Evensong I (12 December 2023)

 I write from a closet in New York City.

In my mind it’s October 2023 but the calendar tells me it’s 12 December. Since mid-September, when I returned to New York, there has been an unsteady suturing of days and nights and places: New Haven and Queens and the West Village and Morningside Heights and Grand Central Station and Staten Island

and Princeton
and Philly
and Bay Shore.

The times and places form a puckering seam.

There are remnants of the recent past I’m stitching into a new present. There are fibers too tattered and frayed to be anything more than a decorative gesture of what used to be. Little flags of the former life.

I fly the colors of truce.

In 2020, like many others, I lost my job to CoVid-19 cutbacks. I worked in the university system for 10 years creating international education programs and building relationships for study abroad programs.

In 2021, Hurricanes Ida and Henri damaged my home. I financed the repair and, having not yet secured a new source of income, sold my property to pay off the financing. I told my teenage daughter that we would take the money and start over.

But first I was going to South America to write and research my next project.

Scheduled to return in late May 2022, I received a message the morning of May 13 that there was an emergency at home. That I needed to return at once. My daughter had an accident; she did not survive.

I’ve been writing everything down because I don’t understand the land of my life now. So much has changed; everything that was is now something else. I am relearning who and where and what and how. The purpose of this blog is to document the documenting.

What is an Evensong? From the Classic fm blog: “Evensong is a church service that’s traditionally held every day as the sun goes down, marking the passing of another day in faith.”

Marking the passing of another day in faith.

I’m not experiencing faith in a religious convention. Faith is the ability to make it through a day, marking the passing by writing it down. Faith is writing.

I’m grateful for the warm, quiet space to rest. Even in the void, comfort comes from stillness.

I fly the colors of surrender.