Creative Practices in Crisis

Erratic Weather & Making Art

PHOTO BY JESS DRAWHORN

Learn poems by heart….

Do calculations by hand….

Know that everything we have can be taken from us 

at any moment…. At any moment everything

we have can vanish in a cloud of smoke. 

ITALO CALVINO¹

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I have really struggled these past few months to write. I mean, I tried. I wrote most every day, sometimes for hours, on mutual aid, flood amnesia, sensory memory, a fall fire ban. But I couldn’t get anything to land. When I look back on my notes, it’s strange to see how every essay constitutes an entry in my growing archive of erratic weather. In the time that’s transpired from my first missive in early October to today, my community in the Northeast has weathered drought, fierce winds, eerily warm weekends, sudden snow, biting cold. 

This “block” doesn’t matter much: my writing will not save the world, not even my own. It’s a practice, something I do in part because I love it, and in part because the very fact of it builds skills, like stamina and surrender, that radiate into my work. 

So I think my frustration with this ongoing block—and my frantic desire to push past it— is reflective of something much bigger.