I spread the pages across my kitchen table, one hand on oak, the other on language.
Afternoon light finds the margins first, then the staples, then the black strokes of my name pressed hard enough to leave its mark three sheets down.
Good.
Some truths deserve depth.
The paper remembers dates.
It remembers names.
It remembers who stood where, who reached first, who kept speaking, who went silent, who needed silence to feel safe.
The ceiling fan turns.
Edges lift, but dare not fly away.
They stay. Pressure makes some run and others stay.
A throat is made of cartilage, muscle, membrane, two pale folds opening and closing over air.
Pressure meets tissue.
Even a whisper requires force.
I know this.
I have taught students to plant their feet, unlock their knees, drop their shoulders, open their ribs, and send a line to the back wall without asking the room for permission.
Never ask for permission.
I have watched a frightened girl find her stomach and then her voice.
I have watched boys speak one true sentence without laughing and become men.
I have watched language enter the body and change the way a person stands.
So when the hand came, when the pressure came, when silence came to wrap around, to shut me down, to choke me—
I know what a voice is.
The larynx bruises.
The breath adjusts.
Once, I lost it.
But don’t worry about me.
I just drink the tea, bite down on the Ricola, and breathe.
Shakespeare told us long ago,
“Speak the speech, I pray you, trippingly on the tongue,”
And I tripped.
A little.
Then I got back up.
And spoke until cartilage, muscle, membrane, air, ink, oak, paper, rooms, whispers, and men who mistake women for little girls
had to listen.
They reached for an instrument they didn't understand.
So I took what the body knew, what the stage taught, what the page required, what courage costs,
and I used all of it.
Outside, water climbs through xylem, one molecule pulling another.
Roots enter limestone by touch.
A seed splits in darkness
and takes root.
What does paper know of life?
Only what we tell it.
—Iris Lennox literary pen name of Jill Szoo Wilson
It’s a miracle when one act of communication takes place.
We take it for granted. “Hello,” and “Goodbye,” but what about the words we're not sure how to say and stubbornly try?
Every syll-a-ble we learn is from someone close by.
The voice of a friend or the first time you heard your grandma speak to your mom in a way that made sense, when she smiled so you figured you knew now what to do.
You got it. So did she. And what about him?
“This flower is red,” that much is true. But “This flower is soft,” could be misconstrued. “I was talking about color,” she shrugs as she sits. He insists, “A flower is petals and my first Valentine’s kiss.”
How many words for one simple thing? A moment remembered? An idea flying through?
And so you see, even flowers mislead. If they can (uh-oh) what chances do we have to receive or to give in the way
your experience taught and your family still chooses, and what of the friends that come and go, and the fights someone wins and another one loses?
Brick by brick the schema is built, and we climb to the top
and fall until
what I said is what you heard or close enough to be understood.
The things that slow us down can't be manufactured.
They have to come— arrive— without warning and before or after we're ready.
Today maybe it's a train rattling through your car and the wind it leaves behind picking up the ends of your hair and pulling you back into something some time when a train was in the distance— was it home, or something like it? When the whistle of the train—
Or a phone call where the C-word is uttered and everyone in the room collapses, but underneath. On the inside. The push and the pull of, "But wait. Just one second ago life was about this or that and now this." Or
a man catches your eye down the hall, a woman laughs with a crinkle in her nose— had it been there before? Maybe only today and then a series of wonderings when wandering is no place to stay, or
sitting on a rock in the desert not asking questions and questions begin to ask themselves in the form of prayers you couldn't hear during this morning's coffee.
When does a prayer begin and when does it end?
Where was I when I was the one who took the breath inward to address God on an exhale and why am I still breathing in one elongated breath since— when?— Was I seven? Or forty-three?
And who was I when I thought or felt or began "Dear Lord . . ."?
What is movement but our footsteps being heavier than air but lighter than we expected because the weight of now never lands until we look back.
