Driving
Drunk on sameness
Among the rough ragged lines of winter
Among the flattened harvest
Among the grey gone world
When, looking up — Geese. Hundreds. Towing each other, being towed
And I didn’t pull the car over but something pulled me over
We were both moving, both travelers
But my progress spins so slowly
And the shape they flock in seems so sure
It isn’t safe
I keep reminding myself
To look up like that
To take your eye off the road
So my gaze goes back
But even without looking, I feel them still
Their hearts all collectively thrumming
To the beat of a place they're not yet sure exists
Welcome to The ALIVE hour.
Illustration: Shannon Colon
Audio + music: Chloe Riley
Things found in real life
This spinach “tree”
These handmade Christmas cookie boxes, tied up with care
Things found on the internet
This obituary of a gray wolf, looking for love in California:
OR-93, a member of Oregon’s White River pack, was born in April, 2019, near Mt. Hood, about an hour-and-a-half drive southeast of Portland. Wolves can be coarsely built, big-boned and thick-necked, but OR-93 was lean and lithe. He had the long legs of a dancer, a large black nose, and a resting smiley face.
This tribute to the late feminist, writer, and practicing Buddhist bell hooks:
…hooks’s twenty-first-century writings about love as “an action, a participatory emotion,” and companionship were prophetic, a return to the basis for all that is meaningful. The social and political systems around us are designed to obstruct our sense of esteem and make us feel small. Yet revolution starts within each of us—in the demands we take up against the world, in the daily fight against nihilism.
The ALIVE hour