A peculiar stretch of November summer has faded into grey skies and rain. My mind is fragmented tonight, flicking around the room and batting at threads but unable to grasp any one thing. Story of my life, perhaps. But how can anyone concentrate when the news is filled with our president’s infantile attempt at a coup d’etat while the predictions of a scary winter are coming fast and true? Hospitals are reaching capacity in several states. Restrictions are returning to New York.
So I’m retreating into my old notebooks for a few hours, hunting for distraction. Maybe I need a reminder of what it felt like to write when politics and infections didn’t constantly tint my thoughts. I riffle through stray factoids that never found a home: Evolution is fastest in body parts used to attract mates or frighten rivals. Words that haunt the unconscious: Trilobites, moonfish, and gorgons. I scan the liturgical names of geological epochs like the Time of the Great Dying, or jotted phrases that I can no longer place: Light echoes from red supergiants. Eyes on stalks. How the word static implies fixture as well as chaotic noise.
