You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall. Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any miseries, or any depressions? For after all, you do not know what work these conditions are doing inside you.”  Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

Never knowing exactly what I will say, I sit down with a picture and write.  First, I look my exhaustion squarely in the eye, but usually let it slither back to the shadows.  No one wants to read about how tired you are, Brenna.  Then I wonder if I have a story to tell.  This week, in fact, is full of stories, but they are not for telling.  The words and their events swoop past each other like spectres haunting the daylight.  I know what has happened but it has to stay invisible.

So then I pull back further.  This is the view I like, seeing where the edges of what is personal seem to melt into a bigger notion.  Maybe I like that grandiose feeling of having something to say about Life In General.  I can tell you a thing or two, you know.  But sometimes I just need to get far away, to see for myself, “I have been through something.”  And get just a little farther back still, where there is room to wonder, “What’s next?”  And then to find another edge.