Gather. Discover. Cultivate.
Hi friends! I’ve recently launched a Substack newsletter: Out of Order: Notes on Chronic Illness. It will be where posts on ME/CFS, Long COVID, and chronic illness live. I will continue to share my experiences navigating these conditions in the context of disability justice. The newsletter will also be a place to practice creativity and courage so we can give the beloved future a fighting chance.
Continue reading “A Second Home at Substack”
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?
for the times we ignore the price tag, may we forgive ourselves
He strides up the steps
in his purple velvet coat,
trailing the welcome stink
of burnt sugar
and rosin,
a gait so light even the oldest boards
hold their breath.
He closes the distance
before you clock his game,
pulls a quarter from behind your ear.
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”
This time last year, I decided to change how I read. Or, more accurately, to change what I read. It was one small way to keep breathing expansiveness and hope at a time when despair threatened to suffocate both.
As is true for any bibliophile, reading fills up swaths of the time I’m not working or sleeping. Certainly other activities populate the days — eating, dancing, hanging with the kiddo, chilling with the girlfriends. Church and family. In fact, I trip and tumble over the heaps of stuff comprising our days. It’s a wonder stories make it in here at all.
Nevertheless, as is also true for any bibliophile, I find a way. The rare hushed hours, those still stretches, most deliciously belong to books. Bedtime, summertime, solitary dinners. And not always solitary. Sometimes my boy and I read side-by-side at the table weaving tendrils of languid conversation into the quiet. Even at eleven years old, Bug still wants me reading aloud every night at bedtime. We travel through the fantasy worlds we’ve entered together. Having only just acquired a TV after nearly five years without, the universes of film and television hold little appeal. Our secret indulgences almost always involve the page. Continue reading “Reading Beyond”
9pm, heading home from pub trivia at a busy spot near my office. Down on the metro platform, the orange line train pulls in. Only six stops to my station. I’ll be walking the dog by 9:30.
The doors slide open onto a car bubbling with chatter. Summer in DC, the weekend lasts all week. Between nuzzling couples and clusters of young people, a few wilted office drones slouch and sleep. I take one of the few unoccupied seats. Bar hoppers stream out around me.
He takes up a row. Briefcase on its side next to the window, legs splayed, foot halfway into the aisle. As I settle into a corner perpendicular across the car, he catches my eye. I ignore him, pull out my journal and start writing.
The sensation a prickle, a tiny persistent sting against scalp and skin.
He’s still looking.
We frame resilience. . . as the capacity of a system, enterprise, or a person to maintain its core purpose and integrity in the face of dramatically changed circumstances.
– Andrew Zolli and Ann Marie Healy in Resilience: Why Things Bounce Back
Having hit all the deadlines for Phase 1, I steered eagerly into Phase 2. Blocks of writing time for the season ahead peppered my calendar. Accountability buddies jumped on board. To celebrate the milestone as well as the momentum, My Mister dipped into the Treat Jar and agreed to host a game night.
Then on the second-to-last day of the first month, my project ran aground.
The professor wears plaid clogs. She strides into the conference room, bold black and gray swimming around feet sheathed in silver-threaded socks. I tell her I like her style. She tells me that every time she hits a professional milestone, she buys herself shoes. She can stand in her closet and scan the trajectory of her career: her first publication shoes, her first edited volume shoes. The plaid clogs? Tenure-track shoes.
“What’s next?” I ask.
“Full professor, going up next year.”
“Have you scoped out the shoes?”
She shakes her head. “Oh no, that would jinx it.” Then she grins. “Which is a total lie. There are these boots,” she sort of moans. “Boots and a whole new outfit to go with them.”
This concept mystifies me. One friend picks out a fancy purse for every promotion or raise. Coach, Kate Spade, Louis Vuitton. Another takes herself on a cruise. I clap along but something rankles. We’re dogs now? We get cookies for every well-timed wiggle?
Itzhak Perlman was riding shotgun when the October moon slid out onto the horizon. The soloist’s strokes teased from the slimmest strings the opening notes of Beethoven’s violin concerto. Other players followed and a rumble rose from deep in the bouts of cello and bass, swelling to a roar and thundering through my ribs, pressing out the tears. The stoplight was seconds from green so I pressed back. It took some effort. It took my breath.
The moon lay herself down in a hammock of treetops and followed us with her sleepy gaze.
Across town, a young writer of mysteries saw her too. What echoed across the dusk to his ears was Don McLean’s “Vincent,” at least the opening verse. His song reached in through the passenger side window and wound around the Berlin Philharmonic. I pulled into a jammed parking lot. They grabbed their instruments by the neck and careened off together, streaking light across the purple sky.
On Tuesday night, I brought 3 days and 10 pages of notes to heel in this whacked out mind map. Even with my scattered brain forever chasing down The Meaning Of It All, I was able to rip the material and pin details to their categories. One night later, I had expanded this into a clean, 3-page document charting each week-long task between now and May 1, 2017. It’s typed. With headings. That makes it real, right?
Shannon E. Williams 