There’s such pressure when returning to something like blogging that it feels like I should give an account for where I’ve been and what I’ve been doing. Have I been writing, is something new in the works, etc etc. Surely the reason for this absence is nothing short of marvelous, so that I might emerge with brilliance and wisdom that would give merit to my disappearance. I wish that were the case. I wish I could sit here and write—this, the first prose I’ve put to paper in six months, save …
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A Life of Creativity and Empathy
This morning, I woke up and felt very aware that nothing was changing in my life today. I just wrapped up a long project, which should have felt more like a relief but didn’t. When you go to work, you get to go home once you’re finished. But when you work at home, when you finish, you get more home. Why this was bothering me today of all days, I’m not sure. I’ve faced this dilemma before, though it’s been exasperated by the long stretches at home these last two years. To live and work and …
Something Too Important to Forget: The Silence of Mornings
Earlier this month, at a writing retreat I took at an arts colony a few hours away, it was the silence that struck me most. I was there to work on revising the stack of poems I’ve amassed in the last two years. But I was also there for silence and solitude, refuge, seclusion. On the desk was a binder with instructions and reminders for my time at the colony, and inside was a reminder: retreat means silence. We came there to work—we who were writing or working on our art—and silence was an …
Song for a New Year: Close the Loop & Let It Go
Last year was a year of evaluation. It was a year of questions, many of which were propelled by my fortieth birthday in October. I never expected turning forty to feel like such a big deal for me, but I also didn’t expect to turn forty after eighteen months of living in this strange and ever-shifting world. I didn’t know that after so many months I’d feel so exhausted or so trapped, that ultimately I’d have more questions than I had answers for. But, if one thing colored 2021 for me, it was …
Being Your Authentic Self and Resisting Definitions
“About hope, I am somewhat at a loss. It is so easy to say I hope to—the tongue slides over it. I think perhaps hope can only be realized by contrasting it with despair. And I am too lazy to despair. Please don’t visit me with it, dear Lord, I would be so miserable.” —Flannery O’Connor I want to write a story about hope. Hope, not fear. Hope, not despair. Hope, the antidote, the holy grail, the magic potion. Hope, the truth. But what is hope without its opposite? A woman is merely …