Skip to main content

Irresolute

 


There are no resolutions for 2022. Instead, there's just beginning again, on top of a pile of half-done or barely begun drafts, with the idea that some things should be finished. This is the "new normal" after the pause.  

Normally, I'm ready to take down the decorations the day after New Year's and start that list of projects that I will definitely find a way to finish this year. I'd stack myself a TBR full of books that I've been meaning to read ever since I encountered them but before I actually started to read them. This year...this year I've spent the past several days compiling a list of all the pieces of writing I actually completed in 2021. Blog posts. Instagram poetry. Monthly bulletin boards. Zines. 


What if I'm not a finished kind of person? What if I'm the kind of person who enjoys hole-punching blog posts and treating them like a school project? Why haven't I been doing this for the past couple of years, tracking the shift and sway of stories that I work on through the seasons? I journal among their notes. Is the story or the journal the point?

Will I ever finish the chapbook compiling my 2020 poems or is it good enough that it lives in a similar folder, ready for the editing hand that might never appear? 

I'm not sure what I want to accomplish this year. There is a story that started out in a fantasy cliché (people meeting in a tavern) that might become something. Taverns feel so much more dangerous now. There are bears and not-wizards and caterpillar fairies that cost the main character her job (so far, it's been like rolling a piece of sticky-tape through the odds and ends of old ideas) and there will be a chicken companion and a fairy who might have once been a drop of blood and I don't know what else. Are there going to be giant, world-eating terrors? No. Who wants to walk through giant, world-eating terrors? (Then again, who can avoid it as  we walk past storefronts both empty and full of a consuming narrative that has already eaten itself into your soul, just like the worms that make jumping beans leap?) If 2022 becomes a folder wherein this plot wanders stark through my own days, bumping against what the dogs are doing (Merlin is sleeping, Arthur is sitting in James' office watching for his return from his booster shot) and what the weather and the backyard is creating that day, then that's probably fine. 

Worth, at the very least, a second read. 

-- Chrissa 



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

To Blue Fields Far Below

 Sharing with The Sunday Muse #228 , The Fashionable Twenties.  A sycamore fairy sits crosslegged in the road Dragons swim toward smooth hills above the storms Vines embrace the telephone poles  Someone washed the blue skies and she knows  It's time to dare the salty foam It's time to wade through the eternal fields' folds And gather golden apples for home.  Hoping this finds you with space to daydream and a good book in which to wander. Working on turning last week's prompt into a longer piece, as I found myself intrigued by the idea of tea in the garden as combat. Social situations are not my forte. As it's still Spider September, there will be a chihuahua-sized jumping spider that is none too happy about anything but hunting squirrels (that's for you, Mom).  -- Chrissa
6 comments
Read more

Once Upon a Future Past

  Sharing with The Sunday Muse #204 . It's too far in the afternoon, I thought but evening ran behind me dragons, demons, and the sleeping world; afraid to turn, to wake me. Power needs its horror stories, its ghosts. It's too far in the afternoon, I thought but evening followed close; a fantasy of goodness, where the gold is always covering bones. Power needs its fairy tales, its witches. It's too far in the afternoon, I thought but evening treads my hem, like an army from the dragon's teeth and all the lies therein. -- Chrissa
14 comments
Read more

Flagrant

  Sharing with The Sunday Muse #217. Come be part of the conflagration. :)  Oh, they called the mob to celebrate But only the fire heard They called the mass to congregate But only the dry grass bowed A conflagration Called to prayer Hungry for light Hungry for air Oh, they called the mob celebrate Wearing flames in their hair They called the mass to congregate Faceless in the burning air.  Greetings and salutations. I'm not sure what to say--we're not celebrating the 4th this year (not that I'm prepared to cede one holiday to the authoritarian idiots in charge of our state, but our grass is still dry from the heat and we have a dog terrified of fireworks...so we're celebrating by bunkering down and watching Howling 2  at the gleefully deranged suggestion of my sibling) and otherwise I've turned our dead corn plants into the basis for this year's Camp NaNo project...it's turning into a weird year, the kind of year where I'm reading more horror than norma...
7 comments
Read more