Greetings from a maze of cardboard boxes as I rest my back against the bare wall of my now-empty apartment in Cambridge, Massachusetts. My forehead pulses with fatigue. My dry fingers are taped with Band-Aids. I feel like I have not sat down here, or anywhere, in a week. I’m grateful for this rare opportunity to pause. My mind buzzes with anxiety and fear of loss while my heart skips with joy and excitement for what is to come.
Here be dragons, hic sunt dracones. Painted on the far edge of medieval maps, artists placed dragons, sea monsters, and other lurking beasts that they believed existed in the wild unknown.
I’m still holding out for dragons, but life has offered me its own kind of magic and danger in the territory of my lived experience. This, unlike a flattened map, casts itself in many directions, shapes, and textures. As I reflect on the past twelve years I’ve spent in this city, in the place where Exponent II was born fifty years ago, I’m thinking about choices, coincidences, and change. If I would have told my younger self all that would unfold for me in this chapter of my life, she would struggle to believe it.
Is there anything so mysterious as our own precious lives?
Among the boxes, piecing together my life after four years of upheaval, I am still struggling to believe it. Is there anything so mysterious as our own precious lives?
I am no genre snob. I devour every story I can get my hands on, no matter where I find truth and beauty. But as an author of both memoir and novels, I can honestly say that — more often than not — reality is stranger than anything I could possibly invent. And if you are still in doubt about that statement, keep reading: this issue is ripe with proof that reality is a peculiar thing. The art, interviews, poems, features, and essays offer a dazzling array of perspectives on this theme.
this issue is ripe with proof that reality is a peculiar thing
We see a love story so implausible it could only be real in Cynthia W. Connell’s essay, while in Myla Godbout’s piece, we see a life posing as a love story when, in fact, abuse is the horrible reality. Tia Thomas unpacks a shocking turn on her mission while confronting the too-real problem of gaslighting while Ashley Mansfield Hoth describes the sensation of a rare health crisis (and the long-term effects of something like being struck by lightning) on her mission. Kathryn Ott finds a spiritual boost in an unexpected lesson outside of our faith community, Kathryn Paul follows the spirit in surprising directions, and Aisling “Ash” Rowan contemplates mortality through a sobering tour of tarot cards. In a similar vein, the heartbreak and coincidences in R.A.Davis’s essay extend well beyond the boundaries of any made-up narrative.
We hope you especially appreciate the humor found in this collection of work. Sometimes, in this strange, wild life, we can’t help but laugh. Because what else can we do? Rosemary Fiala Davidson’s essay shows us a resilient (and very pregnant) narrator who stalls a car on the Bay Bridge while people-pleaser Amanda B. Erdmann rescues herself from being trapped by a refrigerator.
As editors, we always try to balance pieces to host a number of perspectives and subjects. But when we got not one, but two essays about furry primates with attitudes, we knew we had to publish both. What are the chances? In their essays, Kyra N. Krakos and Amanda Waterhouse tell us all about their encounters and what those battles taught them about themselves.
Stay safe out there, everyone. As these contributors show us, it is a weird world. Thank you, as always, for witnessing. May you witness the strange beauty of your own life in return. Let me know if you find a dragon.
Photo by Kadarius Seegars on Unsplash