Galls & Walnuts

books, writing, and a strange life

  • Happy Fall Equinox

    by Parker Wolfe

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    Happy Fall Equinox!

    I can’t express how ecstatic I am for fall.

    Autumn is a precious time for me because it is a season of contemplation, goal setting, and resetting. Even though it’s the busiest season for me, it’s also lively with precious colors, hearty food, and crisp, comfortable weather. Despite some personal challenges, my worries and concerns for the goings-on in my life will continue to be labeled as distractions keeping me away from my ultimate goals and purposes. In this case, it is writing.

    Autumn is my ultimate Memento Mori, reminding me that death is an essential life experience, but that in the colors it grants, comes opportunity for reflecting on the finite time we have in the world. There is no room for persistent negativity. This time is better spent changing the dynamics around us: be more understanding; be more empathetic; be more courageous; be more giving; be more artistic. It is okay to be melancholy and angry at the world, but it is also important to shift one’s mindset into action and become the positive change one wants to see. If terrible relationships are what one sees, be the spectacular friend, lover, and family member. If destruction of the wilds is what one sees, be the steward of the wealds.

    I recently had a disheartening encounter with a close family member who enjoys belittling others (he made unsolicited insults about a bridesmaid at a wedding we went to—which were indirectly insulting to me as well), and after thoroughly defending the integrity of this perfectly wonderful young lady, it had me think about how unpleasant it must be to live in a mind of shallowness and persistent negativity. Life is definitely too short to be speculating horrid (and wrong) things about people one knows nothing about.

    He was once an artist—and I say once because he was at one point passionate about music and writing. I’ve grown up and watched him shift from honing his craft to freely giving his mind away to algorithms and Learning Language Models. The transformation of his art and perspectives was terribly stunning as they became soulless shadows. He wonders why he is so uninspired, and why his music and writing has decayed in quality and soul. I can conjecture several reasons, but rotting critical thinking and the refusal to work without artificial prompts are definitely symptoms.

    We should not aspire to live as he does, stewing in hatred and dislike because miserable others told us to. We should not be hypocritical, complaining of others when we are the problem. Autumn is our reminder that such thinking wastes time. We should prefer to create and share and inspire, rather than tear down, break away, and smash.

    This autumn, we must be reminded of the impermanence of time and the importance of thinking for oneself.

    Spend them wisely. Cherish them kindly. Love what is good, learn from what is evil.

    This season, I refuse to let evil paralyze what I can do in the moment. I hope you do as well.

  • Desperate to Recalibrate: a Brain Dump

    by Parker Wolfe

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    Three weeks of absolute chaos. A midterm election looming, unnecessary war, and killings and terror on the streets overseas and here in the States. The beginning of the school semester, kind yet needy students, I’m attempting to fulfill the needs of them all. I am behind on lesson planning, worksheet building, emergency learning materials, phone calls, and emails. The To-Do list extends into the next week.

    Another lockdown drill today. Another fire drill. Another lunch uneaten. Another afternoon of medical shots, meetings, community service, and group texts from work. I want to see the woods, but I don’t have time right now.

    Gaining weight, losing weight, gaining weight, losing weight. Stress eating and taking a risk drinking coffee. Dinner must be cooked, but I’m too tired. I order instead, but now I’m over budget. Another bill. The lawn is overgrown. My garden is holding on for dear life. Most things are dying. It’s too hot to go outside. Climate change is killing us. Coral reefs are bleaching. The crabs on my beach are disappearing. I can smell wildfire smoke from Canada.

    My stomach hurts, my stomach cramps. I get relief for a day, then it returns. My ankles hurt, and other joints and bones hurt for no reason. I got two more piercings because they hurt in a good way: it’s pain I can control.

    I wonder if a family member of mine is developing dementia or Alzheimer’s because his memory is so goddamn bad… or if he’s so tired of life that he chooses very little to care about.

    I have more yesterdays than tomorrows, but I still feel okay. 👌🏾

    Will we run out of money, food, and supplies as the war we started continues? Will we run out of oil and reserves? Will there be another winter of Arctic blasts, heating bills of over $500, and will the bus drivers go on strike? Will I die before I’m published? Am I running out of time?

    I hate phones. I hate AI. I hate how sick my country makes us when it doesn’t have to be this way. I want chocolate, and I want vegetables. Screw the mindless and the evil and the billionaires. They have no real purpose or shame, so they create misery—even within themselves.

    I am desperate to recalibrate. I want to just hug a tree.

