09. Monsoon Season

Look around. We are outside of ourselves. This home is unfamiliar. New rules, less sense. A crushing command beats down and forces us to remember the last authority respected. 

It was water wasn’t it? The last power you bowed to. Standing small before the ocean; a near-fall into that river raging. Maybe it was in the way a rainy day takes over — the pour, an excuse to push out the mad-making world.

In the Pacific Northwest, we do not experience monsoon extremes. Yet, it is full, vibrant weather in other parts of our Earth. What a curious idea: significant truths exist beyond our own ponds. Brutal seasons, elsewhere, abound.

Like one shore from another, we’re disconnected. Thankfully, this collection of works reminds us that — similar to a country in decline and a warring globe — there are storms that bridge, remake, and pull us together, surge us back to self: 

A tide before remembrance. The modern boulder of waste. When disaster returns us to Mother. An escape to captivity. The sweet draw of fluidity. How a constant past freezes the present. One last leaving. Seeing more than you get. When guilt meets worship. A pledge for the good of humanity. This little life.

Our banks have been overrun, the edges of a world known so well drowned by the recollection of life before this very moment. We’ve been flooded. And still, here we are.

With continued gratitude to past and present editors, designers, authors, and readers; the PNW would not have Issue 09, or HamLit, without your partnership.