In 2020, I read palliatively. Dozens and dozens of inspirational fiction novels by an author first introduced to me when I was a child by my now-many-years-gone grandmother. The scrawlings left for me by my kids on their bedroom chalkboard, or folded-to-miniscule post-its hidden on my pillowcase, or stuck to my bedside lamp. The stickers …
Turns in Its Spaces
I use walks to make claims on things. These claims are silent and hospitable--they take without taking away. They claim in a manner that allows many claimants and no disputes. They claim in the same way that we claim a sunset, or an impressive monument, or any other large or small delight in the landscape …
Addition and Preservation
In 2018, I went on a solo hiking trip to Moab, Utah. I went because at that moment in my life I needed to understand something about myself that I didn't feel I could without it--something about the truth and validity of my personhood, something about who I was, which I hoped this new context …
Resolution
It's a funny thing about me, in that I make use of the starting line of the new year while simultaneously rolling my eyes at its arbitrary power. New things, though, are useful organizing mechanisms--just don't ask me to entirely eschew the part of me that follows whim and instinct. (That Jackie painted an unplanned …
Rather the Ritual
When I sat down to write yesterday's post, I put on a record, Wild Alee by Talos, a fringe indie selection of swirly electronica that I bought in 2019, probably on one of my ritualized walks through Broad Ripple to Indy CD and Vinyl. I put on the record because I was trying to make …
What 2020 Taught Me
Today is the beginning of Writerly and the beginning of daily blogging, and I am shaking off the rust that's settled into my writerly hinges, hoping that the mechanization built in my decades of writing practice will remember its structure and return to fluidity and motion with a little push. The last time I blogged …
Goodbye, and Again, and Again
I was reading Joan Didion in the bathtub the other morning, reading the essay “Goodbye to All That” which I hadn’t read before but the title of which I was inspired by, almost four years ago, when both the calendar year and my marriage were ending and I was trying to sit in a place …
A Resolution Revisited: The 2018 #songoftheday Playlist
First of all, cheers to the fact that I actually managed to keep a New Year's resolution. *clink* What was that resolution, exactly? To select, and post on Facebook, as well as aggregate into a Spotify playlist, a song for each day of 2018. I can't say I always posted each song perfectly within the …
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Increased Magnification
My writing group met up tonight after a too-long hiatus. We tried to figure out when we’d last met but couldn’t grasp it, the memory. We said things to each other like, It was at the Tick Tock. I think it was cold? Is there outerwear somewhere in this memory? We didn’t know too much …
Closed Room
How do you write about something you don't want to talk about? Except, you DO desperately want to talk about it. Because not talking about it means you have barred the door to a room of your life. Barred the door and tried to walk away and forget about it. But-- Say the door you …
Jackie Lutzke 