Happy Friday, y’all. It’s story time.
I thought about reading you The Velveteen Rabbit, or The Wind in the Willows. Maybe soon. But for now, just a brief real-time missive from the road (jump to about :3:30 if you wanna skip the chitchat and get right to the reading)—you’ll note that after I tell you a bit about this wild month, I refer to it as “November”—because after nearly four months of near-nonstop trekking around, chasing the tail of this story or that, golly I’m discombobulated. So while you may not need a quiet story, I do; and I thank you for allowing me to share this one with you.
The piece I’m reading in this video is an essay called “The Dress Form,” originally published in AGNI a few years ago.
In the coming weeks, I’ll tell you more about where I’ve been and what I’ve seen, whom I’ve met and what stories they’ve told; I’m circling around something I want to say about strangers, and about silence, about hotels and diners, and about how we orient ourselves—whether by coordinates in space or dates in time, by the point on the map to which we return and return or the people who feel like home.
And I’ll be back with that next week. Thank you for being with me on this wild ride.
xoM
Letter from a Former Life