Gather. Discover. Cultivate.
Tonight you will dream yourself into a highwire act
free of goblins prowling the edges
unraveling the net.
You will wake to winter’s striped sky
last seen when the world was still green.
You will robe your fingers
in silver
gloss your lips
with greeting
free a trickle of light
from the rusted tap
you have to use a wrench
to turn on.
The smallest circle
then the next
circling into a ring
of circles
twirling round
upon round
spiraling themselves
dizzy
giving shape to a fractal
kaleidoscope
tracing an arc
along another turn.
I wonder if you, at the back of your throat,
chew the cud of us.
Flavor gone bland, molars
working to extract some vestigial molecule of nourishment.
Does its bulk retain any memory of sunlight
at the center of the blade?
Right now someone is packing for a research trip to Antarctica. Swimming with dolphins. Having their first dance.
Someone is falling in love on a bridge in Venice. Ziplining off a treetop platform. Spelunking in a cave in near total darkness.
Someone’s life disappears into the shadows of another’s big moment.
When the unit of measure plucked from the shelf, someone always falls short.
Continue reading “The Incredible Shrinking Woman”
Brain fog isn’t an official medical diagnosis; rather, it’s a colloquial term for a range of significant, persistent neurocognitive impairments that cause such symptoms as sluggish thinking, difficulty processing information, forgetfulness, and an inability to focus, pay attention, or concentrate. With Long COVID, the exact combination of brain fog symptoms varies from one person to the next.
– Kathy Katella, “Long COVID Brain Fog: What It Is and How to Manage It,” Yale Medicine News
Brainstorm, zero draft, morning pages, freewrite, stream of consciousness.
It has lots of names. I call mine WordSpring.
WordSpring has been my writing process for as long as I’ve been writing. At least 35 years. All I do is set a time or a number of pages and just let them spill out. The words flow free. My only job is to tap the source and, in the immortal words of Natalie Goldberg, “keep the hand moving.”
Occasionally I come to the spring with a theme in mind. Sometimes it’s just an opening and whatever emerges becomes the beginning of a project. More often than I care to admit, it’s all process and no outcome. Just the flow and whatever is called to the surface.
Continue reading “Running Dry: Notes on Writing through Brain Fog”
Thank you for protecting us. You were so brave. You did exactly what you needed to do to keep that mess from doing its worst. Considering all of the ways we could have been done in, all of the dangers at the door, it’s really a marvel that you knew just what to do. Your arsenal was stocked and you, skilled at using everything in there. You kept us safe. You have our deepest gratitude.
Now that we’re sitting down here together, we have something else to tell you. It’s important. We need you to hear this. Are you ready?
Continue reading “Immune Response”
Outside, someone was smoking. The stink leaked in around the closed front windows. It stung my eyes as I sat in my partner’s living room in an easy chair, slogging through a work task. This has been my setup for the better part of the past year: balancing on the tightrope between productivity and rest. Pillows, lap trays, things to hold my feet up. Sunlight. Headphones. Pomodoros.
I tried to ignore the smell but it grew stronger. I glanced out but couldn’t see anyone outside. The place is nestled in a cohousing community with a small group of neighbors. Some may light up the occasional joint, but no cigarette smokers.
So it must be someone delivering a package. Or working on a neighbor’s gutters.
The smell persisted. An hour? More? I kept working and the reek kept lingering. No voices, no sound of hammering. Just birds and crickets, and as far as I know, none of them have taken up smoking.
Continue reading “Smoke Signals: Notes on Phantosmia”
You think you are small. You crouch at the edge. This one like so many before, the low riverbed where you seek sustenance.
It’s far from a river, really, barely a trickle. You crouch here and watch how pebbles below the surface make water glint. In the copse of trees between one set of houses and the next, the big road bearing down just around the bend, this is the closest you come to a sacred place.
“You’re doing your best,” they say. You nod, you shrug. Okay, sure.
Inside, you sneer.
“Your best” belongs to brighter days. Not so far off, those days, but somehow also remote. Like they belong to someone else.
Best You learned things. Made decisions snap-snap. Took on the project. Invited people into your home. Best You learned a new language, the names of trees, how to roll sushi, and the most exhilarating route through Manhattan by bike.
Sometimes you sit in a room with someone who is doing something hard. You sit with them and let them do the hard thing. You sit with them not doing the hard thing for them. You sit there not answering the questions facing them unless the questions are some version of, “Can I do this?” The only answer you say out loud is, “You’ve done hard things before. Of course you can do this.” You offer them sips of water. You keep the glass filled.
Shannon E. Williams 