erika on "one simple joy": colored letters.

After Alicia so graciously asked me to be a part of this guest series, I really got thinking about the chaos of a normal day – the hurdles and errands and obligations that for many of us define the adult world. And some days, it is tough to find one simple joy amidst all the responsibilities, but lately, I’ve been looking a little closer and what I’ve found is quite simple indeed.

I spend most of my day in a cubicle, working at a computer, typing and reading words, and I’ve found that sometimes, these letters on a page can really become something transformative. There are certain words for me, that just seeing them printed provides some kind of comfort, some nostalgia or acknowledgement of home – words like poem, low tide, autumnal.

Reading, for me, is somewhat of a visual experience – every letter has its own color and space on the page – a phenomenon called synaesthesia that causes two or more of the senses to cross over, in my case, letters and color. So some words feel like old friends – the oranges and reds of the word poem with a creamy white in the center, the way it smoothes across the page like a spoonful of crème brulee. I take some small pleasure in knowing that these letters put on a kind of show that only I can see, and feel grateful that we all have this opportunity to envision and define our little corners of the world.

--Erika (who not only sees beauty in the word poem, but writes radiant poems, too)

*photo of Erika taken by Graham Shepherd at her home away from home--Newcomb's Hollow Beach, Wellfleet, Cape Cod