And Now It's Almost Spring

I didn’t forget about this blog, this website. Or maybe I did—for a little bit, anyway. It’s always been a home for long-ago projects, for works-in-process, for nows. And right now, I’ve been quietly but regularly showing up online, between school and work and parenthood, popping in with weekly periphery prompts, revamping essays with a now-lens for the book I’m piecing together—those essays on modernity, nature, and connection.

And oh, this amazing thing just happened.

My pal and teacher, Brian Benson, passed along a few places to submit writing to—specifically, the micro kind, the very, very brief kind. One of them was this place called Six Sentences. I was drawn to the challenge of distilling something down, stripping a short piece about my friend Chris (who died in September, of all the cancers) into a few sentences. It was a puzzle, but also a hearty reconnection to who Chris was before all of the cancers.

And here’s the kicker: the editor of Six Sentences, Rob—a kindly soul, clearly—accepted the piece within two hours. A record-holder acceptance for me. I think it deserves some sort of trophy, because, as anyone submitting work knows, publishers can sometimes be maddeningly laggy (no fault of theirs, but true).

Topping it off, Rob then wrote a flash story in response to my website, this one—about selling alien doodles, about how meeting new mammals can get you outside more often.

You can read my six-sentence piece here.

Here I am, writing from the birch branches out back.

September, October, November...

On radio waves, I considered rainbows, the limitations of fish as a name for an entire species of non-fish, the mystery of holes, petunias, brambles, and dirt under fingernails.

I snuggled on the couch with my kiddo while eating popcorn, watching Ma and Pa, Half Pint, Mary, Jack, and Mrs. Olsen. I admired their pink bonnets against the blue sky and their computer-free existence and all those ambling walks into Walnut Grove.

One, two times a reading happened at Up Up Books. The first was to pay homage to a stick named Sean alongside Kevin Sampsell and Erica Berry. The second, which was last night, I read about undressing my heart with five other writers, including Brian Benson and Jules Ohman.

Rolling into the tail end of my first term in the Clinical Mental Health Counseling program at Prescott College.

In the fourth week of the Corporeal Writer’s workshop, where I’m writing into the guts and bones and cells. One of my very favorite people, Michael Nagle, is in the workshop as well. if you’re looking to be catapulted, read Michael’s The Minotaur.

Periphery sensory workshops are happening in December and January.

And in case you need a wellness nudge, here is a Periphery Prompt for those who need a little more idleness in their lives:

After sleeping, day or night, lie there.
Try not to rush to get up.
Try not to grab onto the noise, the stuff, the lists, the production, the reactions, the choking churn.
Lie there.
Wherever there is.
On a couch, in a bed, on a rug, on a tuft.
Lie there.
Absorb your horizontal body.
Rest your eyes on a corner, a window, a knob, a balled-up sock.
Listen to the whirl of a heater, a cat’s purr, the rev of a distant engine, all those birds.
Behold.
A radical nothingness.

Morning Sky - Felicity Fenton

Mary Edwards on Bachelard's Panty Drawer

Last week on Freeform Portland Radio, I had the decadent pleasure of interviewing one of my favorite human mammals, Ms. Mary Edwards, about her newest piece, "Everywhere We Are is the Farthest Place." The soundscape composition features field recordings of glaciers and oceanographic data taken above the 78th parallel in Svalbard. We also played sounds by some of her biggest muses including Susumo Yokota, Tim Hecker, Biosphere, Cortex, and more.

From Everywhere We Are is the Farthest Place, performed live at Epsilon Spires, Brattleboro VT, July 2024. Photo: Perri Lynch Howard