What Rick said. Plus: Your Substack is among fifteen or so I get, maybe a few more, and they're all by writers and yours is the most consistently well-written--not just typed but edited,, honed, listened to, etc. Please don't tell me you just wing it off the top of the head--I'd find that terribly depressing. There is, as well, the wonderful sandbagging of the reader, vis-a-vis "tick." It's a good example, in miniature, of how book titles sometimes sandbag us--for instance, when way deep into the novel you realize that Sophie does, in fact, have to make a choice.
After reading "Tick Tick Tick" I find myself, unexpectedly, laughing at the weirdness of eclipses and the fact that crows are upset at having two mornings on the same day (which I think is very sensible of them) and the things we see yet don't see. I suppose my laughter was relief and joy. Thanks for taking me along on this adventure.
OMG. Beyond the fact that I just loved this gorgeous essay, I related completely to the reality of managing health post-cancer diagnosis. (I didn’t share via email, but my last Substack entry includes a semi-parallel accounting, only without the poetry of yours.)
What Rick said. Plus: Your Substack is among fifteen or so I get, maybe a few more, and they're all by writers and yours is the most consistently well-written--not just typed but edited,, honed, listened to, etc. Please don't tell me you just wing it off the top of the head--I'd find that terribly depressing. There is, as well, the wonderful sandbagging of the reader, vis-a-vis "tick." It's a good example, in miniature, of how book titles sometimes sandbag us--for instance, when way deep into the novel you realize that Sophie does, in fact, have to make a choice.
Does one say, "Hang in there!" to an aerialist?
Hang in there!
After reading "Tick Tick Tick" I find myself, unexpectedly, laughing at the weirdness of eclipses and the fact that crows are upset at having two mornings on the same day (which I think is very sensible of them) and the things we see yet don't see. I suppose my laughter was relief and joy. Thanks for taking me along on this adventure.
How did I miss this! It’s so beautiful and you found a way to describe the shadows. Fringed.
OMG. Beyond the fact that I just loved this gorgeous essay, I related completely to the reality of managing health post-cancer diagnosis. (I didn’t share via email, but my last Substack entry includes a semi-parallel accounting, only without the poetry of yours.)
Thinking of you as you approach your scans. ✨✨
This was lovely. Thank you. We watched from a boat in Lake Erie. Sun time and moon time coming together. Tick, tick, tick.
Your post reminds me of Frost:
"And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky
Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night."