brief flashings in the phenomenal world

work in process//13.

It’s Friday evening. I haven’t started writing this post, the post in which I’d planned to talk about brief flashings in the phenomenal world, not just my book of the same name, which comes out Tuesday, but the flashings themselves.

The day slid away from me, as days sometimes do. I did a podcast interview and then went grocery shopping. Got my windshield fixed so my 15-year-old can legally take her driver's test on Wednesday, ran up the mountain with the dogs, went to Office Depot to buy mailers for book goody bags, answered emails, and am now officially half dead from allergies. So I’ll try to keep this, well, brief.

What ARE brief flashings in the phenomenal world?

I’ve been asked this half a dozen times this week. It’s good to be put on the spot—you get better with your answer. But defining the ephemeral is tricky business. Be too exacting and you risk coming off like a pat elevator pitch or an optimization hack. Stay vague, though, and the flashings sound just a little too woo, the stuff of crystal ceremonies in Sedona.

In truth, the flashings are actually very ordinary and beautiful—beautiful because they are so ordinary. Moments when you catch your breath, look again, and understand that you are alive, here in this moment, that you are part of everything and everything is part of you. They are sublime and fleeting and so easy to miss! I wrote this book because I didn’t want us to miss them anymore.

At the risk of over-explaining—a few examples from this week:

• The bard on skis on closing day at Ski Santa Fe, swooshing to a stop beside our group and reciting, unprompted, from memory an entire, lengthy verse of Bob Dylan’s “Highway 61;”and my friend Sam saying, “If that wasn't a brief flashing….”

• Seeing my daughter’s shape in the bed where she woke and flung off her sheets and flew into her day, like only a 13-year-old can, leaving yesterday’s sneakers still laced on the floor and her sweet, soft imprint in the sheets; realizing again how precious and fleeting childhood is.

• the morning sun on a trail sign 

•the blur of girls on a track, a lacrosse field

• Dreaming last night that I was falling off a giant cliff, tearing myself from sleep before I hit the ground, and then asking my husband over breakfast if this really happens in real life. “No,” Steve said. “I don’t think it works like that. There’d be a lot more people dying in their sleep. People probably have bad dreams but not everyone wakes up.” You’re right about that, I thought to myself.

• A friend grocery shopping with her 90-year-old mother, walking at a glacial pace through the ketchup aisle, patiently asking her mother what she needs, when she looks up to see a man smiling at her kindly, an expression of gentle compassion on his face. No words were necessary, his look in that moment expressed everything she needed to hear. I see you. Showing up. Doing the hard stuff.

To quote briefly from my Brief Flashings:

Life is a series of flickerings, like lightning bugs pulsing in a meadow or street lamps blinking randomly in the blackness. Tiny items of astonishment on the tick list of existence. At first glance, they might not look like much. Look again.

“We should always live in the dark empty sky,” Suzuki Roshi wrote in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. “The sky is always the sky. Even though clouds and lightning come, the sky is never disturbed. Even if the flashing of enlightenment comes, our practice forgets all about it.” The point is to not get attached—to see the flash, feel it, and keep your eyes open for the next one to come, and then the next. Because they will. [read a longer excerpt + intereview in this week's cover story in the Santa Fe Reporter!]

The box containing my first copies of Brief Flashing in the Phenomenal World finally arrived last Saturday. I didn’t open them that day or the next. I was waiting for the Right Moment, one I pictured would be brimming with emotion and reflection—maybe even a few tears of gratitude, like other authors' cinematic book reveals!—but one day became the next until I realized I was officially avoiding the box. What if the books looked bad or had a typo (please tell my publisher if you find one, not me.) Finally, on Wednesday, racing out the door for a radio interview I realized I might need a copy. I barked at my 15-year-old to hurry up and capture the moment for posterity, but she stood at a weird angle and the kitchen table was a mess and I threw a little fit—on camera—about the junky things lying around all askew.

Then I composed myself and smiled into her iPhone. I was doing it. I was opening the box! What began as a staged act was becoming a genuine moment of awe. I tore open the box and there they were. The books. My books! I couldn’t believe they actually existed! I worked for three years and finally, they were here: their own brief flashings in the phenomenal world.

Pro tip: grab a notebook, any old thing will do, write brief flashings in the phenomenal world on the front, keep it handy, and jot down the ones that you see. You don’t have to compose poetry or Pulitzer-worthy prose. Once you see one, you’ll start seeing them everywhere. Later you’ll look back in the book and realize you are the flashings.

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If you are reading this before Tuesday 4.16, you can still do so for 25% off using code RUNFREE; book clubs and running groups and other orgs ordering 10 or more get 30% off with code FLASHINGS30. Message me if you’d like me to zoom into your club discussion.

After Monday, Brief Flashings will officially be flashing its way into bookstores and online, so you can get yours there. Don’t forget to ask your library to order a copy if they don't already have one.

FINALLY, TUESDAY 4.16.24 is pub day and I will be celebrating Brief Flashings’ birthday with a book talk and launch party at Bishop’s Lodge in Santa Fe at 6:30 PM. Garcia Street Books will be on hand selling copies. Come buy a copy and get it signed! Most important, there will be CAKE! This is a free event and open to all.

Thank you for supporting authors, indie presses, and local bookstores.

see the flashings, x

katie