Kathryn Mayer • Writing Out Loud
I write stuff down. writer • humorist • activist
So many songs written about broken hearts, I wonder if heartache didn’t occur would music even exist? There are happy songs of course, but those too break hearts that are currently cracked, because happy songs offer endless scenarios of what could be instead of what is. I have a broken heart and I’m doing all the right things, the things doctors and therapists and well-meaning friends tell you to do,
This essay was selected for Birthday episode of Read650, where writers read, if you prefer to listen. I’m about 17 min in, and highly recommend not just my story, but all the stories. ~klm • Dad’s giant, fat finger slices through the smooth, silky frosting; doesn’t matter whose birthday it is. My dad bends to table level, his thick glasses and bushy beard inches from the cake, whispering to kids
I remember sleeping through the night. I remember when I didn’t wake up at 3:17 am and lay awake for hours and hours trying not to remember. I remember when I didn’t lock my doors. Or keep my car in the garage. Or pull the curtains at night so no one could see in. I remember in the before, when I didn’t shop in a different town in a different
Flypaper dangles from the rafters of the barn, swaying in the breeze and sticking to my hair when I forget to duck away from it, and I am left to peel it off hair, shirt, or shoulders, leaving teeny-tiny fly body parts stuck to my clothes, fingers, and scalp, like corpse glitter long after the party is over. The strips hang like toffee-colored party streamers, a ploy to attract pesky
“The male humpback whale …” – the male announcer singsongs into the video. I’m already pissed. Biologists studying the male humpback whale. What it’s like for them to sing and memorize songs, how smart they are, these copycats, plagiarizing each other and taking the leisure time to dance and swim, look how strong and handsome and brilliant I am. How elegant and athletic and deserving. “Look at me, look how
For almost a decade, I’ve had writer, humorist, activist on the bio of my Instagram, Facebook, and even here on the blog. FFS it’s on my business card. I’m slowly but surely taking activist off the list, because as little as I did before, I’m doing less now and the term should be devoted to people in the fight, not those on the sidelines. Where I firmly am. For now.
New neighbors moved in across the street, a young couple, man and woman. No kids that I could tell, peaking out through the upstairs window where the tree doesn’t block the view. A white couple. No surprise there. I’m a white woman living in a sleepy white somewhat suburban town on a white street with white neighbors. I prepped my welcome to the neighborhood gift, a basket chock full of
It’s hard to be funny when the world is falling apart, and while maybe Dave Chappelle and Steven Colbert and Samantha Bee can do it, I cannot. People read me for the funny, for the lighthearted jabs life gives us, how I interpret them then regurgitate life’s snippets from maybe not a point of view previously considered. All that stopped when the shooting paralyzed my community, almost a decade ago
An irreverent storyteller with a foul mouth and big heart, Kathryn Mayer (aka Kathy and/or Kate) is a writer, humorist, and (former) activist writing out loud with humor and grace about little life moments with big ripples, including the space between parenting and aging parents, social issues, angsty reflections of midlife, and, sigh, gun humpers. Still. Sometimes a big deal, sometimes not Mayer is a national award-winning columnist, according to the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, and her essays have been recognized as Voice of … Read More Here...
kate[at]kathrynmayer[dot]com
xo Kate