Check Yourself

Will Smith + Formula 1 + part 1 of a very short story

This is Emily Writes Back, a newsletter for brilliant people.

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A version of Sebastian Münster’s sea monster chart, from Public Domain Review which got it from the State Library of New South Wales collection.

Dear EWB Readers,

Below is a blast from the past, a heretofore unpublished thing from March two years ago that I was happy to find in my drafts folder just now, because I cannot think of anything to say today. Content must be germinating deep inside me, not yet ready to break through. Maybe tomorrow. (Well, it better, because I have said I will publish a new story, poem, or cartoon every day until August 10!)

Emily

From March, 2022

I said to Marshall on Sunday morning, “Do you know that today is the Oscars?” and he said, “Do you know that today is the Saudi Grand Prix?”

Ocean Strip, part 1

Before you start picturing a swimming pool or a pond when I tell you this story, I have to explain the “Ocean Strip” to you. It is part of the Atlantic Ocean. It has gray concrete sides like an in-ground pool but is elevated about shoulder high like an above-ground pool. The city planners and architects thought it would be revolutionary design to make a long, rectangular raised canal out of part of the ocean.

If you are on the fourth floor or higher in our condo complex, you can see the Ocean Strip from your window—a churning trough of salt water—stretching from the parking garage to the ocean.

I was coming from my car, walking up the slanted pavement from the underground garage to the complex’s front entrance when I saw the big girl with the dark curly hair swimming in the Ocean Strip and waving at me.