The Grinch Rides Again
Best wishes on this dark holiday season
I hope it’s not too horrifying. I think the skeleton means well and anyway it just seems an appropriate image in the sense that it reflects (and celebrates whenever possible!) the down-to-the-bone feeling here on planet earth; it seems like a lot of us are feeling that way.
I’ve been working on my fiction (specifically a novella about a woman who, in anguish and despair, sells her soul to the devil) but thinking of you and wanting to send some kind of holiday something. I decided on this link to an oral story I told for the Moth Radio Hour; if you haven’t heard of this wonderful entity, it is basically a forum for people to tell a story about dramatic, weird, funny or transformative things that have happened to them. Some of the stories are ordinary, some are remarkable. The Moth is performed live in various venues across the country; some of the episodes are then broadcast on more than 500 different radio stations. My Moth story was part of a live NYC reading in 2017; it is somewhere between ordinary and remarkable, at least for me. It is about an unexpectedly beautiful Christmas experience during a hard time in my life—even if, technically, the beautiful part happened after Christmas. I hope you enjoy it.
May I humbly speak for every gentle reader of your substack and say we cannot wait for your new novella about a woman who, in anguish and despair, sells her soul to the devil.
Dearest Mary ,
I laughed and wept at your grinch tale . I also wish you well in your search for a more balanced place.
Your words have helped me find balance over the years , being ,as it is ,so brilliantly poised between darkness and light, fear and love, irony and joy . No mean feat . So withdraw , retreat and rebalance, any damn time you feel like it.
If you never write another word , you’ve already done enough .
Thankyou . Have a peaceful Christmas . J