Janna Urschel

The Mouse and the Ladybug

Lately I’ve been trekking to Colorado to my in-laws’ to help prepare their old house for sale. In the absence of humans, other denizens have taken up residence. The first I noticed were the mice. I didn’t notice mice, that is, but I noticed mouse droppings. Lots of them. Everywhere. My mind raced to rabiesContinue reading “The Mouse and the Ladybug”

In Defense of the Grossly Imperfect

This semester I’m teaching a writing course, the theme of which is Artificial Intelligence. If spending time daily contemplating the looming AI takeover isn’t enough to plunge you into existential dread, I don’t know what is. AI has become so sophisticated that it is already replacing our doctors, our service workers, our artists and writers, me. I have no skills AI cannot do more accurately and efficiently. I am thoroughly, humanly, excruciatingly fallible.

The $4,000 Cinch

So, with respect to Tom Hanks, life is less like a box of chocolates than it is a wobbly Jenga tower threatening to topple from one unidentifiable lynch pin …

Grievings

This grief is different. It took me awhile to figure out why. It is my first encounter with a loved one’s physical suffering from a violent death. Consequently, the shape and path of this grief is profoundly different than those I have experienced before. … This weekend our dog Shiloh was hit by a car.

Life Will Out

Life is the dandelion in the sidewalk crack that shrivels under a spray of Round-Up and then shoots up a new stalk next day, the lichen on the headstone, the bacterial bloom in the holding tank. It is tiny and mighty and everywhere. The sublime is underfoot.

Why My Body Is Smarter Than I Am

When I got an “I put pants on today” sticker for my computer, I thought it was a kind of funny metaphor for the small victory of just getting through the day. I never expected it would express a literal major achievement.

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Goldilocks Syndrome: An Elegy for the One True Chair

It’s just not working. It’s been a good year, we had a good run, when I fit into you, and you fit into me, and we did beautiful things together. Once I could just sit with you for hours, reading, dreaming, and, yes, writing. You used to support me, comfort me, but gone are thoseContinue reading “Goldilocks Syndrome: An Elegy for the One True Chair”

Hands Free

Picture this: a beaming, triumphant nine-year-old straddles the blanched, decaying carcass of a gargantuan, prehistoric organism. She smiles and waves from the perch she’s clambered to twelve feet above the forest floor. It’s perfect; it’s memorable; it’s eminently share-able. I reach for my phone to take a picture. It’s not in my pocket. Not inContinue reading “Hands Free”

Food for thought

There’s nothing like a malfunctioning body to smash through the fallacy of the sovereignty of the brain-self. In December, I weighed in at a nice round 106. This is a good weight for a slight-framed shorty like me. For the better parts of January and February, I was suddenly and dramatically hard-pressed to keep foodContinue reading “Food for thought”