Today I looked up into the trees in a place I know well and I saw the sunlight weave itself through every leaf and all the way down, just as it has before and there was a moment when all I could do was forget where I was forget what I was thinking and maybe I breathed but who is to say
I crouch where the sandstone breaks into shallow shelves the color of old bone, one knee in dust, the other on loose grain that slides downhill with every shift of my weight.
The rock is so warm I imagine an ancient woman setting a kettle here and boiling water for tea.
Emerging from the crevice—
yellow.
I admire the Painter through the painted and wonder at the Breath and the breath it takes to stay, in this place,
alive.
Four open cups lifting from a seam no wider than the edge of my thumb, petals folded back shamelessly in the morning light.
I lean so close I can smell the yellow. Or is that the bone? I've never smelled either so it's hard to say.
My hair falls forward and brushes the soil, one strand catching on a blade of green— I feel like an intruder,
slowly, hooking it behind my ear, then lower my face again— this time with more care— close enough to see grains of pollen caught in the folds, gold dust gathered at the center.
Treasure left out in the open.
A bee was here.
Maybe an hour ago. Maybe it's only been ten seconds.
How long do bees stay gone? Quickly,
I peer below the bloom. Silver leaves spiral outward in every direction, coated in tiny hairs that catch dust, light, and whatever the wind decides to leave behind.
I run one finger along the stem—
green at first, then red, then pale where the shadow begins and sunlight never quite made the turn.
I guess there are things even the sun never sees.
The stem narrows, twists once, then disappears into a seam too thin for my fingernail.
Still— there it goes.
Down through lime, through grit, through powdered shell, through pockets of black soil pressed deep between layers of stone older than language.
Roots no thicker than thread find water that probably does not splash.
I sit back on my heels, dust coating my jeans, my hand still warm from the rock, and watch one yellow cup
tilt upward another fraction toward the sun.
—Iris Lennox literary pen name of Jill Szoo Wilson
I sit on the splintered bench where the trail drops close to the river’s edge, one boot untied, laces dark from morning grass.
The wood pricks through my jeans only when I swing my legs so I have to choose between comfort and carefree— the mosquito zigzagging around my wrist reminds me to slow down.
Below me, water folds over stone, slides around a half-sunken branch, catches for a second on something I cannot see, then keeps moving.
A world within a world within a world. Each with its own beginning, middle, and end.
I rest my elbows on my knees and watch cottonwood seeds land on the surface, play Russian roulette with the current and sometimes lose.
But sometimes they win.
There used to be an island here but now only swimming for fish and food for one crane whose beak was made for moments like this.
Across the bank, a sycamore leans like a dancer— if I tried that move I might hurt myself. But the sycamore— graceful, roots half exposed, holding a wall of mud through another season of rain.
What happens here at night? Does the dancer feel lonely?
I run my thumb along the groove someone carved into the bench years before I found it. There used to be a heart scribbled here. Was it time or circumstance that rubbed it away?
Where do all the lovers go who leave their hearts on benches in trees and in one another's hands?
The river keeps carrying branches, leaves, foam, the occasional flash of silver,
and twenty feet downstream a man in a fishing boat has a pole for an arm, a hat for eyes, and a dream I cannot see—
I stay on the splintered bench swinging my legs watching the sunlight
feeling the shade.
—Iris Lennox literary pen name of Jill Szoo Wilson
This was the answer when I asked one of my high school–aged acting students to give me an example of something that is “just one thing.”
“Yep, that’s correct,” I agreed. “Give me another.”
He thought for a moment. “Heaven is good, hell is bad.”
“Yes. Now let’s turn our attention to the horizontal. People, places, and things we can touch and see. Give me an example of something that is just one thing.”
“A car is just a car. A tree is just a tree. This building is just this building. My mom is just my mom.”
I wrinkled my nose when he made the final assertion. A tale as old as time. He stopped and waited for my response.
“Your mom isn’t only your mom. But also, a car isn’t only a car. A tree isn’t only a tree. This building isn’t only a building. Try again.”
