Recently, I came across an app
that lets me know how many people are in space. It seemed like an absolute
necessity, so I downloaded it, and now at any given time I can tell you….how
many people are in space. Currently, it’s six, and most of them have Russian-sounding
names. Six seems like a low number to me considering the vastness of the cosmos and how many people there are on
the planet, but then I suppose sending humans into space is a costly and
complicated endeavor. It’s a strangely comforting app. It shows photos of Earth
from a great distance and pictures of the astronauts floating around in the
vastness of the universe. I find myself using it for perspective. Whenever I
start to get anxious, I open it, and it reminds me that we exist in an infinite
galaxy and that maybe the exact hue of the napkins at the annual banquet I plan
isn’t really that important in the overall scheme of things.
During my writing group last
week, I was trying to remember the name of my favorite author when I was a
pre-teen. I was talking about one of her early books, “The Witches of Worm”,
which I took a brief stab at trying to turn into a screenplay in college. I
finally remembered that the author was Zilpha Keatley Snyder. Upon a Google
search, I found a list of her books, and I was reminded with an almost mystical
nostalgia of her book “The Changeling”. I can’t believe I ever forgot about it.
I was fascinated with that book as a young adolescent. It ignited my
imagination in a way that nothing else I read did, and to this day, it still
has an influence on my writing style. It was just one of those books that imprinted
on me very early, and even though I consciously forgot about it, it’s still
rattling around in the deep recesses of my soul, leeching out all over my
poetry and stories. The book’s main character Ivy Carson is my spirit animal. Sadly,
Zilpha Keatley Snyder died last October due to complications from a stroke. But
I’ll always be grateful for her literary legacy. If you’re interested, you can
read a synopsis of “The Changeling” here.
I wasn’t really joking about
the hue of the napkins. Last Thursday was the Big Annual Stressy Event I Plan
Every Year for work, with a bazillion moving parts and all kinds of things that
I worry will go wrong/fall apart at the last minute/epically fail. I spend the
weeks leading up to it obsessively checking and double-checking lists, nagging
vendors, going over things in my head, etc. I have a superstitious but
unshakeable belief that my worrying acts as a ward against disaster. It proves
to the banquet gods that I’m paying attention, and therefore I will be rewarded
with a smooth and glitch-free event. Ironically, all of the things I worried
the most about and planned contingencies for were complete non-issues, and
things that it never even occurred to me to be concerned about went awry. There
comes a point where your brain just can’t process any more possibilities and
walls itself off to focus only on the essentials. It was a lesson in
rolling with it, but in the end, it all went off brilliantly, and I came home
exhausted but deeply satisfied.
Here’s a brief interview with
Zilpha. It reminded me of some other long-forgotten books of hers that I’m now
determined to re-read, including “The Velvet Room” and “The Egypt
Game.”
--Kristen McHenry
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