When feeling unmoored, it helps to light incense and read a few pages of Clint Smith’s poetry
Then to toss a large pile of laundry into the washing machine then take a shower further depleted the funk.
Earlier today, damnyouautocorrect decided to write biscuits
As I sought to write vicissitudes
It turns out that s does not come before c in that noun
Vicissitudes (noun): 1) a change or variation occurring in the course of something. 2) interchange or alteration, as of states or things. 3) vicissitudes, successive, alternating or changing phases or conditions, as of life or fortune; ups and downs. 4) regular change or succession of one state or thing to another. 5) change; mutation; mutability.
Vicissitude (noun): 1) variation or mutability in nature or life, especially sucessive alternation from one condition or thing to another. 2) a variation in circumstance, fortune, character, etc.
The weekly vicissitude between adjacent towns, the rhythm of delivering priceless cargo gets easier than it was 3 years ago. Soem behaviors have become fixtures while old notions of what is proper, kind, or appropriate have disappeared or disintegrated.
Unmoor (verb, used with object): 1) to loose (a vessel) from moorings or anchorage. 2) to bring to the state of riding with a single anchor after being moored by two or more.
The washer is quiet but I heard no click releasing the lid–but there is the final cycle, followed by the unlatching
Among the stunning lines inside Clint Smith III’s Above Ground (published in 2023 by Little, Brown, & Company) are:
- You can still mourn the damage done by a storm
even if you stood on the shore and saw it coming - I think about how difficult it is for any of us to
admit that we’re not who we used to be. - Your life is only possible because of his ability
to have walked through this country on fire
without turning into ash. - I was born onto a sheet of pwer and became a citizen of a lie.
Expedience (pg 65), Cartography (pg 60), Roots (pg 25), and Lines in the Sand (pg 37), respectively.
washing dishes: a father’s glimpses 