Hi.

It's nice to make it to November with you.

Ding dong, October is over, and I don’t want to think badly of witches, and I don’t want to think of death at all, but ding dong, ding dong.

October got stuck in my front teeth, and I’m lucky enough to know people who pointed it out, and didn’t just let me walk around like some kind of autumn fool.

I’m lucky enough to know people who pulled the floss of time from their handbags and handed it over like our friendship means that every single thing one of us has is had by the other, as well.

I would have needed to pry my teeth out to get October unstuck from my mouth , so I had to do the human thing and just wait it out.

I am an impatient soul. A dinosaur, a goblin, a potato, a rock— and frightfully, achingly, human. So I waited, and somehow survived.

We made it to November, and I say we because I always write like I’m talking to you, and I always write about me.

My name is Ra Avis.¹ Sometimes, people call me Rara. Sometimes, people call me Rarasaur.²

I live in Long Beach, California. I’ve been a blogger for a long time, and I just recently left my community at WordPress to start over here. The room is smaller. The paint is still new. I still don’t know why I’m here instead of there, but it’s something about the acoustics.

I don’t want to write to an echo, and when I tell you what I love about someone else’s writing, I want you to hear it like it was shouted over the rain and the boombox held over my head.

Photo by Labbie Manesh

I am a published author, for whatever that means, and I work in Communications, if that matters to you, and I love a great many things. I like to say I love people who love things, people who hate things, and people who do things.

Sometimes people tell me, “Ra— that’s everybody.” But that’s not a true. A large number of people walk through this world without ever hitting the edges of it, without ever swimming³ through what looks like the final door just to find another door.

But you do, or you wouldn’t have gotten this far.

This year, as has been true for the last 13 years, I’m participating in NanoPoblano⁴, which is an offshoot of National Blog Posting Month. That means, I’ll be writing something here every single day.

I write about me. I write about my time in prison, and I write about my beautiful dinosaur-headed cane and where it’s taken me. I write about my late husband and how my love for him is how I dot every i and cross every t. I write about new love, and world love, and justice love, and joy.

This space is free. There aren’t special levels or secret content, or hidden stories. If you want to pay, it would just be for support. It’ll show up on your credit card as Silver Star— my late husband’s artist name was Grayson⁵.

And isn’t a gray sun a kind of silver star?

Today, the sun slow-roasted Long Beach, California. I love this city. I love how it’s a big dog of a city — full of tall buildings and fast roads. I love how it sits on your lap like a small dog.

Today, I went to a coffee shop and knew almost everyone there. I went to talk about zines.⁶

There is a section of this site called “Achingly Human”, and there you’ll find more cohesive pieces, if that’s more your style. They are digital zines, with downloadable paper versions in case you feel inspired to print a stranger’s thoughts and hold them in your hands.

We don’t have to be strangers, though. We can say nice to meet you, and then know each other in some sort of passing.

Nice to meet you.

The internet is a big cat of a city. I wake up every morning and pspsps at it. I know it will likely never sit on my lap, but I would like it to come close.

I’d like us to sit on the pavement near each other, and know each other, and know the slow-roast of the yellow star in the sky. I want to talk to the yellow star in the sky.

I want to tell it about a silver star I knew, and how once I lived in a cell that couldn’t see it, and how I grew up in a place where it was four times bigger than it’s ever actually been, and how it’s twenty-seven billion fifty-five million six hundred thousand giraffes from my favorite bookstore⁷, and how from that bookstore, it looks like it’s wearing a beautiful wedding dress made of fog.

That’s what I do here, and if you’d like to be part of that conversation, and sit in the sun with me, I’d really love that, too.

Pspsps.
You are loved.

1. Many thanks to my friend Mica for reminding me that sometimes friends need to say hello.

2. All illustrations on these posts are made by me. <3

3. Unrelated, I just love this site that lets you trek down to the deep sea in a non-threatening way: https://neal.fun/deep-sea/

4. We have a number of Substackers this year, if this is your platform of choice. If you run all over the internet like me, you’ll find even more delicious writers. You can still join us until 11/3. It’s a great community. I love it. https://cheerpeppers.wordpress.com/2024-team/

5. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to look at his blog url without choking a little, even though I’m so very far along the grief journey.

6. I am a co-founder of this zine project that is currently for submissions if you’re interested: https://biggestlittlezinefair.com/

7. An Instagram picture of me at my favorite bookstore:

rawra.avis

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