that time i dangled off a mountain during a lightning storm
and other stories from my trip to Oman
Bro how is it December already, and where can I lodge protest against this warp-speed passage of time?? I’ve been spending most days working hard, running from thing to thing, and to my own glad surprise, stumbling across joy, again again again—in clutches of sun, in friends stopping by, in the perfume of balsam fir in my small living room, in protest, in dancing, in holding a friend’s baby and watching her face metamorphose from baleful gravity to a tiny-toothful grin. It’s that latter sensation of opening, of softening, of letting in the world, that I’m in pursuit of, these days.
I’ve been revisiting the resolutions I formulated for myself at the end of last year, choosing what to move over to 2024, checking off the ones that stuck. One that didn’t: completing Miss Novel #2. I’m telling myself that it’s alright. If you’re new to this newsletter, I wrote about resolutions and practice here.
Finally, below you’ll find my first foray into travel writing, an essay for AFAR Magazine about revisiting my childhood home of Oman after sixteen years away. Thanks to AFAR and Katherine LaGrave for working with me on the piece. Reading it again I’m struck by the gravitational force of place, even place that does not claim us. How it shapes us. How we can mourn its loss. How some of us can return to our places of origin and ancestry and others are forbidden this. How place can persist in us, its half-life both invisible and long.
Anyway, take a look.
A couple of bonus photos to accompany said read:
Take care of yourselves and yours,
xx
STM