a return

Back when I hit the pause button on this blog in January 2020, I had no clue what the months to follow would bring. My very last post, a late 2019 draft I never bothered making public, was an interrogation of the phrase “on the brink” and my own muscle memory in times of crisis. The last thing I actually published, back in December 2015, was a note of longing for a more stable, more still, more rooted life following years of constant movement. I had been grieving. I was tired and felt disconnected from so much. Several years and three major international moves later, I have at last arrived at stillness. I have houseplants, some of them fussy, a long lease in my name, and about a third of my books – liberated from long-term storage – now crowd the shelves in this sun-soaked apartment. Just last year I hung a beautiful painting by the Haitian artist Maxan Jean Louis on my wall, gifted on a studio visit in 2013. It took me the better part of a decade to give it a proper home.

I hit pause on freelance magazine writing some years ago, too. Did a stint in documentary, then radio, then quit both to start a PhD. But all this time of barely writing in public, of social media repulsion and decay, of not having a space to think aloud, has left me feeling a different kind of disconnect. So, I’m clearing the dust. Long live the blog. The blog is back.