Category: Love
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Essay #38: signify
Step into a world where you matter. What does it look like? Who populates it? What’s it like to be cared for? cared about? Imagine: you are heard … acknowledged … visible. Do you have to fight for space? for food? for approval? for love? religion? Do you have to gird your loins and strap…
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Essay #37: thanks
My friend Anger came to call and I finally let her in. Turns out Shame had been shrouding her like a dense fog, blurring her edges, slurring her words. She was almost invisible. Acknowledge my feelings, said Anger, loud and clear now that Shame has evaporated. When I am ashamed to be angry, I cannot…
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Essay #36: patagonia
My father is going to Patagonia tomorrow, to build a bridge. Just like old times. When I was a kid, he worked for the federal Bureau of Public Roads, building bridges and roads in the mountains. I remember riding shotgun in a yellow-orange government truck, somewhere in California or Oregon or Washington. I remember evergreens…
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Essay #35: bat qol
“If it bothered Avery, it can’t continue.” –letter from a mother to Dear Abby about her daughter and possible sexual abuse, published 10/21/2011 Another mask smashed to the ground yesterday, taking a bottle of holy water with it. I made it a few years ago, after Emmett died – a white wolf-dog face with an…
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Essay #34: security
I never thought it was necessary – security. I thought it was a mirage, an impossibility. Amused and bemused when others thought it possible with locks and alarms and stocks and bonds. I was wrong. Here are some definitions, courtesy of msWord: the state or feeling of being safe and protected freedom from worries of…
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Essay #33: perspective
“What your father sees and hears is not what you see and hear.” –Terry Pratchett, Mort And vice versa. Consider the physical perspective: Dad is taller, so his eye-level is higher. We see different berries on the bush. Wheelchair-user Nancy Mairs wrote Waist-High in the World, which explores this very thing. Experience also molds perspective,…
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Essay #32: masks
Last October, I drove to Arcata, where my brother was living, to rendezvous with my father. I hadn’t seen him in 11 years. While I was gone, someone burgled my loft. They dumped out a duffel bag and filled it with art supplies, jewelry findings, and a wooden sewing box containing a rose-gold bracelet my…
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Essay #31: Elizabeth Kuehnoel
“I want to speak to god,” said the dark-haired woman, backstage after the show. I was dressed in crimson, with red gladiolus blossoms and white orchids in my hair. I had just sprinkled the audience with rose petals and performed “Can You Surf?” – a poem about god and love I’d adapted for a trio.…
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Essay #30: down days
Have you seen the George Clooney film, Up in the Air? His character travels year-round, home only 43 days out of 365. His family and co-worker give him grief because he doesn’t want to get married and/or have children. They tell him he’s too isolated, he must be lonely. But he isn’t lonely until he…
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Essay #29: restore
Restore: to bring back to or put back into a former or original state: renew; return ~Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary When I was a kid, I sang with brio, mimicked Flip Wilson, beat on the drums, banged on the piano, dressed up in costume, and put on plays and puppet shows. At one point…
words & art by shé 