Liz Ahl

The darkness & difficulty of this pandemic is not photographable for me. That darkness is big & real and debilitating in unprecedented (to me) ways. That said, I’ll focus here on building. One weekend, my partner and I got deep into some vintage space lego therapy. I have a huge collection of them from my (okay, technically my younger brother’s) youth. Still had the kit instructions — but all the legos were a jumble. So the first part of the “playing with legos” was the sorting — which, for certain types, is its own deep pleasure. We built a bunch of moonbase & spaceship kits, then making a silly video. The other picture I’ve included is of the in-progress “kit” I’m assembling for each of my creative writing students this fall — a blank journal, back issues of National Geographic, a multicolor pen, two stamped envelopes, & a pack of 100 index cards. Each of these has a purpose connected with course asst’s & community building. I may add a thing or two. This photo gives me hope.