Life has been full lately. Wildfires. Mom life.
I haven't been able to focus on writing in a while.
The only thing I've written in the last ten days is this poem:
Too much noise.
The world crumbles.
It burns,
Rages,
Weeps.
Breaking cages.
Rattling keeps.
In the trees,
I seek peace.
Seeds grow in darkness.
We are whole
At the heart.
Before the wildfires started, I was making wicked progress in revisions on a couple of different manuscripts. Yay!
Then the heat wave hit. We had record highs for a week. A town three hours away from us was engulfed in fire, 95% of it burning to the ground.
This all happened at the same time that a pipeline burst and there was a giant hole of fire in the Gulf of fucking Mexico.
It blows the mind, you know?
Survival mode isn't very conducive to writing, in my experience. So, I've been playing guitar, and hiking, and hanging out in my backyard with rocks and crystals and a cup of tea.
And doom scrolling, of course. Refreshing community pages and fire maps all day and all night.
I find gratitude amidst uncertainty, amidst packing and re-packing the bags and bins that line the entry way and living room of my house, ready to load into the truck and trailer if we have to go. Hopefully, they'll sit there all summer, unneeded.
If you look on a map, there are a lot of fires, but there's a lot more wilderness that is forested.
Our valleys are green.
Our mountains are beautiful.
I try to focus on that.
Not on the clearcuts, which are far more prolific than the fires. I don't know how people are still cutting down trees when they're burning, when we need them more than ever...
I envision rain.
A week of rain.
Gentle,
Calm,
Deep.
Cool.
Lush.
Green trees, protected.
Mother Earth, respected.
🌲🌳🌿💦
Note: This is a personal update more than an author update, but it's also an example of using writing as therapy. I've posted this in the Hive Book Club as an offering of how one author processes the intensity of life.
Stay safe out there. 💖
