Some useful friction
Little did I know when I sent this newsletter back in July that it would be the last day of my life that I'd never broken a bone! I biked a mere seven miles of rural Wisconsin gravel roads before hitting a rut of loose rocks at an angle that put my body at odds with gravity. Consequentially I fractured my left clavicle, which had to be repaired with a hook plate that is still disrupting my strength and flexibility and keeping me off my beloved bicycles for an indeterminate number of months. I'm grateful I had friends to pick me up and bring me ibuprofen and ice packs immediately after the crash (hi, Dave, and thanks again for everything) and loved ones to take me to the ER and play "Sandstorm" at a respectful low volume in the post-op area because they know well what brings me joy when I’m suffering (hi, Chris, you’re the best).
And of course this is not a bikes and broken bones blog, it is a poems email. But both poems and healing take time and attention and so I'm writing into that useful friction. In between my prescribed physical therapy stretches this morning I was finishing Heather Christle's latest book, Paper Crown, delighting in the playful way time and idioms move in her poems. Here's one that I've come back to several times: I love how it brings the imagination of the adult speaker projecting feelings onto the sun next to their child's departure on their imaginary horse. Real “imaginary gardens with real toads in them” energy, how those shadows shift.
One of the guiding questions that Chris and I had in our Zine Lunch that seemed particularly useful was: What do you want to catalog so it won't disappear? I thought of things with life-or-death implications (public health information being purged from government websites) and less consequential ones (the shoebox of snapshots I've carried from apartment to apartment for decades, unlabeled by date or location). I thought of watching Nitrate Kisses, how emotional and wonderful it felt to see women who are likely no longer alive preserved in their intimacy. And I think imagination itself is something to catalog: that's why poems about shadows or pickles or being wrong as a charitable act make me feel a little looser and lighter, more capable, sometimes.
Take care, keep reaching out, keep making things and getting through.
Yours,
Erin
PS - If you're interested in more good questions to write from, the Zine Lunch archives pointed me to these.