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In one of my favorite books (There But For The), Ali Smith says “Winter makes things visible.” And here’s this from Ben Stewart: “This is the season for mystics, for those who search the stars and the sky for signs of hope and promise in the deep blue winter.”

I’ve been loving walking around in the minus-sign air. Purple sky, Tim Burton trees, pink-lit sugar cookie trees, dark beer, and that winter happy/sad tightness under the ribs. When the sun comes out, it’s not even a sun; it’s a sun-hole, and I love it.

I visited my family over Thanksgiving, including my grandma, who’s getting hospice care and has become very, very small. When I left her house, she held my face steady for a while and looked at me, saying she was memorizing my face, as if I were the one disappearing. We’re all carrying around this grief-rock in our bellies. She’s started wearing bright pink lipstick, and so have I.

I saw choreographer Osnel Delgado of Malpaso speak last week before his company’s performance at Northrop, and it was phenomenal, and I think I’ll write a separate post about it sometime. It was all to do with homesickness and the particular homesickness of the dancer performing in a large space. For now, here’s video of his dance “24 Hours and a Dog.” If you only have a little bit of time, zoom ahead to the 5-minute mark and watch the ensemble.

In writing news, I have a short essay about the 2012 Duluth flood published in The Collapsar today. And my essay “Unnatural Acts” about dance, injury, and grace was published in the Fall 2014 issue of The Normal School. The editors were kind enough to nominate it for a Pushcart, the issue has a bunny girl on the cover, and this essay is a big chunk of my heart, so it’s all-around lovely.

And I’m reading Edwidge Danticat’s Create Dangerously. It’s fantastic.