I’m delighted to share that my first ever creative nonfiction piece is up at The Offing! (It’s a little scary, too, to be so vulnerable on the internet. Being a writer is strange.) Huge thanks to Eddie Bruce-Jones for the thoughtful editing, and to Steffan Triplett and everyone working behind the scenes at the magazine. The Offing has published so much excellent, daring writing—take a moment to browse their archive.
The essay was published two days ago, and by coincidence, that day I also had an appointment with my optometrist. She dilated my eyes. I’d forgotten how much those drops blur your vision. It’s not just that bright light becomes painful. There are two sets of drops, and one of them forcibly relaxes the muscles of your eyes so you can’t focus on anything close. Despite this, I decided to run a quick errand after my appointment. I wandered around the store in sunglasses, squinting, struggling to decipher what I needed from the many items on the shelves. Checking out, I inserted the wrong end of my credit card into the chip reader. To me, the card was just a blurry rectangle. Standing there, failing to complete my purchase, it hit me how this attempt to navigate the world while half-blind echoed an experience I describe in the essay, and now the essay was out in the world. At that very moment, some stranger might be reading that very part. It felt uncanny, and also lucky.
Kate Blakinger 