of the neutral rooms as my bedroom when no one is here. The third room, which I call the crazy room has all of my personal belongings, is my closet, my office, has a twin bed, my dresser, all my journals, cameras, photographs, love notes, sex toys, printer paper, printer, binders, my desk, 12 step literature, yarn, and cords to things I no longer own. It now also has multiple binders, file folders, file boxes, sticky notes, jars with markers and everything I need for grad school.

I call it the crazy room because even when I clean and organize it it becomes a pile of clothes, indecipherable stacks of paper, clumps of baseball caps, and crates of supplements I tried to cure my insanity with that didn’t work. Beef liver seemed promising but didn’t quite do the trick in the same way praying did.

The crazy room is my research portal, my creative sanctuary, the office of my mind and the office of my practice. I sit on my ergonomic chair and host Landscapes or dream up new classes and offerings. As June’s spine is healing she likes to nap on the twin bed because it is low to the ground and doesn’t strain her back to hop up. I let this room be messy, I let it be functional, I let it be the place where my walking pad and my bio mat collect dust in the corner in the summer time because the sun gives me heat and the trails give me a walking space.

I am in the process of creating systems for the room to fold in with my school work in a more streamlined way. I decided to print out all my readings because I wanted to read at the beach, at the picnic table, at the coffee shop, and in the meadow without the screen in front of me. The readings don’t delicately fit into one binder and so I have folders for my current readings, and then a filing system for the readings that I am done with.

Want to see all my physical materials I use like file folders, pens, notebooks, and more? Check out the free guide I made NOTE TAKING TOOLS + NOTE TAKING POSSIBILITIES

I do my best to unbutton my shirt and put it back on the hanger but in my swift motion to get from one event to the next I throw it on the floor. The same pile I threw my sweatpants on in the night when I got too hot. The same pile my gratitude list notebook is on and my Oura ring charger and my socks. The piles make their homes and I start to get frustrated because then I can’t find the piles of paper for my readings.

The filing system is promising as I stare at it from the dining room table through the half open door of the crazy room. The white noise machine is on while I listen to the sounds of two of my cherished ones.

I both love to have systems and despise them. I judge myself for not being consistent. The thing about this body I am in though is it is inconsistent. Ovulating, bleeding, pain, no pain, migraines, being tired, being sore, being bored, being cranky, being sad, being joyful, stretching, getting stronger, getting weaker, all in an endless cycle with no announcements and little predictability.

I trust that I can apply this unknown timeline to my work, to school, to my systems of learning. I tend to this haphazard expanse with the mind of an organized saint. My Virgo Rising and Capricorn Moon wrap seamlessly around five planets in Gemini to create a pathway to art making.

I’m texting back with less urgency in an effort to be more in my work and in my life and with my neighbors and with my fellows. I look at my phone less with this vibrant life. The fuller it is the more the crazy room is littered with sand from every pant leg half unrolled. I see what is right in front of me. But when the stress of the crazy room creeps in I want to grab my device and tune out. It hits some sort of thing that small Cody wants to rebel and say I don’t need to keep this room clean! As if there is a power in denying myself my own sanity.

So today I slowly label my little folders. I pick the clothes up one at a time. I put the hats back in their baskets. I thank the crazy room for holding all of my objects, my diaries, my most precious and revered thoughts and ideas. Sticky notes of things that never manifested, love spells unmet.

I stay committed to the process of creation, to work, to invention, to possibility. I do this without streamlined systems or perfectly alphabetized archives. I do this with a wild mind and a slow body. I do this my way, and my way is perfect for me.

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ECHOES OF SELF

LIVE ON ZOOM SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 8 : 9am-12pm PST / 12pm-3pm EST

Join me this upcoming Sunday for a class all about systems and practices for organizing your own notes and research. Maybe you have a room or an office or a studio you want to tidy up and organize. Maybe you want to learn more about Notion, Google Drive, and creating a digital garden for your business ecosystem.

The possibilities are endless and together we will shape this class into what we all need and desire. Class is $175 and there are two part payment plans, closed captions, and class is recorded for those who cannot make it live.

You have my cheerleading, my attention, and my unwavering support in these three hours and beyond.

Class is part slideshow, part sharing, part writing prompts, part magic. We are going to have a lot of fun and visualize together not only how to arrange our research modalities but also how to synthesize it for public sharing.

PLUS class includes TWO co-working days where we will talk more and then spend some time putting our new skills to use. Respond to this email if you have any questions!

ECHOES OF SELF

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info@codycookparrott.com

PO Box 252 Cedar, MI 49621

Landscapes : A writing group for all genres (Members get 10% off of Echoes of Self and the recording of the workshop with is now available)

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Published on September 03, 2024 09:03