*Stay Happy*
I've had a Christmas carol stuck in my head all morning: We Three Kings. It's a mostly cheery tune, but the verse on repeat in my mind is one the church choir assigned to my Dad when we were all younger. "Myrhh is mine / its bitter perfume breathes / a life of gathering gloom." I sat down to start on my homework and saw the planner I bought last week, gleefully admonishing me to "Stay Happy." These are certainly strange days.
Devious Activity
What are your hopes for the summer? What is your strangest pandemic story so far?
Where to even start
2) An apocalypse happened when I wasn't looking.
3) After driving around in the apocalypse, I got sick and am still slowly recovering.
4) On the bright side, I suddenly have a little bit of free time.
5) I started a collaborative blog, Intersectional Frameworks (reframetrauma.weebly.com) for people to share their experiences, and we've received a broad range of responses from all sorts of backgrounds and all sorts of places (though we're always looking for more).
How have you been? What are you doing to stay sane in this apocalypse? What does isolation taste like?
Since I last wrote
What have you been doing? What is your biggest ending/beginning/both?
When your words want to scream
I've been working on myself. On being more open. On being more vulnerable. For years, I've written short imagist poems and long-form fiction. I've added a layer between myself and what I write. Maybe I would let my protagonist say aloud or act out some of my fears, but I seldom put them in my own voice.
I can't do it that way any more.
Sometimes life hits you hard, abruptly, exposing all your blind spots. This artificial distance between myself and what I write is one of those blind spots. I'm working on changing that now.
I haven't been writing pretty, carefully crafted little snapshots lately. I still see beauty all around me. I still feel that the best way to capture those glimpses of the infinite is through words. But these days it isn't enough to write about the beauty and ignore the pain. I have to write it all. The universe has taught me that.
Sometimes, when you're trying to sing through the screams, it's better to take a deep breath and go hardcore.
Don't worry, I'll still sing. Just expect a lot more throat-grinding mixed in.