  • Raw Banana Bread

    by Parker Wolfe

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    I hadn’t baked anything in months―which is ironic considering I used to work in a bakery. The collection of dalmatian bananas with syrupy skin inspired me to bake banana bread.

    I was out of sour cream, so I used cream cheese. I used stevia in place of half of the brown sugar so I can be delusionally healthier. While I beat the dry and wet ingredients out of order, my cat stole the small sphere of yarn hanging for dear life on a knit sweater I began last winter.

    I forgot to add the eggs, and prayed to somebody that the banana bread would still come out okay.

    It smelled like Grandma’s doily-laden cottage, rich with sweetness, and toffee-like perfume.

    After it cooled just a bit, I cut into it.

    The whole damn thing was raw.

    Writing Can Feel Like Raw Banana Bread

    I looked forward to my masterpiece turning out like a masterpiece. However, sometimes what you bake and write feels raw… in that uninspired, unoriginal, and flavorless kind of way.

    But, that’s okay. Sometimes it helps to take a step back and push away the judge hammering away at our insicurities.

    I don’t know why, but I’m afraid to bake banana bread again even though it was the first time in years since it turned out raw, soft, and inedible. But, I know that I’ll have to return back to it one day. We should never quit after one bad day.

  • Oaks Should Stand Taller Than Skyscrapers

    by Parker Wolfe

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    I was suffocated by the skyscrapers

                that replaced Trees

    In my current dwelling, it is nice to see

                Trees Taller than skyscrapers.

    If only we could tap into the

                Memories of an Oak.

    They hold Knowledge, like a centenarian grandparent.

    “I Look Up To You” by Parker Wolfe

  • Writing a Novel: I Have a lot of Sacrificing to Do

    by Parker Wolfe

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    What’s the longest trip you’ve ever taken?

    Twenty years is a long time to be in “writer’s block” and I made the decision to remove quite a few distractions and overcome creative cowardice. I’ve begun to make some sacrifices to make room for writing, and although it’s a bit soul crushing, not writing my book is more soul crushing.

    It all started with a few injuries that took me out of my martial arts practice. I left my dojo to heal several cases of tendonitis. I do plan on going back, but I’m not sure when. Then, I cut back my sewing, knitting, and crocheting. I often have tunnel vision when I’m in my creative zone weaving up my most loved garments.

    Then, (the hard one and probably the most dangerous), I cut back on family time. I made a conscious effort to check in on family obligations, but if I’m honest, I usually write eight to ten hours on either Saturday or Sunday, locked in my art room, opening the door to eat, pee, and let the cat in or out. I still work full time, so I live for my weekends to get through as much of my draft as possible. This story has been in my head for so long that the characters feel like real people trapped in my head. They’re living there paying no rent and they need to leave.

    My sacrifices aren’t perfect. They’ve forced me to reduce my community, embrace isolation, and dip my fingers into fewer cookie jars. However, they also got me through two hundred pages of draft in six months.

    I have a long way to go, but the desire to write (even on the days when I’m stuck) has prevailed because I’ve forced the time instead of forced the act. I’ve given more time to practice, study, plan, and draft instead of getting stuck thinking and dreaming about the input and judging myself on the initial output.

    This is one long trip. I look forward to the end of it, but the journey is certainly wild.

  • Tending to the Garden While Writing

    by Parker Wolfe

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    In tending to the garden of my mind, I’ve neglected my actual garden. Summer has been brutal, and the heat has given me sun sickness more times than I can count. Many of my leafed babies deteriorated, resulting in pests, fungal infections, and overgrowth. My real garden is no longer pretty and requires a massive amount of love.

    With that said, I’m taking my first break (only a few days) from writing after five months—not because I’m burnt out—but because I want to take a few steps back and return to my story Eclipse with a fresh set of eyes.

    One of my favorite “break periods” involves literally touching grass—and dirt. And soil. And worms. And sticky sap and mildew.

    Thinking About My Story While Gardening

    Other than the typical benefits of spending time in nature, it’s a necessity for me as I’ve been using my gardening and hiking experience to flesh out one of my main characters in Eclipse. It’s inevitable that pieces of ourselves end up in all of our characters, but it’s fun to see them manifest through relaxing hobbies.

    This main character utilizes wood magic, which I am identifying as a practice that connects the magician to plants and fungi and allows the magician to manipulate it (with limitations), at will. She is in tune with the plants and earth around her, and she uses their knowledge to fuel her medicinal practices—which will be heavily relied on at a turning point in the story. When I garden, I sometimes pretend I am her, feeling the pulses of the soil as though my fingers are the mycorrhizal fungi.

