Dear Readers,
This summer is ushering in change. After over a year of hunkering down, visiting only with a select pod of friends, elbow taps by way of greeting, outdoor dining galore, and the myriad gravities of this pandemic, life is getting “back to normal” thanks to higher vaccination rates that have slowed the spread of the coronavirus. Maybe you’re seeing loved ones for the first time in a year, maybe you’re not (as) obsessively grabbing a mask everywhere you go, maybe you’re going to the gym, on dates, even on an airplane. Whatever you’re doing or not doing, a door of possibility has opened to our mobility that simply was not there a few months ago; a unique space of possibility awaits.
I recently moved from Brooklyn, NY to Providence, RI. After years of lamenting the difficulty accessing nature in New York City, I acquired a teaching job last spring in a town outside of Providence that I saw as my passport to leave the urban jungle and welcome more outdoor time into my life. However, that plan was quickly stalled since the first year of this new job I taught remotely via Zoom at my kitchen table in my small Brooklyn apartment, sporting a button-up top and a rotating roster of pajama pants. Those days are over (I think?) and come fall, I will be teaching in person again. Hence, my recent move to Providence and all the highs and lows of the first month in a new place. I’m trying to not be derailed by the vertigo and emptiness that unfamiliarity causes me and instead bask in the wonder of newly discovered gems, like the little wine bar in my neighborhood or a stunning stretch of beach only accessible by a rocky scramble.
Amid all these changes, I had the honor of editing this fantastic collection of short stories. I’ve been itching to do an all-fiction issue to showcase the delightfully philosophical superpower of fiction, that is, its ability to transform reality with imagination. I am so excited to share these ten stories with you now, dear readers.
It’s always fun and intriguing to see what common themes bubble to the surface of each issue, despite the disparities across tone, style, and subject of each piece. In this issue, I find an emphasis on work/life balance and the permeation of the logic of the market on everyday life and love. Perhaps this harkens back to how the pandemic drew attention to our working lives and habits in yes, unprecedented, ways. It seems impossible today to separate the social, economic and emotional aspects of life. As we are now realizing a labor shortage in the U.S, no doubt in part due to the hundreds of thousands of souls lost to the pandemic, we cannot help but internalize the gut-wrenching interconnectedness of all aspects of our human society. These short stories bracket that interconnectedness, revealing with clarity the ambiguous space where these various factors intermingle and take shape.
As the gears of life now direct us to somewhere near the “before” time, this issue is a portal into needed reflection. How does opening up to this new mobility mirror or refract the version of yourself from one and half years ago? If there’s one thing I know for certain, it’s that next season will bring another round of change to process, and then, too, there will be art to help us along. Perhaps most of all the opportunity of this moment is our unique position to decide with intention how much do we want to be like we were before, and how much do we not?
Sincerely Yours, Kim Coates
July 2021
