2019: no gentler than expected

This year, I stopped…

writing letters.
reading books.
writing stories.
going dancing.

I stopped.

But here are some things I did do:

I took the intensive one-week training known simply as Leader Week.
I took a summer leadership course.
I passed the Wilderness First Responder training.
I juggled a long-distance writing internship and a full semester’s class load.

And, friends, despite all they’d have you believe of knights and dragons, I set out on an adventure with Crusader, sword-and-flame side by side.

I’m still here. Still not sleeping. Still not giving up.

Words Snarled or Swallowed Back: Exploring Edmund Pevensie

Edmund Pevensie: brother, bully, traitor. Aslan died for his betrayal. Always my least favorite of the Pevensie kids, always the one I was a little uncomfortable with. Who likes Edmund, after all? The bitter tang of his betrayal carries over through the Narnia saga. But today I want to talk about Edmund of C. S. Lewis’s  The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in relation to his siblings – Edmund and Lucy, the first two Pevensies into the wardrobe; Edmund and Peter, the fraught relationship of brothers. Let’s talk about that long, gloomy hall where a boy stood and gave away his siblings for the promise of candy and a crown.

Continue reading “Words Snarled or Swallowed Back: Exploring Edmund Pevensie”

Wakeful Winter: a brief explanation of writers

What the writer says:

Wakeful here, we trespass!
Wakeful here, we walk a foreign world
pale-sky palace built not for us
best left to bloodless voices
warmthless wakeful wind-sprites
screaming down their waste.

What the writer means:

I’m COLD and TIRED and I want to be HIBERNATING.

Red Riding Hood, lost

I’ve been here before. You’ll make it safe through the woods if you stay on the path, that’s the rule, but there was never a path here in the first place. Dark branches tangle overhead and the trees are different this time around but the shadows are the same, thick and cloying and very very quiet. Continue reading “Red Riding Hood, lost”