Reentry Meditation - Backstory

What the Editor-in-Chief of Black Heart Magazine didn't know when she decided to publish "Reentry Meditation" this April, was the identity of the woman in the last line.

For months, I'd been dropping canyons with two friends who, including myself, made up a love triangle after the fashion of bad formula romance—achingly, heart-breakingly bad.

A recap:

Girl A likes Guy B, but Guy B likes Girl C, who's friends with Girl A and uninterested in Guy B, because she's really in love with Guy D!

I'm Girl A, by the way.

Now let's plop these characters into the most beautiful, dangerous, intimate of adventures together for days at a time. We go deep into the wild places—the hidden growing sanctuaries where only beasts and gods live.

We share food, water, shelter. Blood mingles, sweat pours and dampens shirts and chonies, bras come off, freeing bodies that work and play and laugh and smell together. These are the beautiful, sharp-edged moments. I listen to their voices dance—for I can't see them ahead of me around the bend in the river. The sun beats down. The creek is a glass snake, mottled with the deep green of the bank and the clear water sky. There is a rock in my shoe.

I come to these places with them because this is my home, and they are my companions. We work well together. He knows best the harsh embrace of this land. We've cultivated our own respect for it. She is brave, handsome, tall, and strong, with a smile like a moon crescent, white-radiant. No wonder he loves her.

When we cross the river and start the trail back, mosquito-stung and drowsy, I know I will not return to the Gila Wilderness with these two. I can't look at him without the pain of knowing.

I want to despise her. She doesn't love him, either.

I turn and take in the towers of crumbling cliffs through which we've traveled, the tangle of green summer growth. I see her hop the last of the river stones. The ash from last night's fire like a tattoo on the backs of her legs. She is a dark angel.

Grim, we face the city, and brace ourselves for reentry.



--Lora

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Click here to read "Reentry Meditation" in Black Heart Magazine.

dreamings ~ in medias res ~ in miniature

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She reads around the world | Get a global perspective

Take a look at your bookshelf. Are most of the titles written by US or UK authors?

Mine are.

Ann Morgan is a reader much like you and me -- a writer and editor with a college degree under her belt, a healthy amount of curiosity, a love of the written word, and the self-awareness to know that globalizing her perspective would take a certain degree of radical commitment.

In this case, a 365 day challenge to read 196 books from around the world.

Her personal  challenge:

In 2012, the world came to London for the Olympics and I went out to meet it. I read my way around all the globe’s 196 independent countries – plus one extra territory chosen by blog visitors – sampling one book from every nation.

Morgan started with a quest to solidify The List. No easy feat, this. How to go about finding legit books, quality books, from sometimes obscure publishers with hard-to-discover titles by lesser-known authors?

She took the quest to the net:

...I asked for your help. I invited you to tell me what’s hot in Russia, what’s cool in Malawi, and what’s downright smoking in Iceland. The books could be classics or current favourites. They could be obscure folk tales or commercial triumphs. They could be novels, short stories, memoirs, biographies, narrative poems or a mixture of all these things. All I asked was that they had some claim to be considered part of the literature of a country somewhere in the world — oh, and that they were good.

"Good," of course, is subjective. But that wasn't the point.

Picture by Diane Cordell

The point was to look out from the eye-holes of people whose worlds look entirely different from ours --
from hers.

And isn't that why writing (and reading) is so important? Literature tracks the human experience. Books magic us into the existence of those who are not like us. The Other, the academics call these people for whom many of us lack empathy -- whom we might even fear -- until we strive to toward understanding, compelled by their stories.

I grew up in white bread Daytona Beach, Florida. After finishing undergrad in Central Texas, I hiked over to Tucson for an MFA and a tech job. No world traveler, that's for sure. I'd never consider myself cosmopolitan. And I don't have the money or time to go abroad and globeallivant in any deliberate way.

This challenge may be just the thing for these state-side-bound toes.

For 2014, I think I might take a crack at it.

What are your thoughts about this challenge? About the power of writing? How have you attempted to globalize your perspective?


Learn more about Ann Morgan:
Publishing Perspectives
Vimeo
BBC Culture

Join the I Write Video (Repost)

A year ago, YA science fiction writer Imran Siddiq took submissions for the empowering and evocative "I am a Writer" video. Its launch connected writers across the globe.

Now, it's your chance to join the "I Write" video.

If you're not a writer, you can still be take part. Submissions are open to editors, cover designers, formatters, and proofreaders.

As Imran says...

WE ALL PLAY A PART IN CREATING STORIES.

Read the guidelines.

Submit by August 31, 2013.

Email the video to flickimp@gmail.com. 

Join the "I Write" video!

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