tell me about your love

on comets, wonder, & writing

Lunar Halo Over Vienna (after The Book of Miracles, 1552) - mixed media on paper (2023)

I’m working on a new essay, one I thought was about celestial events—shooting stars, comets, meteors. But I find that what I can’t stop myself from writing about is not the events themselves, but early artistic renderings of them. 

In 1587, a Flemish artist whose identity is lost to us created Kometenbuch, or, The Comet Book. It is a wonder-driven illuminated manuscript filled with rich and strange images of the heavens—flaming swords in the sky, comets with faces and tail feathers. 

I love these images. They excite me and trouble me. I dream about them. They fill me with questions that I want to keep close to, which is how I know there is an essay to be written. Sometimes my writing begins from a place of curiosity. Sometimes aching. Most often it begins from a place of love, the place where an obsession of mine meets a question that won’t leave me alone.

Pérégrinations d'une comète from J.J. Grandville's Un Autre Monde (1844)

In “Write Til You Drop,” Annie Dillard says, “Why do you never find anything written about that idiosyncratic thought you advert to, about your fascination with something no one else understands? Because it is up to you. There is something you find interesting, for a reason hard to explain. It is hard to explain because you have never read it on any page; there you begin. You were made and set here to give voice to this, your own astonishment.”

Knyahinya Meteorite Fall by Wilhelm Ritter von Haidinger

Above my writing desk is an index card with two questions on it. The first, from Annie Dillard: What do you read to someone who is dying? The second, from Alexander Chee: Dying, what stories would you tell? 

Dying, I’d want to tell you about my love, its many shapes, its wellspring, the objects of my affection. I’d want to tell you about the way my son’s shoulders drop when he climbs out onto our fire escape to pick basil, the light this afternoon as I was standing alone in the kitchen peeling a clementine, what it felt like to wake in the mornings the summer I spent dreaming of waterfalls.

Leonid Meteor Storm, as seen over North America on the night of November 12-13, 1833, from E. Weiß's Bilderatlas der Sternenwelt (1888)

When I work one-on-one with a writer who’s feeling stuck, this is my favorite way to begin: Tell me about what you love. There are other places to start, of course: What troubles you? What questions do you return to? But I prefer to begin with love. 

I love this prompt because the answers usually come from a place of wonder, the heartbeat of my favorite art. 

In preparing to teach a creative nonfiction class this fall, it is a request I keep coming back to when I think of how I want to engage with others: Tell me about your love. 

Image from Kometenbuch (1587)

This isn’t a new interest. Weekly, I write and share a prompt with the community at the London Writers’ Salon. 

Last month, I shared Alex Dimitrov’s poem “Love,” excerpted here,

I love the nostalgia of the future.

I love that the tallest mountain in our solar system is safe and on Mars.

I love dancing.

I love being in love with the wrong people.

I love that on November 23, 1920, Virginia Woolf wrote, “We have bitten off a large piece of life—but why not? Did I not make out a philosophy some time ago which comes to this—that one must always be on the move?”

I asked the writers in our community to list what they love, being as specific as possible. 

It’s an exercise that I’m finding nourishing this summer. My writing life has felt quiet, in flux. I’ve been pausing, waiting to see what emerges, and, in that pause, trying to reconnect with my loves, finding a way back to my creative impulses. 

I’d been asking so many questions of my work: Am I being audacious enough? Am I telling the truth? Is this the most surprising choice? But I’d gotten far from myself, and it feels good to be asking new questions. What have I come to say? What do I value? What do I love? 

Listing my loves has also helped me to get clear about the shape I’d like my life to take, helping me take note of what is vibrant, what is potent, what quickens the heart. I love the five minutes before a play begins. I love deep time and geology. I love corvids and open windows during a rainstorm. The list is long and growing—a demand for more.  

Tell me what you love. 

P.S. The artwork I make to accompany these posts (usually the first image) is for sale and pay-what-you-wish. Simply reply to this email and let me know you’re interested.