I’ve logged more experience than most with simplicity and the complexity you discover inside simplicity, minimalism and asocial behavior, endurance and landscape.
Here is the truth: I think some deep wisdom inside me (a) sensed the stress, (b) was terrified for me, and (c) gave me something new and hard to focus on in order to prevent me from lapsing into a despair coma — and also to keep me from having a jelly jar of wine in my hand.
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Jackie Shannon Hollis lives with her husband in Portland, Oregon, where their cat, Fred, often sits at the windowsill and looks out at the cedar trees while she writes. Her work has appeared in Rosebud, the Rambler, High Desert Journal, and Oregon Literary Review, and she has completed a novel, for which she is seeking an agent. A different version of her essay in this issue, called “Subtitles,” was published in May 2005 in the online journal MARY.
You are not ashamed. You are stunned: By this new thing that he left behind, that spread through you like blood in those hours he was with you. By how easy it is to die.