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I’ve been trying to write something about self-abandonment for a while now. My therapist laughed when I told her that prior to reaching out to her for the first time I had been thinking I kind of had things figured out. “Oh well, that’s endearing,” she said, “but there are always more layers.” I can
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It’s sunny on the south coast and though the wind is here, and it is here to stay, people are wearing shorts and walking around in a kind of spring euphoria. I’ve been actually finding it a little hard to say goodbye to winter—there was something about all that darkness, wet and cold this year
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a turn and burnto portland in february was excited to gobut then all i could think of to do once i got there was to sit in a bar and reada book of short stories, alone no good sleep, lately. maybe it’s been decades the brightest spot in these miserable timesleonard out of prisonevery time
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It is 4am in Oaxaca. I’m still on Oregon time, which makes it worse. 2am and wide awake. My beautiful partner and I flew here on inauguration day. It felt perfect, and also I was aware of the hypocrisy: the entitlement of vacationing in a county that my country’s policies have systematically fucked over. But…here
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Tomorrow is A Wounded Deer Leaps Highest’s 5 month anniversary. But what is that in book years? It seems like a hundred years ago that I found out it would be published by Torrey House Press, another hundred that I went on book tour with my dog Ducky in an old pickup for six weeks
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I’ve never, ever been into rainbows or flags, and especially not rainbow flags. I was an edgy, little queer when I moved to San Francisco at 25 and thought rainbow flags were for people who were a different type of queer than I was. I guess I thought rainbow flags were for the mainstream gays.
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Sometimes I go into the bathroom to write. The bathtub can be an especially helpful container, I’ve found, and seems to be pretty helpful for the lower back as well. I live with children but what I’ve found is most adults, regardless of their home lives, have to be clever and resourceful in finding time
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I’ve been staying at a house on a river—complete privacy surrounded by so many different kinds of trees. There’s a Barred Owl who calls out every night, and even though the temperature keeps dropping after dark, I leave the bedroom window wide open to hear her as I drift off. A friend came up for
Author of "A Wounded Deer Leaps Highest"
Charlie J. Stephens 