confessions of a compulsive writer, and a few journey-stories
Photo credit: "Big Brother visits" by derPlau is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 **This is an excerpt from a longer essay in my creative thesis/book/whatever we're calling it this week. The longer essay is structured around definitions related to limb difference, but I'm posting this section in honor of my mom. a • nom’ … Continue reading Anomaly: A section from a longer essay, in honor of Mom on Mother’s Day
"It's almost a definition of a calling that there is strong inner resistance to it. The resistance is not practical-- how will I make money, can I live with the straitened circumstances, etc-- but circumstantial: Can I navigate this strong current, and can I remain myself while losing myself within it? Reluctant writers, reluctant ministers, … Continue reading Resistance
Photo: soybean field along the Blue Mound bike trail, on the north edge of Luverne. Earlier this week, I bumped into this article from the Atlantic Monthly, circa 2014, one of those random reposts that pop up in one's Twitter feed. Now, I'm sort of a skeptic about articles like this, and not at all … Continue reading Endorphins: a ramble about exercise and depression
Highland Cemetery, Sept. 12, 2018, early evening I am here, in search of something like the muse that followed me in the last few years, but now seems to have gone its own way. This is where it first found me, as I sat armed with a blank page and a pen, chasing thoughts like … Continue reading Practicing Resurrection
**This section got edited out of another piece I'm currently working on. Here's my "Floods of '93" story. Enjoy. I spent the summer of 1993 home from college, driving into day after day of heavy rain on my way to work. In the early morning hours of July 11, the Des Moines and Raccoon rivers … Continue reading 25 Years Ago, Today
[something I wrote last fall, but it's how I've felt all week and I just found it this morning again, so here it is...] This morning, I’m home. I’ve slid into home after a two and a half year adventure that I wasn’t even close to ready to end. But, it’s ended. And here I … Continue reading The Heroine’s Return (a journal entry)
Some time in 1978 or 79, after my parents had moved to Ankeny, Iowa from Omaha, we switched churches. We'd belonged to the United Methodist Church, where I was baptized as an infant, I assume because that's the church my dad was raised in. That is to say, that is the denomination that held their … Continue reading Found Faithful
“I am going to make it through this year If it kills me…” -“This Year”, The Mountain Goats This was the year that began with a looming new presidency that I wasn’t entirely excited about (to be honest, moderately terrified) and a profound sense of disappointment with my nation. This was the year … Continue reading 2017
My tank is full. I've spent the last three or so days back at my alma mater, Dordt College, filling my head with information and conversation and my heart with seeing good friends again. This weekend was just what I needed in the middle of a long semester of writing craft analyses and reading and … Continue reading Culture, Criticism, and Community
It's starting to look a lot like late August. The cicadas are humming again, the late-summer sun has that intensity that only happens this time of the year, and --though I could've been just imagining it-- I happened to catch a tree on my drive yesterday just about to glow itself from green to yellow. … Continue reading A letter, to my friends about to return to college
Shelbi Gesch 