I knew something was a-foot when sticky tears made a run for the ledges of my eyelids. People do cry during yoga. It’s a common somatic release, especially while harboring a fleet of tension: dark, pointy ships that guard the boundary between well-being and oblivion. But this kind of yogic release is a rarity for me. Something at bay wanted to flag me down.
Hiatus Recap
At the end of last season, this was me:
With some time off ahead of me, my Big Fat Goal is to nail down the rest of the story outline. Then I can finally start to trickle out Act II at the turn of the year.
Nope. None of that happened.
During my hibernation, I didn’t just put Bonesick in park, idling in the driveway. No. I turned off the ignition, stepped out of the vehicle, tapped the lock fob, and closed the garage door.
Here we are nearly three months later. She is stone cold.
Don’t get me wrong; I needed this break. Amongst the dry, dusty creases of these winter doldrums I went to North Dakota to shoot night photography, I launched
(a new home for those photography adventures), I read three books, I pushed myself through some hefty professional barricades, and I also sent out a lifeboat for loved ones drowning in personal muck.But I did a lot of not much, too.
All-in-all, a good balance of productive and reductive—exactly what you want out of a hiatus. But to be quite honest, now I’m getting super itchy and panicky. I’m afraid that, even if I can manage to fire up my mothballed engine, back out of the garage, and head out to the corner, I’ll just sit there staring out into the distance, paralyzed without a set of specific coordinates.
Warning: Bridge Out
Around this time last year, I was at a similar crossroads. I wrote about it and here’s a healthy reminder of my specific variety of panic…
No, I’m dead center in Act Two, as Mr. [Steven] Pressfield describes perfectly:
“The notorious Second Act Horrors. You feel like Columbus halfway across the Atlantic. You’ve come too far to go back but the goal is still so far off you can’t believe you’ll ever get there. Resistance loves this point. It jumps on you with every dark self-sabotage thought it’s got.”
…only this time, I really am inside the Second Act Horrors, having “completed” Act I last season. Extra bold quotes because I’ve decided that Act I doesn’t just need a quick spit polish, but a full-on restoration. Yes, that means returning to the beginning to fix it. To lay this car metaphor on extra thick: What if I built a Mirthmobile when I really wanted a Batmobile?
Turn Left at Retrograde
Bonesick was born from what can only be described as a fever dream smoked up by a muse who bestowed me with a satchel of semi-precious stones. She assumed I’d be the best candidate to string them together. So far, the result isn’t so much a bespoke statement piece someone like you would don on special occasions. It’s more like a rosary hanging from my rearview mirror1, a symbol of quiet desperation as I gaze at all the work behind me, mentally caress each bead, and pray that my muse will give me the faith to keep driving.
When my muse gifted me the Tarot idea this time last year, it felt like coming home. Staring at the second act before me, I wonder if I made a wrong turn somewhere. Do I double back? And what’s down that creepy tunnel?
My author friend, Jule Kucera—the mastermind behind The StoryWheel writing tool I often rave about—has been sending out newsletters about how to identify your genre. When she sent a nifty little genre-identifying checklist, I followed her line of questioning. She asked, what’s at stake in my story? I arrived at the only multiple-choice answer that tugged at me:
“The stakes include salvation and damnation—someone could be tormented forever!”
At first, I was like: Yeah. Yes. This feels like an intriguing entrance ramp that could steer me in the right direction. That is until I scrolled down and arrived at its corresponding genre:
Horror.
Ummm. Hm?
I’m far too much of a writing noob to stroll into the Horror genre like I own the place. I wouldn’t have even acknowledged the door had I not followed Jule’s line of questioning. But I’m not here to flat-out say no to the prospect either.
Metaphysical interior with biscuits
While getting my art degree, Surrealism was my favorite style. I made paintings of a bleeding crucifix impaled by amorphous pastel blobs, eyeballs that flew through the sky carrying pencils, and the Barbie logo interrupted by long strips that revealed clumps of red paint meant to represent bloody wounds. Typical emo art student. A week ago, while researching Dadaism and Futurism for a day job project, I was trying to recall an artist I studied back then. A short paper assignment required me to sit in front of a painting of my choice for an hour to study every detail. It’s been 25 years, so the artist’s name escaped me.
That is until just this very moment when I received Nick Cave’s Red Hand Files newsletter which features a painting by Giorgio de Chirico and my brain instantly pulled up the old log entry. The painting in the email is part of a collection he did after he left Surrealism behind, but I definitely remembered his name and quickly located the painting from my college paper and others from that era—the likes of which inspired more mainstream-famous Surreal painters like Dalí and Magritte.
De Chirico’s work falls into the broader “Magic Realism” category and he argued that his “metaphysical painting looked beneath the surface of the real world to find curious and uncanny hidden meanings.” What struck me about the painting all those years ago was those three-dimensional biscuits. Absurdity in the normal. Magic in the mundane. Love it.
These biscuit breadcrumbs of synchronicity might be what I need to find my way back on track.
And so I humbly ask you if it’s ok that I have no idea where I’m going just yet, but it’s probably somewhere strange, and we may need to backtrack, and I have no idea how that will unfold in this digital space.
In standard writing practice, Act II is all about The Upside Down world—the antithesis of what’s established in Act I, when the protagonist must travel to the proverbial dark side to meet up with their core flaws and general undoing. Perhaps those somatic tears I shed during yoga this past weekend were my subconscious mourning the end of my Normcore phase as I step into my Underworld era.
On the Tarot note, this weekend I pulled my card for February: Death. Change, Metamorphoses, Transformation. Fitting.
So if you’re in the mood for some horror lite, join me for the 9th card in my Bonesick Tarot series…
Mirrors. In the past 3 days, I’ve received 3 email newsletters that reference mirrors:
“I am not who you think I am; I am not who I think I am; I am who I think you think I am.” — Charles Horton Cooley, The Looking Glass Self (1902)
“The time will come when, with elation you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror and each will smile at the other's welcome” — Love After Love
by Derek Walcott (1986)“Instead, I picked up the dry bar of soap next to the sink and wrote ‘Enjoy’ on the mirror. Now when I look at myself, the word is on me. I always notice it.” — Jule Kucera, 2024 So Far, part 1
No matter how weird it gets, I’ll certainly enjoy myself. And I hope you do too.
Hello from the other side.
Katie! So glad to have this update from you. It sounds like you've been doing what more people should this time of year — going inwards, resting, and keeping antennae up for clues to the next step of our creative transformations.
And that de Chirico! I'm so pleased to say I've seen it at the Chazen (my husband had an audition in Madison two years ago), and was equally thrilled to see his work in Nick Cave's recent letter. The Magic Realist artists have such a special place in my heart. 💙
I think my sync lately has been reading people's more vulnerable thoughts and struggles. Just having that moment of awe that you let us in deeper and admiration for bravery to just admit "hey, this is hard". I am the (probably not) tiny minority that really needed to hear these words delivered across the interwebs. Thank you, friend.