Patricia Wild’s Blog

Inner Landscape
[Edward Tufte's Hogpen Hill Farm's Sculpture Landscape Park, Woodbury, CT; October 12, 2020] Yesterday afternoon, as it has done for ...
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You’re Evicted!
I've heard lots of people talk about "the real estate in my head" lately but have had no reason to ...
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Slough of Despond
Is it slew? Is it slahw-rhymes with cow? Does it matter? No. What matters, Pilgrim, is that you and I stay in this ...
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Who’s In The Frame?
Needing to do some in-person banking yesterday (where, wearing a mask, my glasses so thoroughly fogged up I could barely ...
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“Opening like air, like realization”*
This year, Coming Out Day prompted me to recall the first time someone came out to me—almost fifty years ago ...
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White Rooms
Because decisions get made that reinforce white hierarchies every day, it would be good if the culture of whiteness were marked and ...
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Excerpt 3: Strands
On a propitiously spectacular early-summer Sunday, maybe fifty of us, maybe a hundred, most of us White, most of us ...
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That’s a Good One
She’d been badass once. Had you’d ambled through the New Hampshire woods when oak tree leaves were the size of ...
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Egret
[This is an excerpt from my new meta novel, Missing Reels, currently looking for a home:] Egret, she starts to write on ...
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Excerpt 2: Strands
[Here is an excerpt from a memoir I'm working on—Strands.] Grief does not appear solely through tears; it is also ...
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Excerpt 1: Strands
[Since I am both proud of what I am currently working on and, apparently, unable to do more than one ...
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Making Do
Six stamps left. Loathe to step inside our tiny, neighborhood post office and wanting to support the currently-endangered USPS, we'd ...
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“Feeding off the Vibe”*
Zoom has become a daily feature in my life, much-needed yet disquieting. Yes, I long for connection with others; I ...
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How Can I Keep from Singing?
Almost home from our daily walk, just as we were walking past, we saw a neighbor we didn't know come ...
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Talk to the Hand
[This story centers on someone whose identity I should protect. So will be using the they pronoun.] Yesterday on a walk, ...
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Cover Your Mouth!
More than forty years ago, when my oldest daughter was in elementary school, we'd lived in Wethersfield, Connecticut's historic district, ...
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What I’m Taking On For Lent
I'm not giving up anything this year; I'm taking on something. Something I've been afraid to take on for most ...
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Butter-knifing
Here I am, once again, "circling Fort Knox with a butter knife trying to figure out how to get in."* ...
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It’s Complicated
Back in the day when I taught homeless women in greater Boston shelters, one of my students, young and lovely, ...
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Fallow
[Cuyamaca Rancho State Park, California, after a fire.] When I was working on WellingUp.net, I told its web developers: "You ...
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Do I Matter?
[This 2007 photograph of an El Salvadoran mural taken by Alison McKeller.] This week I heard a story, a story ...
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The Marmee Dilemma
Much is being written or vlogged about Greta Gerwig's "Little Women." May I join in? Seated in perfect seats in ...
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Muscle Memory
One Sunday morning every December, my Quaker meeting shortens its morning worship to put on a fifteen-minute Christmas pageant. Directed ...
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Two Toucans Touching
Sometimes I exchange books with a dear friend. Sometimes I'll notice intriguing titles or descriptives in a box of give-aways ...
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