Letter from away

Sunset in Amherst, VA, today is twenty-four minutes later than in Bloomfield, NJ.

*

"I noticed you left your lights on in your studio the past couple of nights."
"I must have forgot."

I didn't forget. I thought I’d be more likely to come back after dinner, if a lamp-lit room awaited me.

*

A writing residency is not a vacation and it's not a retreat, but it is a kind of detox, a place of recovery.

You do not become a different person just because you decamp to the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains for a month. At the same time, once you are here, you cannot escape yourself.

*

The despair of the writer is different, separate, from the despair of the narrator.

The writer herself is in despair almost exclusively at night when doubt says: This is a very thin soup of a book.

By day, the writer thinks she might in fact have something special if she can only tolerate the unknown a little longer (where the quantity of "a little longer" is also unknown).

By day, the writer is drinking more water and eating more vegetables than she does at home. When she walks, the writer moves her arms all around, as if she is conducting the chorus of cardinals, Carolina wrens and Carolina chickadees. Without the weight of the phone in her pocket – without the weight of the phone in her room? – she thinks she may take flight.

It's raining today. All week the snow has been melting, the temperature broke sixty. Where the bright snow persists, it indicates shade, its opposite.

ABOUT

I make Divinity School from scratch without AI. The writing and the photos here are all my work, always. Thank you for reading, please share near and far, and upgrade to a paid subscription if you can swing it!

Divinity School • a letter every Sunday at sunset • if you’re always looking, after some time you’ll have seen

NEWSY STUFF

I'm writing at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA) February 9 through March 10. It is a privilege and a joy to be here! Thank you, VCCA staff and all the fellows, for your company at dinner, and your inspiring work.

JUNCO AND WOLF, a story inspired by my year studying in Moscow, is forthcoming in Issue No. 33 of A Public Space. Stay tuned for a pub date and order link.

Free but required RSVP is live for the April 1 (new date) launch party for SEARCH WORK: A Collective Inquiry into the Job Hunt, edited by Rachel Meade Smith (OR Books, 2026), available for pre-order now. My essay is in the book so YES I WILL sign your copy. You can buy the book at the event.