6 June 2024<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kate C, after reading my latest essay, directed me to this essay. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is a lovely piece for writing, and on I can learn from. Looking more closely, I see this essay won the Pushcart Prize. You can find it here: https:\/\/agnionline.bu.edu\/essay\/glaciology<\/a> And there is more by her — at least in the same place this was published — that you can find at https:\/\/agnionline.bu.edu\/about\/our-people\/authors\/lia-purpura\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n It was as if after the big event of snowfall we\u2019d forgotten there was more, still, to be said. A cache of loose details below to attend. A trove poised. A stealth gathering.<\/mark><\/p>\n\n\n\n Deposition below the singular-seeming white cover.<\/mark><\/p>\n\u2014Lia Purpura, Glaciology<\/a><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n The essay is divided into sections: The first is Plan, and then six sections titled \u201cDeposition on Thaw,\u201d \u201cDeposition on the Shapes of Tasks,\u201d and so on, each being a deposition. She beings, in plan, with an accurate description of how glaciers work, how they pick up material, entrain it in the ice, mix it around, and then drop it, depositing it as poorly sorted till. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Poor sorting: I like that: that it all gets dropped, the big stuff enmeshed with the grainy soft stuff. The indiscriminate mess. That it forms a long train, so that seeing it all, one can trail events back. Guess at them. View time. And by way of the whole scattered and shifting pattern, by the gathering eye, make something of these loose details, collecting.<\/mark><\/p>\n\u2014Lia Purpura, Glaciology<\/a><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n The second section, Deposition on Thaw, talks about melting, and \u201cthe way snow melted into vertebrae, whole bodies of bone inclined toward one another. Bones stacked and bent in the attitude of prayer, the edges honed and precarious.\u201d Nice and apt imagery. Later: \u201cThere were thicknesses, white places layered in smears that others were trained to read. Densities<\/em> amid the rivulets of veins. Occlusions. Artifacts.<\/em><\/mark>\u201d Next is a passing mention of an X-ray, and an artifact, that melds into listing objects revealed by the snow melt. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So far:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The next section \u201cDeposition on the Shapes of Tasks,\u201d <\/em>gives us more of a clue as to what is going on: \u201ca little shard, small bit taken out of my body and sent off for further study.<\/mark>\u201d And later\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Waiting all that long week\u2014for test results, the snow to stop, dough to rise, nightfall\u2014small tasks turned into days. Days unfolded into tasks. The inside-out arms of clothes pulled right, made whole and unwrinkled, took lovely hours. Tasks filled like balloons and rounded with breath; they floated and bumped around the day: some popcorn, some dishes, some mending. <\/mark><\/p>\n\u2014Lia Purpura, Glaciology<\/a><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n \u201cTest results\u201d lends weight to the idea that we have a thread of medical and health content. The image of tasks floating and bumping like balloons is nice. And more<\/p>\n\n\n\n Everything coming down\u2014snow, sleet, threat, delicacy\u2014twined through like a rivulet (the cut water makes in its persistence, its pressure carving) so the bank grows a dangerous, fragile lip. <\/mark><\/p>\n\u2014Lia Purpura, Glaciology<\/a><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Again an allusion to threat, and a reinvocation of the image of a rivulet, this time not just a product of melting, but a process that it shaping other things, carving a miniature canyon with a \u2018dangerous, fragile lip. And a return to the dynamics of glacial melt. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As the depositions continue, they remain image-laiden. The imagery focuses on home and cooking and family and personal objects. Every now and then there is a hint of what is going on, ending with \u201cThe snow receded, the warmth returned, and I was fine. I was negative. Negative, negative, I was thinking, buoyant. The hard winter lifted all at once, the sun came, dewy and beading, the air was sweet and I was fine\u2026<\/mark><\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n A nice essay. A skillful use of imagery. A bit overpowering, perhaps \u2013 more than I think I would be inclined to use, but not wrong, just not my style. I will see if I can capture a selection of phrases\/images I like\u2026 though perhaps there will be too many to list: <\/p>\n\n\n\n the elbows of everything poked through.<\/mark><\/p>\n\n\n\n There were thicknesses, white places layered in smears that others were trained to read. Densities<\/em> amid the rivulets of veins. <\/mark><\/p>\n\n\n\n Tasks filled like balloons and rounded with breath; they floated and bumped around the day<\/mark><\/p>\n\n\n\n Everything coming down\u2014snow, sleet, threat, delicacy\u2014twined through like a rivulet (the cut water makes in its persistence, its pressure carving) so the bank grows a dangerous, fragile lip.<\/mark><\/p>\n\n\n\n That week time was ample, broad as a boulevard, a stroll, a meander. <\/mark><\/p>\n\n\n\n Scents fully unfolded: coffee, chocolate, and milk marbling together on the stove, thinnest skin across to touch and lift and eat. <\/mark><\/p>\n\n\n\n One rough, gritty chip in the rim of a favorite cup.<\/mark><\/p>\n\n\n\n the yellow dust that rose and stuck to my hands as I folded in the unbeaten eggs, cold suns to poke and dim with flour<\/mark><\/p>\n\n\n\n that week passed with a fever\u2019s disheveled clarity<\/mark><\/p>\n\n\n\n There were intimacies akin to falling back to a pillow after water, soup, and tea were brought, gratitude unspoken; the night table\u2019s terrain, the book, the book\u2019s binding, glue at the binding and the word for each sewn section, folio<\/em>, surfacing from far off. <\/mark><\/p>\n\n\n\n Always one lemon pared in a spiral of undress, its inner skin gone a flushed, sweet-cream rose. <\/mark><\/p>\n\n\n\n Time should seize, should haul us back, then let go, wind-sheared into now<\/em>, breathlessly into the moment\u2019s hard strata.<\/mark><\/p>\n\n\n\n the perfect scrolls of carrot peel I lowered like a proclamation into the hamsters\u2019 cage<\/mark><\/p>\n\n\n\n I am tied to the sight of the world, to things burnished and scoured by use, and by their diminution loved<\/mark><\/p>\n\n\n\n One idly picks up pinecones, rocks, shells to mark a moment, to commemorate time. One picks them up because they shine out from their mud, or water lapping brightens their veins and shorn faces, or there they are, wedged inexplicably whole in a jetty, and a spiral tip beckons, though the center be partial and broken.<\/mark><\/p>\n\n\n\n The tender crack in a baking loaf, its creamy rift rough at the edges and going gold. <\/mark><\/p>\n\u2014Lia Purpura, Glaciology<\/a><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n What all do I like in this long list? To much to say, but let me at least call out some of the (differing) features that engage me:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Views: 51<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 6 June 2024 Kate C, after reading my latest essay, directed me to this essay. It is a lovely piece for writing, and on I can learn from. Looking more closely, I see this essay won the Pushcart Prize. You can find it here: https:\/\/agnionline.bu.edu\/essay\/glaciology And there is more by her — at least in … Continue reading Reflections on \u201cGlaciology,\u201d by Lia Purpura<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,39,91],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essays","category-craft-of-writing","category-single-essays"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3689"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3689\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3705,"href":"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3689\/revisions\/3705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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