Backwards and in heels. Overweight and in pain. With a cold. In mourning for the news. Making the magical. Stinging from a rebuke. Sleep deprived. Making it to pick up. Late for the lesson. Out of blueberries. Emailing the teacher. Swabbing the nose. In yesterday, in tomorrow, in a decade. Just as hygienic. Just as…
Staring into the Vantablack Bagel
In “Fleishman is in Trouble,” Toby stares into the blacker-than-black Vantablack and Libby stares into the metaphorical Vantablack. It’s the blackest most terrifying black. Rachel spends a long time in the terror of the Vantablack. In “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” Joy and Evelyn stare into the everything bagel. We all stare into this terrifying…
This way madness lies?
In a bit in a fog. It hasn’t always been this way. Tasks are by the hundreds, a constant rate, no matter how many you do. What are they all for? There was a forest to these trees. There was a world that the forests were on. I think before things fit into categories, and…
Haunted atoms go to space
It bears remembering that we are just haunted atoms. Or more biologically, small mammals with programmed instincts. I used to find this thought disturbing. Now it seems more comforting. How can we expect to do all and be all and fix all and understand all the things? We have an imperative to try, to some…
Having a sad like a straw in the head
There’s a meme where someone says “I have a sad.” And then they talk about how their companion can help. I, too, have a sad. I feel it. I poke at it. I curse it and I wonder at it. It’s like when I skinned my knee badly and I was endlessly fascinated by the…
Under the surface… worthless without purpose? Or dancing donkeys?
Down below you are seemingly endless depths. First, your own body, below the first inch of which is too appalling to consider visually. Then dirt, filled with insects, mud, grime, and a fiery core. Below that? An inhospitable vacuum. That’s above you, too. There are depths that aren’t physical, as well. The astounding degree to…
Freeing a hell of a bird
A soul could be a bird. In “The Girl who Fell Beneath the Sea” by Axie Oh, the main character’s soul is a magpie, and I feel like mine could be some avian variety as well. I can feel it now, in fact. Fluttering madly in my chest, the ribs like cage bars. Such is…
Finding me in the mess: The Sandman and I just want our stuff back.
Am I myself without my stuff? Surely, the answer is yes, right? We reside somewhere in our minds in our brains in our bodies, and the outside world is just something with interact with to achieve our goals. However, I’m not so sure that is true, at least for me and the Sandman. I just…
The Everything Bagel isn’t Everything: Dealing with life’s meh
I’ve been going through it lately. A bad “it.” “It” can be a lot of things to different people, but “it”‘s are everywhere. I’m tired of “it.” Figuring out how to cope with “it” all has been a top priority for me, when I could figure things out at all. In my better moments, I…
A Redshirt’s Journey: How to hope when dreams fizzle
You are, quite possibly, a redshirt. As are we all. We all know about the Hero’s journey, I’ve blogged about it before and I’ve made a yoga flow about it. It sets the template for so many of our popular art forms. More or less: the hero pines for something, gets it, it’s good but not…