An Interlude

And a hint of what's to come

I keep thinking I need to write it all down.

The swell and hush of cicadas in the yard.
The pink sky above the westward trail.
The humid midnight air in Palmer Square.

The branch of the redbud drooping across the path.
The chatter of cardinals in the birches that are rotting one by one.
The stillness of downed catalpas on the boulevard after a storm.

The dance of leafy shadows on the ceiling, a flickering, shimmering black and white film. while the stained glass casts its rainbows on the wall.

The parquet floors gritty with gravel and fur.
The spot by the sofa worn dark from restless years.
The busted gutter over the south windows, leaving its seasonal ice floe.
The mismatched linoleum cracking and seeping beside the stove.

The smell of the neighbor’s skunk weed.
The sight of the peonies flopped over in midsummer exhaustion,
The sound of the kids playing in the courtyard next door.
The taste of sweat running off my nose, box after box.
The feel of my feet aching, back tensing, heart breaking as I catch my breath and look up to the brilliant blue sky and wonder what it will look like in a new place on a new day.

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Thank you for indulging my terrible poetry!

Just popping in here to say that the move is done, we are out of Chicago, and I can report that the sky in Waukegan is pretty brilliant as well. It’s nice here. Calm. And even tho we’re still digging out from under boxes, things are resetting to a new normal.

Yesterday Sonya Huber and I turned in a draft of the manuscript for our collection of essays on Sinéad O’Connor to our editor at One Signal. Now titled “Nothing Compares To You: What Sinéad O’Connor Means to Us,” it should be out sometime next … spring? It’s been such an honor to work with this incredible array of writers, all of whom rose to the prompt — write about one Sinéad O’Connor song and connect it to a moment in your life — with a degree of skill, vulnerability, power, and talent that I’m honestly humbled to be charged with bringing their work to you. Seriously, when I had to sit down and write my own essay I had to get over some crippling feelings of inadequacy, because what was coming in was so damn good.

There are still some loose ends to tie up with that manuscript, but I’m finally able to move on to the next project, of revamping this newsletter. As you can see, there’s a new name, intended to signal a shift in focus. “Range of Motion” is a term I heard a lot as I went through cancer treatment, broken bones, OT, and PT over the past few years, and I’ve used it as a lens through which to also understand the expansion of agency and possibility that can occur at midlife and, in my case, in the aftermath of serious illness. Re-engaging with ballet and modern dance, along with my ongoing aerial training, has grounded me in my aging and fragile body in ways that feel powerful and revelatory.

Some people get religion after cancer, in other words, but I got this movement practice and it is giving life. While I am leery of overpromising (I learned the hard way as a journalist how dicey it can be to report on what people say they’re going to do), I am aiming for a mix of personal essays, memoir, and interviews, with a dash of practical how-to stuff. I’ve been loving Anna Maltby’s new newsletter “How to Move,” for example, an anti-diet newsletter about exercise, and I hope that “Range of Motion,” with its focus on expressive movement, can find a seat adjacent in the larger newsletter ecosystem.

I know there are some subscribers out there for whom this may not be what you signed up for. I won’t hold it against you if you opt out. But I’m also open to your suggestions! What would you like to hear from me in the months to come? Drop a note in the comments. I’d love to hear from you!

I’ll be back in a few more weeks, from a hopefully box-free office.

Martha