StoryMusings
The Clock, The Coffee, The Decision
Did I have enough time to take a good shower and dry my hair before the call? If not, was I willing to go through the video call with wet hair? [Side note: I’m not one of those women who looks cute and dewy after stepping out of the shower. My face gets flushed from rosacea, and my stringy hair makes me look rather like a drowned rat. In other words, I generally try to avoid having people see me in such a state.] If I didn’t take a shower then, was I willing to spend the rest of the day feeling gross? [Another note: This is the pandemic, so you know, it had indeed been, um, a whiiiile since the last shower.]
The Garlic Epiphany & My Superpower
What emerged was an essay, “The Garlic Epiphany,” comprised of short reflections on a world without him, a world where his voice was silenced, how I struggled to feel alive on some days spent stretched out for too many hours on the couch he’d left to me. The title came from the ending where I was struck with the very sensory experience of standing at the stove, stirring garlic in a pan, the pungent odors and crackling sounds washing over me…
The Curving, Carved, and Curated Path
A spiritual walk with grief in some ways is, and in some ways is not, like these paths. A walk with grief, especially at the beginning, is more like being totally off the grid, mucking around, with no discernible path at all.
The Pandemic “Play” List
Here are some of my favorite ways that I’ve kept going–what I’ve done to keep myself occupied, reflections on my best and hardest moments, and what I hope to carry with me into next year when we emerge into another new reality…
Nostalgia, Purpose, and Change
As the election season has dragged on this autumn, I’ve found myself falling back in time to that time four years ago when the wheels of change were starting into motion for me. The actual week of the election I was still trying to juggle my full-time job as the managing director of a dance company while also conducting a storytelling residency at Virginia Tech.
Leading Them to Drink
I would never buy a bottle of water.
Many people who know and love me recognize that I have this kind of extreme hangup about environmental waste, carry my own water bottle pretty much everywhere. Given that water in this country is often free and clean, I always wonder why more people don’t insist on doing the same. The answer, of course, is that we’ve been marketed out of understanding and believing it.