    Although I’m not a Green Witch—a pagan practitioner of earth-based crafts—I do borrow some of the spiritual philosophies and practices such as honoring seasonal changes, herbalism, and Earth-friendly actions.

    I have to be honest that this main character is probably most inspired by my spiritual journey, and I like the idea of embedding the need for the quieter, natural living that technology has ripped away from us.

    The idea is to have her presence reflect what humanity has lost in its relentless pursuit of “progress” and “technological advancement”: connection to the environment. Don’t get me wrong; I love a good computer. However, as a millennial that has seen several generations of technology in the span of nearly four decades, I’ve grown tired of learning how to use another damn device.

  • The Outsiders’ Book Club: Because I Could Not Stop for Death… by Emily Dickinson

    by Parker Wolfe

    A Reflection…

    Emily Dickinson’s 479th Poem is one of my top five favorite poems.

    I find myself quoting parts of it practically weekly as a sort of morbid yet comforting prayer that comforts me in regard to the future.

    This current timeline of wars, artificial intelligence, and growing tastes of fascist ideology can indoctrinate anyone into perceiving the world as a hellscape of death, genocide, and rot—and, if we’re honest, it is exactly those things for those who have lived it. I wish I could erase those mortifying and tragic events from history where humanity acted on their worst sins: genocides, slavery, and any assault on human rights.

    Although I do not condone ending our only lives on purpose, Death and Eternal Rest can very well be a satisfying alternative when the hardships are overwhelming.

    Dickinson’s poem reminds me of Santa Muerte, Our Lady of Holy Death. She is a folk saint of Mexico who promises safe passage into the afterlife. She protects and heals, just as Dickinson’s grim reaper who guides her to eternal rest or life—whatever that might look like.

    I wonder sometimes if death lifts us up to a plane beyond one-sighted earthly materials. Houses are little blips in the ground, and time is relative.

  • Japanese Novel Haul

    by Parker Wolfe

    I have a soft spot for Japanese culture—surprisingly to most it did not begin with anime.

    It all started in elementary school where I attended a Quaker academy for primary school. We had a teacher named Yuki who taught us Japanese, shared folk traditions, and occasionally treated us with rice candy. We often sang a song called Teru Teru Bozu, a nursery rhyme about a little ghost-like charm hung outside of windows to encourage sunny weather. We made our own teru teru bozu, and I hung mine on the window of our Brooklyn apartment until he got too dusty and crinkly.

    Since then, I’ve dabbled a little bit in the language (I am far, far, far from fluent), cultural documentaries, practiced martial arts for over fifteen years, and incorporated homemade teriyaki, miso soup, onigiri, karē raisu, and other goodies into our diet at home. Until I can save up the money to actually go one day, I have been pretty obsessed with reading translated media (because, again, I’m not fluent), which has led me to a Japanese book haul one day.

    There was a major sale at my local bookstore that highlighted quite a few pieces by contemporary Japanese authors:

    Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

    If Cats Disapeared from the World by Genki Kawamura

    The Cat Who Saved Books by Sosuke Natsukawa

    Life for Sale by Yukio Mishima

    Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka

    Not sure what to expect, but I’m excited to see what they bring to the mind. You can tell that I have a weakness for cats on covers.

    The last Japanese literary novel I read was Kazuo Ishiguro’s A Pale View of the Hills. Ishiguro is a Japanese-British author born in Nagasaki, but raised in the United Kingdom. He has a creative history of not only written work, but cinematic work and musical composition.

    His debut novel from 1982, A Pale View of the Hills, tells the story of Etsuko, an elderly mother grappling with the suicide of her eldest daughter. As Etsuko reminisces of her younger years in post war japan, her life and unwinds as she navigates uncertainty, accountability, and autonomy in her life.

    This narrative reads like strolling in the middle of a fog… in a good way. It is a mysterious read that reminds me of how it feels to be mentally and physically stagnant in a world of constrictions. Unlike the haul novels listed, Ishiguru’s novel was written in English first.

    Lost in Translation

    Of course, ideas and concepts are lost in translation when reading books are interpreted, however, it is still fascinating and important to read stories from (in my situation) outside of the United States. The perspectives, themes, and values presented offer new insight that my limited American experience cannot fathom.

