have you read this essay?

Erika Veurink is my favorite writer “living in Brooklyn by way of Iowa”. The essays featured on her site are somehow simultaneously haunting and comforting. When I’m not reading her essays for a second or third time, I enjoy learning what she’s been up to on the weekends.

Recently she wrote an essay for Entropy Magazine. Below is an excerpt:

“When I could walk, I wanted to swim. I was landlocked, but I built my own oceans. I sat by the marsh in the backyard, writing in the notebook I buried under a mossy rock. The words melted between pages, dripping into new words. I dried them on the heat vent and taped leaves over where the paper wore thin. In late summer, I stood on the dock, teetering over the murky lake, anticipating the mossy give of its floor, the anonymous tickles of plants and fish and driftwood.”

There’s something in her words and imagery that reminds me of Annie Dillard and Sally Mann. High praise, but not at all unwarranted. You can read the essay in its entirety by clicking here.

May we all build our own oceans.