Shipwrecked & Comatose

When I was in middle school, my grandmother gave me a copy of Wuthering Heights for my birthday or Christmas. She was pleased and encouraged by the fact that I read obsessively, but I think he wanted to curb my interest in trashy modern novels and improve my mind with the classics. I was young enough to have not heard of the book yet and I knew nothing about it. The synopsis on the back of the book wasn’t helpful. It merely said it was about the tumultuous romance between Catherine Earnshaw and the “swarthy Heathcliff”. It said the romance was complicated, but that’s all it told me. This is the actual copy she gave me. It took me a long time to decide I was willing to pick up this dense and mysterious novel, but once I did, I was caught in a world I didn’t expect. This love story wasn’t romantic. In fact, I couldn’t grasp its central characters at all given that I wasn’t inside their heads and I was only reading about their story through secondhand accounts. Then the story continued...

The first full moon of 2026, the “Wolf Moon” took place on January 3 rd . Although it was a chilly winter night, I had an urge to take a walk after dinner that evening. I wanted to take in some fresh air and have a conversation with the full moon. (She didn’t have much to say. Celestial bodies can’t talk.) I sat on a bench in the park for a few minutes and observed the moon peeking through the trees.  I thought about the next appearance of the full moon. It would be February 1 st . What would come to pass in this new year between now and then? Where will I be in a month? What will I be doing? The only certainty would be the moonrise would be a bit later because the day would be longer. A day or two earlier I noticed the sun hadn't set yet at 4:40 PM, but it was dusk at 4:50. I congratulated myself for observing the world around me enough to notice the subtle change in the length of the day. Anyone who knows me knows winter isn’t an easy season for me. I don’t like cold and I don’...