Welcome to the world in which some people very gently brush the soft white bellies of squirrels.

Visceral Self: Writing Through the Body | Week One | A Very Ordinary Moment, Brought Alive

Good morning, and welcome to the world, the world in which we all live and then die.

Welcome to the world in which rain falls, miraculously, from the sky, and where overwintering fires burn slowly beneath the snow even during the cold months.

Welcome to the world where, when I was nine years old, a freckled boy named John in my third-grade class—a boy who wore brown pants and liked to laugh and was, in fact, quite jolly—made up a rhyme about me that went like this: Jeannie, Jeannie with the ten-foot weenie, showed it to the boy next door, he thought it was a snake, cut it with a rake, and now it’s only six-foot-four. Welcome to the world where a rhyme as catchy as this can come alive in your head just as it did in mine, just as if you yourself were right there beside us on that dusty asphalt in 1977.

Welcome to the world in which some people very gently brush the soft white bellies of squirrels—and then brush their tiny brown foreheads—with toothbrushes until the squirrels enter a state of bliss and then, with their teeny-tiny squirrel hands, they grasp the toothbrush to demand more, all of which you can see for yourself on YouTube.

Welcome to the world that contains a condition called Takotsubo cardiomyopathy or "Broken Heart Syndrome,” where the heart muscle becomes suddenly stunned or weakened in the event that someone stops loving you, or some other very bad thing happens to you, as it did to me one day in 2018, a thing so bad I still can’t talk or write about it even though my heart mostly beats again.

Welcome to the world where a new baby’s raspy cries and the arrhythmic heaving of her bird-boned shoulders—still covered in that delicate layer baby fur—can inspire you to cry with and for her.

Welcome to the world where bread bakes and also burns, where dogs leap and writhe with happiness to see you, where a soft sweater makes most things better, and where our bodies contain all of these realities, and so many more.

Welcome to The Visceral Self embodied writing experience.