about
Author: Laura Scheffler Johnson
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Some nights, I sit for hours watching the backyard fence, what golden light it holds still for a moment as, on the other side, cars rush by. The fence posts seem to catch and release each car, like sheet by sheet of animation drawings. Headlights gush open each framed space and proceed up the street,…
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Driving back from St. Louis, I noticed a sign advertising an “exclusive” neighborhood: lakeside chalets set apart from the surrounding communities. While the photo of the area looked rustic, wooded and serene, I couldn’t get past the word, exclusive. I thought of scarcity, something closed. Then I thought of its opposite: inclusive, abundance, something open.…
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Three years ago last night, or sometime before that night, someone, in the company of an adorable, tiny, filthy, ear-mite-ridden, wounded-lip kitten, left that kitten – the veterinarian would later presume − in front of a neighborhood. The kitten spent at least Halloween night on his own in a world full of cars and kids…
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After an extra slippery shower soap went on a sudden journey knocking over a liter of shampoo onto my foot, for the past two weeks I’ve had a very sore toe. I can move it, so I don’t think it’s broken, but it’s whatever is closest to that, because it hurts. I’ve tried to stay…
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In a conversation recently, I brought up my sadness over the upcoming change in this country’s leadership. This isn’t about politics; more, it’s about atmosphere. The woman I was talking with shares that sadness, and we discussed how to handle it. She suggested that instead of being sorrowful for the way the impending leader has…
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Last winter, I decided to find out how a snowflake forms. So fantastical, when immersed in a cloud of bright gray, to suddenly notice a single crystal, and then another, and see how the two are so alike and yet not at all the same. A snowflake, as it turns out, is a mineral. It…
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That was a damn tough year. I’m trying to think of the parts that weren’t tough, and to understand that the hard parts helped me grow and learn. I wrote poems, not many, but more than I wrote the past few years. I cooked a lot and made up new recipes, and tried others’ recipes.…
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The name, Particles to Waves, refers to an excerpt from Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek: “Here is the word from a subatomic physicist: ‘Everything that has already happened is particles, everything in the future is waves.’”
PARTICLES to WAVES 