  • The Outsiders’ Book Club: Weyward by Emilia Hart

    by Parker Wolfe

    Weyward was my introduction to Emilia Hart, as well as the beginnings of a beautiful friendship with a colleague of mine. Around the time when I had thought I would never read or write again with the same passion as I had as a teenager, I was invited to join a book club at my school by a fellow English teacher whom I originally thought I had nothing in common with. If this isn’t the greatest lesson in not judging a book by its cover, then I don’t know what is.

    Weyward is a story of female survival in a world dominated by relentless misunderstandings, accusations of witchcraft, and the consequences of losing oneself when patriarchal dominance removes one’s agency. It isn’t quite a secret that women who were different—I think the appropriate phrase is women who just wanted to be themselves—faced all manners of persecution including death when they refused or simply were unable to navigate society at large. Weyward shows such dynamics through the interconnected stories of three generations of women with subtle weyward gifs.

    If you’re cautious about dabbling in the occult, this is definitely a sanitized read. It gets moderately dark and there is a touch of suspense when danger rears its ugly head with each protagonist. I did, however, wish there were more interactions with the antagonists; they did not seem to be entirely fleshed out, appearing somewhat “evil for the sake of being evil.” I would have appreciated more interactions between them and the protagonists to intensify the plot’s friction.

    Otherwise, it is still quite an enjoyable read, and I appreciated the subtleness of the magic. It aligns more with everyday folk magic as opposed to complex magical systems with mages and wizards.

  • Overcoming Creative Cowardice

    by Parker Wolfe

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    When I was in high school, our art teacher wanted us to come up with a mural to hang in the school cafeteria. It was a design project, and we had to show and discuss the steps we took to create the mural. I was getting into political and philosophical ideas at the time, often listening to music that was heavy in social and political awareness. I would be lying if I said I was particularly knowledgeable and understood entirely what I was consuming, but one has to begin somewhere, right?

    The Girl and the Dragon (somewhere around 2004-2005)

    I was the lucky art student that had to hang their work first. So, my friend and crush at the time helped me hang the mural early before school started. What came next, I did not expect.

    “It’s a dragon raping a girl!” a kid screamed.

    That was not what I drew, nor was that even going through my head.

    It was a Catholic school, so I pretty much created an uproar. I got my art teacher in trouble and I was brought down from class and back into the cafeteria to explain to the school what I had created.

    Rather than feeling fear or retribution, however, I was proud that something I made had begun a conversation. I had drawn a dragon crying and mourning the death of a human friend. She was killed by her own people because she had dared to love a sentient, living being beyond her own skin. It was a representation of how prejudice begats death and destruction. The cat peers at its audience, pleading why?

    After high school, the desire to make those conversations disappeared.

    The Beginning of Creative Cowardice

    I used to love shocking people and getting them to think about real world issues: human rights, prejudiced thinking, environmental destruction, etcetera. In my young adulthood, however, I began to wonder what people would think about me and my ideas? Would my ideas, my art, and me be cancelled, my career snuffed out as soon as it started?

    Social media, algorithms, and search engine optimization homogenized art. It all became fabricated content to appease the marketplace. I began to write blogs, killing my creativity and joy so that the Search Engine Optimization Gods would notice me and bless me with likes and eyes.

    The result was work I did not even enjoy. Work that felt soul-less. Work that was identical to others because the aesthetic being pushed was safe and marketable. I did not even know who I was anymore.

    The End of Creative Cowardice

    I created a small quilted American Flag for No Kings Day.

    This morning, I remembered that mixed media picture I created for high school art. I have forgotten the title of it, but let’s call it The Girl and the Dragon. I rolled it out onto the garage floor and laughed at how beautifully naive it was, yet proud that my young sophomore self had more guts than I do now.

    These days, I feel my younger self being summoned, having a story to tell, loving to create raw art from the inside out. I feel more empowered to release the creative cowardice that has kept me from creating anything. I want to create a work of enduring love, philosophy, and power. Even if I’m unsuccessful, I can say that I’ve tried.

    A Story in Progress

    My new hobby is writing unapologetically. I believe my book Eclipse (a steady work in progress), has been a good starting point. I want to talk about Diseases of the Mind. Since my goal is to put contemporary issues into a fantasy story, I wonder how I can express three issues that haunt me daily:

    1. The inability to think for oneself.
    2. Outsourcing thinking to others, especially machines.
    3. Blatant refusal to attempt to think for oneself.

    How can I fit these issues into the seemingly impossible moments my characters will have to overcome? Am I able to overcome them in real life? One who thinks for themselves has no room for creative cowardice.

    Daily writing prompt
    Share a hobby you’ve picked up recently — what got you into it?
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