A smirk grew across his face. I couldn’t tell if he was amused or annoyed. Maybe both.
“God is good. The devil is bad.”
I laughed. “That’s right. Why do you think you have to keep going into the spiritual realm to give me examples of things that are just one thing? Angels, demons. God, Satan. Why is that?”
He thought for a moment. “Because even though people go back and forth between those two kingdoms, the kingdoms themselves don’t change. We do, but they don’t.”
It was a good answer.
“When I’m coaching students to play villains,” I said, “one of the first things we talk about is the fact that villains don’t see themselves as villains. They see themselves as heroes.” Michael Shurtleff makes this point in his book Audition when he reminds us that if one thing is present in a scene, the opposite is also present. If Sally hates Peter, she probably also loves Peter. If Simon is grieving Teresa, it’s because he remembers their happiness.
We live in tensions. Between here and there. Then and now. Who we are and who we might be.
Take Walter White in the best series of all time, Breaking Bad. He begins as a high school chemistry teacher. Then comes the diagnosis. The bills. The fear of leaving his family with nothing. He starts cooking meth to provide for them, to secure a future that will outlast him.
And then something shifts.
He discovers he’s good at it. The work begins to fill an empty place inside himself. A need for control, for significance, for power. In one of his most famous lines, Walter White reminisces about his drug-lording days and concludes, “I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. And… I was really… I was alive.”
Is Walter White a villain? Or a hero? Both?
What makes him a villain? The drug that harms other people? The lies? The control he begins to exert over others? The blood that clings to the money he brings home?
What makes him a hero? The motivations with which he acted early on? The care his son receives? The fact that he’s working to build a future? The moments when he protects the people he loves?
Ask Walter, and he’ll tell you he’s a hero. Especially when he believes his objective is to provide for his family. That is the story he tells himself.
And still, the bodies pile up around him.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn writes in The Gulag Archipelago:
“The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.”
I turned back to my student.
“Think of your worst moment. A time when you chose to be cruel. Did you allow yourself to realize you were being cruel, or did you try to convince yourself you weren’t that bad?”
He didn’t hesitate. “I justified it. I knew I was wrong, but I made excuses. I compared myself to people who are worse than I am.”
“You chose something dark and still looked for light. What did you do to relieve that tension?”
“I tried not to think about it. Oh! And, I helped more at home. I told people I was volunteering at church. I stayed busy doing good things, so other people didn’t think I was a jerk. I guess I was also trying to switch back into a good person.”
I nodded.
“So you were a villain. And you acted like a hero.”
“Yeah.”
“So you weren’t God or the devil. You were aware of both. And you chose, moment by moment, how to move toward what you wanted while carrying both at once.”
“Yeah.”
The wheels of thought whirred.
Nothing is ever just one thing.
When you’re playing a bad guy, you still have to know what he’s moving toward. Somewhere inside that pursuit, something he recognizes as good is leading him forward.
In many stories, we see a man overcoming great odds by wrestling with the weaknesses anchored inside himself, rather than those he must fight in the world around him.
The age-old story of Man vs. Self.
One of the most memorable tragic heroes in Greek mythology is Sisyphus, the prince whose moral foibles Zeus punishes by dooming him to roll a boulder up a hill eternally, the rock rolling back down each time he manages to muscle it to the top.
The first time I heard this story, I was in seventh grade. We read it aloud in English class through timid and cracking voices. I should have known then that I had a serious bent toward the philosophical. The story captured both my imagination and my emotions to such an extent that I immediately felt what I can now identify as empathy for the main character. I wanted to reach beyond the centuries to help Sisyphus.
Because I couldn’t do that, I settled on trying to prove the story wrong.
This was my way of rectifying the deeds of Zeus and the fate of Sisyphus himself. It was also my way of closing the dissonance I felt as I considered the unfairness of the story. How had we, as a human race, allowed this man’s torment to survive in our books, our minds, our cultural imagination for so long?
