FIELD NOTES, December 2025
- This poem by Kayla Czaga, published in PRISM international:
2. December 11, 2025: Woke late and drove to my grandparents’ home not long after rolling out of bed. Baked gingersnaps and shortbread with grandma while grandpa chopped wood behind the barn. Later, sat on the back step and watched the rain come down, then went inside to finish knitting a scarf; snow geese flew by the window at dusk.
3. These quotes from Adrienne Rich:
“You must write, and read, as if your life depended on it.”
“Until we know the assumptions in which we are drenched, we cannot know ourselves.”
“To write as if your life depended on it; to write across the chalkboard, putting up there in public the words you have dredged; sieved up in dreams, from behind screen memories, out of silence– words you have dreaded and needed in order to know you exist.”
4. For a long time, I’ve had a tenuous relationship with art, and I’m finally at the point where I’m sick of saying I’m going to create and then I don’t. My pastels are out on my desk, and once I’ve finished writing this, I’m going over there to draw something. [A note from later: I drew figs & pomegranates, and am now kicking myself for avoiding making art the past few years].
5. A look at my year ahead, as told by my horoscope:
6. A little writing update: the past few days have been busy, but as of writing this, I’m just past 20,000 words on my new novel. Over the next few days, I have little else I need to do, and so I’m looking forward to having a good amount of time to plow ahead. I’m aiming to have the first draft done by the end of January!
7. This notes app entry from December 4, 2025:
8. A friend from a past life, someone who’s known the worst sides of me, came for dinner late last week. He, my mom, my sister, and I had a wonderful dinner together and talked late into the evening. I always find it strange to reconnect with people who knew me before—who may have known me better than I knew myself back then—when I struggled to be a human. He’s also seen me at nearly every stage of my life, from early teens to mid-twenties to now—it’s a strange feeling to be known in this deep way.
9. These festive photos of Frank and Theo, taken throughout the month:
10. December 19, 2025: Slow morning drinking coffee and flipping through one of Natalie Goldberg’s books on painting. Then to the grandparents’ home with Jane, and on to Michaels—yarn for the weather scarf, at least the first few months, is bought. At Oldhand: talk of analog media, reading more & logging our thoughts offline, and owls.
11. This month’s bibliomancy: a line from Five Quarters of the Orange by Joanne Harris, flipped open at random:
“My parents couldn’t understand what was going on. They behaved like people who had been struck by lightning.”
—Catherine
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