Hi, readers of the intangibles! I’m essayist Allison Kirkland, and this publication was created to celebrate and explore the world of creative nonfiction and the writing life. I’m so glad you’re here.
I don’t know about you, but it’s been a strange summer. It has been unseasonably stormy in North Carolina. Most days I wake up to the lower half of our windows fogged up from the humidity, to the sound of light rain, sometimes rumbling thunder in the distance. Some days it will rain from sun up to sundown. It’s been a summer of tracking in mud, of lightning cracking open the sky and rumbling the earth underneath our feet, of leaks in the ceiling and the sound of rain running down our gutters.
We’ve barely watered our garden all summer, and yet it looks as lush as we’ve ever seen it. But all the rain has given the season — usually known for being light — a ponderous, melancholic air.
I ask a lot of the summer season, even as an adult. I have high expectations for it. I want a week-long vacation somewhere fun. I want a few afternoons by a body of water, if I am able. I want to put my burdens down, unplug, unwind. I want to eat all of the tomatoes and peaches and sweet corn. I want to celebrate the year and prepare for the fall.
2025 has been a diffcult year — a combination of world news, personal grief and some writer’s block — so my expectations for this summer have been even higher. I was going to use this summer to redeem the year!
But instead this summer our cat, Lyra, has been recovering from a small surgery. Our summer has been spent inside: velcro-ing Elizabethan collars around our cat’s neck to keep her away from her stitches, mashing starchy pills into her stinky food, so many vet appointments. Picking up prescriptions. And, thrumming underneath all of that, the anxiety of watching a vulnerable animal not understand what’s happening to her.
“I wanted another Brat Summer,” I said to my husband while spoon feeding my cat her gloppy wet food mixed with an antibiotic, the sound of the constant light rain in the background. “Or a Hot Girl summer. Instead we got something like Storm Summer.”
“Sick Cat Summer,” my husband replied. We laughed. He was right. It has become our refrain.
And yet.
In June we noticed that the bird house that we had put up at the front of our house years ago was finally inhabited. First we noticed, out of the corner of our eyes, the tiniest bird flitting back and forth, each time carrying a small stick or a bit of moss in its beak. A week later another bird had joined him and they took turns winging back and forth to the house and then out into the world to find bugs, more sticks. They were house wrens — known for being fiesty, quick and opinionated. We started using our backdoor more than our front door because each time we opened the front door one of the wrens would protest loudly, vibrating their tiny wings and swooping down near our heads. Soon we started hearing the tiniest chirps coming from the bird house. There were babies in there.
In July, my Great Writers Block of 2025 finally thawed. I started writing again, finding my words first thing in the morning, desperate to get them down before they disappeared, trekking out to my writing studio first thing and not emerging until lunchtime, or later.
I felt the relief in my body — it felt like finally being able to cry after holding back my tears for months. The words were coming so fast it was almost like they were being pulled out of me. I got back to my memoir manuscript, for the first time this year. I wrote about 16,000 words.
Then in August I had the opportunity to read from my work-in-progress at the Bull City Press Presents Reading Series. This was the first time I’d read my work in public since the pandemic, and I was really looking forward to it.
I read from my memoir manuscript, a section that I’d written in July. It was about my time in New York City as a young adult just out of college. It was fun to be in the world in this way. To hear other writers reading their work. We all went out for a drink afterwards and talked about writing, publishing, submitting, community, art. To be honest I’ve wanted more of this type of engagement with the world for so long.
The most poignant part of the evening was that so many of my friends and colleagues showed up for this event. I had an audience there from all walks of life — high school, college, new writer friends I’ve made in the area. In fact, a few people who showed up were complete surprises: some friends I’d known since childhood who happened to be in town and who I hadn’t seen for years.
That felt especially poignant because it reminded me of one of the central questions I’m trying to answer for myself by writing this memoir: who is this person, the narrator of this memoir, and how did she become who she is now? How much of her childhood self still resides within her, even now?
And now, it’s mid-August. The house wrens have fledged, and the bird house sits empty again.
Our cat is out of her cone, her fur is growing back over her stitches.
I suppose I got what I needed from the summer after all.
JOIN US: The September Writing Circle is taking place three evenings on Zoom: Wednesday September 3rd, 5:30- 6:30pm ET, Wednesday September 17th, 5:30- 6:30pm ET and Wednesday September 24th, 5:30- 6:30pm ET. Each evening we’ll begin with a guided meditation and then work with two enlivening prompts, with the option to share. Open to adult writers of any experience level. Read more here and sign up here. Registration closes on August 26th.
You are reading the intangibles, by writer and creative writing instructor Allison Kirkland. This publication is geared toward writers of memoir and creative nonfiction and the people who love them.
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Sick cat summer is the new hot girl summer! Right??? Right!
My head is full now with the images of flitting wrens making you change your house/walkway pattern, foggy windows in the morning (same here; I call it terrarium mornings), the stinky cat food, lovingly spooned into a mending cat. Ha! I enjoyed that visit with your summer days.
Congratulations on a big turnout and reception for you and your returned muse!!🥰💖