22 January 2022

Andreae Callanan
At the edge of a disused parking lot, a child in a cerise pink winter coat and tawny brown snow pants kneels, side-on, on the snow-covered asphalt. Their face is obscured by the hood of their coat, which is trimmed in faux fur that matches the snow pants almost perfectly. The child is in the centre of the third of three circles they have drawn in the snow. A wide strip of snow-dusted grassy field runs from the lower left to upper right of the photo; beyond that, a row of leafless trees, and, beyond them, dark hills and bright blue winter sky. In the top right corner is a flare of light from the sun, which is just outside the frame.
At the edge of a disused parking lot, a child in a cerise pink winter coat and tawny brown snow pants kneels, side-on, on the snow-covered asphalt. Their face is obscured by the hood of their coat, which is trimmed in faux fur that matches the snow pants almost perfectly. The child is in the centre of the third of three circles they have drawn in the snow. A wide strip of snow-dusted grassy field runs from the lower left to upper right of the photo; beyond that, a row of leafless trees, and, beyond them, dark hills and bright blue winter sky. In the top right corner is a flare of light from the sun, which is just outside the frame.

I’m reading The Shapeless Unease: A Year of Not Sleeping by Samantha Harvey (Grove Press, 2020) and trying to figure out what it’s reminding me of. Thinking, too, of the categories of chronic illness, chronic pain, and disability. Would a memoir about insomnia belong on a syllabus for a disability memoir course? A year is a long time, but it’s not a lifetime. The trauma would last after the insomnia had resolved, I imagine. The body-mind is a complex ecosystem.