Connor, your insights, your prose, your honesty in this piece genuinely brought tears to my eyes. I kept stopping, rereading lines, letting them settle. There are so many beautiful turns of phrase, so many moments where you shape language into something that feels like poetry itself.
Passages like this;
“With my ears muffed, the words amplified as if my skull were an auditorium. I felt the words more deeply, and also felt like I understood language at a subatomic level. Language had a physical component and that physics consisted of vibrations. Words were merely vibrations echoing up my throat and escaping through my teeth. My tongue was a tuning fork, helping calibrate me to the frequencies of my beating heart…”
That’s not just writing, that’s a sensory experience. It’s someone showing the reader how language feels in the body, how thought becomes vibration, how emotion travels.
And then the way you write about the unspoken, the thoughts we withhold, the “lightning inside the storm of consciousness,” the way writing becomes its own kind of crossing, its own form of survival, that moved me deeply. It’s such a beautiful reminder of how important it is to understand our own feelings, the feelings of others, and the way we move through the world in relation to them.
Thank you for sharing something so intimate, so thoughtfully constructed, and so deeply reflective. I could run this river dry trying to articulate how much I loved this piece, but I’ll simply say this: it made me think, it made me feel, and it made me grateful, grateful for your voice, for your perspective, and for the way you see and shape the world.
Connor there is something in your father’s poetry that brings to mind Philip Larkin, particularly the ode on the bus journey with the pervert. A joy to read.
We all (Geoff's friends) carry guilt that we didn't do more. I would ask him repeatedly what he needed when I was heading to Lincoln to see my mother. Could I bring him groceries? Clothes? He had bought me so many hoodies over the years (before marriage and children). He did ask for paper and pens when he was in assisted living (hence the stack of legal pads, I assume). I often thought I'd invite him home with me to KC for a week or two. Becky strongly discouraged me! Maybe she was right but now I'll never know. On another note, I often think Geoff would be SO INCREDIBLY DISTURBED by the state of our country now, maybe it's a blessing he isn't living through it. Of course I miss him, his joy, and deep love of his people.
Connor, your insights, your prose, your honesty in this piece genuinely brought tears to my eyes. I kept stopping, rereading lines, letting them settle. There are so many beautiful turns of phrase, so many moments where you shape language into something that feels like poetry itself.
Passages like this;
“With my ears muffed, the words amplified as if my skull were an auditorium. I felt the words more deeply, and also felt like I understood language at a subatomic level. Language had a physical component and that physics consisted of vibrations. Words were merely vibrations echoing up my throat and escaping through my teeth. My tongue was a tuning fork, helping calibrate me to the frequencies of my beating heart…”
That’s not just writing, that’s a sensory experience. It’s someone showing the reader how language feels in the body, how thought becomes vibration, how emotion travels.
And then the way you write about the unspoken, the thoughts we withhold, the “lightning inside the storm of consciousness,” the way writing becomes its own kind of crossing, its own form of survival, that moved me deeply. It’s such a beautiful reminder of how important it is to understand our own feelings, the feelings of others, and the way we move through the world in relation to them.
Thank you for sharing something so intimate, so thoughtfully constructed, and so deeply reflective. I could run this river dry trying to articulate how much I loved this piece, but I’ll simply say this: it made me think, it made me feel, and it made me grateful, grateful for your voice, for your perspective, and for the way you see and shape the world.
Connor there is something in your father’s poetry that brings to mind Philip Larkin, particularly the ode on the bus journey with the pervert. A joy to read.
We all (Geoff's friends) carry guilt that we didn't do more. I would ask him repeatedly what he needed when I was heading to Lincoln to see my mother. Could I bring him groceries? Clothes? He had bought me so many hoodies over the years (before marriage and children). He did ask for paper and pens when he was in assisted living (hence the stack of legal pads, I assume). I often thought I'd invite him home with me to KC for a week or two. Becky strongly discouraged me! Maybe she was right but now I'll never know. On another note, I often think Geoff would be SO INCREDIBLY DISTURBED by the state of our country now, maybe it's a blessing he isn't living through it. Of course I miss him, his joy, and deep love of his people.