updates from hell
The essay I wrote in the aftermath of our daughter’s full-term still birth was recently accepted for publication by Denver Quarterly. I am grateful to the editors there for giving the piece a place to land, to nest. It’s an essay in two parts: the first part I wrote during the pregnancy, the second during the early grief following her death.
Relatedly (in my mind at least), my debut story collection Slight came out last week. My publisher’s announcement about it can be read here, and the book itself can be purchased here. The stories were written between 2022 and 2023, and back then I had a lot to say about them. I loved to talk about how they operated, where they came from, what made them so unsettling to readers. I saw them, in part, as stories about mundane cruelty—the kind we accept (and enact) as the price of living. But after experiencing the ultimate cruelty of our child’s death, I no longer know what to say about them. Except that in writing the stories I tried to look my fears in the face, and then my fears came true.
I’ve recently been learning tarot—specifically, the Tarot of Marseilles recovered by the avant-garde filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky. His book on tarot is strange and fascinating and a little bit fucked up, if you’re interested. For the beginner, Jodorowsky recommends pulling one card to answer one question. So today, I asked the deck “What is my strength, as a writer?” To my horror, I drew the Devil card. Then quickly consulted Jodorowsky for an explanation.
He writes that the card is “always a good omen for questions concerning creativity." The Devil dwells in the night of the deep subconscious, and lights the torch that brings order to darkness. And if the Devil spoke, Jodorowsky believes this is what he would say:
On an obsidian ladder I make my way to the feet of the Creator to present him the power of transformation as an offering. Yes: before the divine impermanence I fight to freeze instinct, to fix it in place like a fluorescent sculpture. I illuminate it with my awareness and cling to it, until it bursts into a new divine work, the infinite universe an immeasurable labyrinth that slips through my claws, a prey that escapes from between my teeth, traces that vanish like subtle perfume.
All else aside, I think the “instinct” descriptor suits Slight well. It’s a record of a very real, ominous instinct. Something other than fiction. More: animal.
