An unsorted pile of words from the last year
Goodbye to 2023, may 2024 be much better for us all
Below is an assortment of posts I wrote last year about adjusting to long covid, surviving another record-breaking heatwave, a lament about insects, and some old photos, drawings, paintings and music playlists. I guess this is sort of a lazy year-end review, and a welcome to more recent subscribers. Thanks for reading my work this year, it has meant so much. May 2024 treat you well, and may we be strong in the face of whatever it throws at us. Please feel free to like, comment, and share.
little research projects for good days, quiet videos for wipe-out days
I’m wobbly again after a couple of months where I was a little more capable and maybe even slightly energetic. Once again forced to limit activity, I research the history of post viral illnesses and their impacts on culture because it is far too hot to swoon on the porch in a long white dress like they did in the old days.
somewhere under the hell dome
What happened to the insects this year? Years ago I saw armies of ladybug larvae emerging from under the siding and marching on the aphids and sometimes getting lost and marching into our kitchen window. Lacewings and Atteva aurea fluttered in and out of the house, and clouds of fireflies lit the wild tangled spots at dusk. Click beetles, junebugs, stin…
silly little projects for the end times
This week I prepared a cute home for a bag of worms. I await their arrival, concerned that they may not have survived the trip after being on a truck all day underneath the Hell Dome, I ready a spray bottle to spritz them with cool water. They will live in a double stack of storage totes, one peppered with drainage holes and a multiple screened porthole…
nocturne
in summer in hot places we sleep during the day become nocturnal listen to cicadas and the owl in the oak mother raccoon with twin kits bumbling up and down the porch steps black witch moth rustling around the light over the door tiny possum children tipping the cat bowl
a memory of theory
The books are important, the library I want to read when life settles down is still there — there’s not much else I can do so I try again. I re-read the same paragraph and go back to the beginning of the chapter, lose context and thumb back further to the last thing I remember, but nothing sticks, everything is everywhere in my head, mental roads washed…
illuminated fictions, shadow puppet dioramas, wind-up toys, and whatever is hidden under that giant tarp
I am new to this platform and was concerned about my focus because so many writers seem centered on a particular subject, like maybe they do self-help or writing workshops, maybe they are experts in a field, climate change scientists, long covid researchers, wise-cracking moms, brooding poets, plant geniuses, archaeologists, fortune tellers, or bird wat…
distant music, fading ghosts
A melody drifts through shuddering cicadas and traffic rumbling on 35. I can’t make it out — it is far but moving closer. Clubs and patios broadcast live and recorded music, distorted by the acoustics of buildings and trees. It is happy hour. The wind raises summer dust and wisps of smoke from a bbq pit blocks away, nudges ghosts of homesick travelers tow…
buhhhhhraingfoggly notions
a before times playlist I struggle to be hopeful, improve energy levels, to not go absolutely crazy, but every day feels like the same day, like one big never-ending day punctuated by naps, chores, remedies, the needs of cats, and not much else. I wear out too quickly, unroll a futon and flop on the floor, and make playlists or just listen to music with …
the most dangerous place on the most hospitable planet
In a universe we see in sharper focus now, with telescopes pointed out into infinity from orbit, sharpening details reveal places we can only appreciate from afar, places we can never survive in our present vulnerable form, places that can never provide us with air, sustenance, water, and shelter.
Thanks a million, y’all. Happy New Year!