Clearly, it was up to me to change the narrative.
Once the bell rang for lunch, I donned my invisible cape and set out on a dangerous adventure. Knowing we weren’t allowed on the soccer field unless we were in PE, I slipped past the lunchroom proctor, ducked under the railings, and made my way down the hill that led to the edge of the field. At the far end, the incline rose steeply enough to pass, in my mind, for a mountainside.
My school was called Foothills Junior High. The name was not decorative. It sat at the base of a mountain in Los Angeles. I knew this was the place to right the wrongs set forth by the Greek gods.
I looked for a rock. I never found one large enough to make the journey feel worthy, but I did find a kickball. Orange, round, just large enough to wedge between my shoulder and neck as I climbed on my hands and knees, pushing it upward with a kind of theatrical conviction that, in retrospect, revealed itself early.
I made it to the top.
My hands were filled with pebbles, my knees ground into denim and dirt. I stood there for a moment, the kickball in my grip, scanning the field beneath the dry California sun. A victory, unmistakable.
And then, unlike Sisyphus, I made a decision.
I would not let the rock roll back down. I would carry it.
Halfway down the hill, I lost my footing.
It happened quickly. Instinct took over. The ball slipped free. I watched it fall.
Disaster.
I tried again.
Three times I made it to the top. Not once did I make it all the way down.
Up the hill. Down the hill. Up again. Down again.
The past returned as the present, and I heard the bell ring for science class.
Maria Popova writes of Sisyphus:
He may be a tragic hero, but he is first and foremost a hero, precisely for this unrelenting faith in the possibility of accomplishing the impossible. His optimistic tenacity renders him the epitome of the creative spirit.
Jack White, in his song Over and Over and Over, gives the story another life:
The Sisyphean dreamer My fibula and femur Hold the weight of the world (Over and over)
The rock ‘n’ roller, the young and older Rolling back to the stroller (Over and over)
One story, carried through different forms, returning again and again.
And then, from Ecclesiastes:
All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full. To the place where the streams flow, there they flow again.
What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.
A repetition that feels, at times, unbearable.
Life returns us to the same questions, the same efforts, and the same inclines. We strain, we lose our footing, we begin again. Something in us resists the cycle. Something else learns how to thrive within it.
There is a kind of dignity in that.
Not in escaping the hill, but in meeting it.
Not once, but again.
And again.
So I think of that hillside near the soccer field.
Of the orange ball slipping from my hands.
Of the certainty I had that I could change the ending.
The morning sun draws itself in lines across my hand as I lift the shades. Three succulents on the sill squint and awaken.
I fill the kettle with filtered water, set it on the stove, and wait as heat gathers, quietly like the introduction of a song before the singing begins.
I scoop the grounds into the press— piñon nut coffee from New Mexico, dark, resinous, faintly sweet, holding desert sun in its edges.
The water stirs before it speaks. I watch the surface tremble, then rise into a low, certain boil.
At the window, my black cat claims his post. A squirrel meets him there, small hands braced against the glass. They study each other as if to ask, "Oh, just you? Again?"
In the living room, my white cat stretches long across the rug, pressing herself into the day. A small felt cat rests beside her— a careful replica, stitched into stillness.
The kettle calls me back. I pour.
Water meets grounds, and the air deepens— coffee blooms, expands, releases what it has carried.
I stir once, twice, set the lid, and press the timer: four and a half minutes.
I lean into the counter where the sun has already shifted.
Steam lifts from the press, moves through the room beckoning even the walls to wake.
The squirrel disappears. My black cat stays, newly enthralled by a robin hopping through grass.
My white cat settles beside her smaller self. They rest in the same light, one breathing, one not.
The timer sounds. I press the plunger down, slow, steady, feel the quiet resistance give way— a practice in patience amid anticipation.
I pour the coffee. I lift the cup. I take the first sip.
Another morning where God makes morning and succulents and sunlight and cats,
Iris Lennox 