“Bullet In The Brain” by Tobias Wolff

1.11.22

(this post discusses suicide)

Dear Readers,

How are you? I ask that earnestly. You can respond to this email or comment. We are in a stage of the pandemic that none of us could have predicted. Of course, we may have learned by now that we can’t truly predict anything. But here we are, and it really sucks. It almost makes the summer of 2020 look easy. We knew what to do. We had our little stimulus checks. Now it feels like we’re all adrift, navigating everything individually.

One of the places where I teach yoga, the Seattle Bouldering Project, is dropping off a rapid test for me today because I am sick. I am also on immunosuppressants. So, I hope it’s not covid. But it seems everyone has it, and those of us who haven’t had it are stragglers rather than those who have escaped. Though I may have had it, way back in March 2020 when I flew from the UK and then Reykjavik to Seattle, maskless, and spent the next 15 days feeling like I couldn’t breath. Or that could have been the stress metabol…