To Move Is To Exist
All matter is in motion. That's the first thing to know. Jot that down on my gravestone.
Edification – Newsletter #109 – April 17, 2023
Dear Friend,
All matter is in motion. There’s nothing real that isn’t moving. To move is to exist.
For the past couple of months, these basic facts have asserted themselves with gale-force in my life. Mostly in good ways. Mostly billowing the sails in directions I need to go.
Thought I should send out a newsletter with a few updates, and a couple questions for you.
First, I have a literary agent! In case you haven’t seen me pulling my own suspenders all over social media, I am so proud to have Lauren Albury of Holloway Literary in my corner. She has been patiently working with me as I do revisions on my (fingers crossed) debut novel. Meticulous, ambitious, and passionate about literature – she’s everything I could wish for in an agent.
Second, while I’m polishing that aforementioned novel, I’ve been churning up another (my fourth?!?!?). I’ve tried ignoring her but she won’t leave me alone! All my books are adorable lost kittens. She followed me home; what am I supposed to do, let her not have the best food in my fridge? She needs a name! She just wants to sleep on my pillow!
Third, my family has been in the middle of a move to Virginia. For the last month we’ve been living out of two suitcases. We’re currently staying in a basement apartment near a lake with public access walking trails and a playground. It’s been a lifesaver to get out every day and observe nature. Blue herons, turtles with moss growing on their shells, a little island where the birds flock up every evening.
My priority while we seek permanent residence somewhere has been keeping the kids in a routine, eating healthy, and enjoying some educational enrichment. Home is where the coloring books are.
We’ve been to the beach several times, mostly on cool days, to hunt shells and sea glass and cool pebbles. It’s been incredibly— Restorative? I’m not sure what is being “restored,” exactly, but the little ghost crabs keep busy with the grains of sand falling into their holes. It’s a constant restoration process out here. It’s been incredible. A human being could get used to this.
My recent poetry has been preoccupied with the ocean, naturally. Incorrigible poets and their rough seas. All that churn, reminding me of the motion of the cosmos.
In publication news, I’m honored to have a nonfiction essay published as an Editor’s Pick in Litro Magazine. Called “Year Three,” this piece is kind of a deep bucket. I wrote it in a big pour of emotion last summer, grieving for my dad and about all the ways our life has changed since the onset of the pandemic. I talk about raising toddlers, grappling with nightmares and perimenopause, the wedge that Covid has driven into my family, and the decision my husband and I wrestled with to move away.
In Year Three of the pandemic, my dad will die and then I’ll stop dreaming he does.
Again and again, my dad develops in Polaroid contrasts, dies in Kodachrome blues. Coming home the back way, he rolls the truck down the ravine. He slides off the barn roof and ragdolls over the tractor. He has a heart attack as he’s welding at the machine shop and the line moves on with mechanical detachment.
In my dreams, my dad’s mustache is still dark the way it was when I was a child. But I’m not there, either as a child or an adult, to help him. Scenes are presented in a fixed view, not quite full-color but not black-and-white, like a worn VHS tape replaying events on a monitor.
Each time I wake up in the throes of a hot flash, soaked in sweat and disturbing my two toddlers who sleep on either side of me on our mattress on the floor. Mark, sleeping on another mattress pressed against ours, reaches without waking to tuck the younger boy under his arm.
I know my nightmares are about the virus. My dad’s going to catch this thing. People I love are going to die.
In the week since this essay has been out in the world, it is striking how many readers wrote privately to me to thank me. To thank me for writing about the pandemic from a zero-Covid point-of-view! Thanking me for saying hard things. For expressing my grief and despair and frustration – and anger and betrayal, it’s true – when so many others feel unable to do so.
Why aren’t there a thousand essays airing all these feelings? Discourse over the pandemic has gotten very quiet lately, hasn’t it. We’re supposed to pretend it’s over.
Oh, I know. Believe me, my mother-in-law never stops reminding me in between her coughing fits.
To move is to exist.
That’s really all. My life’s turning inside out – right-side out. Hopefully what has looked so long like a tangle of threads is turning over to show the design of all this weaving work. Life’s rich tapestry and all that.
Oh, I had a couple of questions:
Social media’s a big honkin’ mess. Where are you at?
Do you like Substack’s “Notes”? (I haven’t had a moment to fiddle with them but am willing to try if the interest is there.)
Talk soon,
Edie
Congratulations on finding a good agent (her good luck to have found YOU!) and good luck with the move. I was wondering where you and the family were looking to put down new roots. Keeping the whole gang of you in my atheist prayers! <3
Congrats on the literary agent!!! I sense it’ll feel good to finally get settled. It can be grueling being on the road constantly. Even when you’re sightseeing and enjoying where you’re going, like in a foreign country, it can be a drag, and when you’re not, yikes. 😊