SOLSTICE GIFTS

BY TRACY SCHLAPP

Today is the winter solstice. The planet tilts just so to its star, lists and holds circling in a fixed tension between veering and longing, and spins helpless, exalted, in and out of that fleet blazing touch. Last night Orion vaulted and spread all over the sky, pagan and lunatic, his shoulder and knee on fire, his sword three suns at the ready—for what?

ANNIE DILLARD

PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK

Dillard’s winter day quest contains the urgency of a young writer (just 27 when she wrote this masterwork) as she fills the final chapter of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek with fresh blasts of air and the deep water of contemplation — tying story and landscape into messy bundles that spill out in haste as her mind moves from one place to the next. It is an internal toll that draws to Shadow Creek.

A cast-iron bell hung from the arch of my rib cage; when I stirred it rang, or it tolled, a long syllable pulsing ripples up my lungs and down the gritty sap inside my bones, and I couldn’t make it out; I felt the voiced vowel like a sigh or a note but I couldn’t catch the consonant that shaped it into sense. I wrenched myself from the window. I stepped outside. (Dillard, p. 266)

This chapter is included in our final writer’s workshop newsletter to spark contemplation during Winter Solstice. We ask our writers to take time during the longest night of the year to consider that resonate sound (Dillard’s long syllable) inside of each of them. Locate the energy, that brightness. From this point: How do you write your life forward from this place? To extend our workshop’s reach, Lakota Club Chief Matt Reyes will send the newsletters to folks in solitary confinement. Very strong writing has trickled back to us from the hole, and we want to encourage folks to stay connected.

It is likely that you too are distracted by the gifts you have yet to purchase, wrap, and distribute this year. Prisoners have little personal space and few material possessions. Any goods come from the commissary — books and magazines can be ordered by someone on the outside and shipped directly from the source. Anything that is not approved is contraband and can be taken — this can include artwork that a person has made. As part of the writing project, we are able to provide certain tools (such as notebooks and drawing paper, and reading material) with pre-approval. The materials can be donated to the culture club at OSP, or through the volunteer services in other prisons. The materials are then distributed to each of the people engaged in our programs. We give each other the gift of our time and the sharing of our words. In that spirit, we have selected these pieces about gifts. | TDS

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