Is this a turning point, which is to say a breaking?
Nearly everyone I know is slogging through a bog of exhaustion, mind and body weighted with worry, wondering: how to live in pandemic, in propaganda, in deceit and hate, in flames and flood, in hurricane and heat?
I wish this were metaphor.
There's a lot of why bother because to be bothered is to be worn away. Aren't we all just so tired?
What’s your strategy, what keeps you going? I keep doing the things I know best: eat, sleep, read, write, soak. Bath as balm. Book as solace. Food as drug. Writing as necessity.
We are the secretaries of the heart, writes Susanne Dubroff.
And so we write — letters, lists, poems and dreams. Writing against clamor, out of sludge, into silence. I keep writing, to you, to the gone and going, to no one and every one. Hear me, hear me, here in the corner huddled, here in the door waving, here in the car moving forward in the only way I can.
Words are paths to emotional sovereignty, writes David Harris.
I keep reading. Looking for wisdom and path, for distraction and delight, for you in the galley, in the gutter, in the page’s last dash. There is a tap-tap-tapping in my head: keep on, keep on.
Eyes blur, pen drags, night arrives early. And yet we write on and on. Like breath, we cling and clutch and reach for more. Words hang on necks, creak through hearts, slip through hands. These words, these words, blanket and balm, heat and life, rest and renewal.
These words — all we have & everything we need.
Why Bother?
Because right now there is someone
Out there with
a wound in the exact shape
of your words.