SUSAN WEBER

Susan Weber is a writer, musician, and enthusiast of water. When adding a post here she announces it in her email newsletter. Just now she’s posting less to pursue a longer fiction project. Calling it a novel may be a stretch.

In her life she’s seen some of Africa, Israel, India, the Americas, and Europe. So far she always returns to her Ohio roots. Pandemic has upended her longed-for pilgrimage to Greece, but not her wanderlust. When not writing she swims and reads with boundless gratitude.

Susan’s one published poem appeared in Tributaries, a journal sponsored by the Cuyahoga Valley Nature Writers group. She has received the Great American Songwriting Contest Honor Award, the US International Film & Video award for Best Original Music and the Cleveland Free Times Music Award for Best Female Singer Songwriter. Her collection of original songs, Monet's Orbit, was honored as a Top Ten album by Cool Cleveland.

TRISKELE according to susan

Named by the Greeks, the triskele has circled the world on coinage and banners and prows. It’s been carved in metal, stone, and wood. Gamers, foodies and jewelers affix it to their wares. When I first paid attention to the triskele it looked back, a repeating triplet of waves. The waves seemed to matter and to ask what matters most to me.

Well, one great love is water. As kids we sprouted gills in a land-locked pool in Loveland, outside Cincinnati. Summertime was a wet wild spectacle of letting go. Gravity, boredom, inhibition disappeared in the pure joy of it. I’ve been a swimmer ever since, and hope to swim till the day I die.

Love for guitar came later. The sound waves of strings on wood was a place where time rested and serious play began. From that place came songs. And to the songs came band mates who felt free to join me.

Triskele had another question though. “So what’s your third immersive love?”

Thinking awhile, I laughed at the obvious. Stories. I’ve loved them since forever. Played in them, felt my way through large and small adventures, and emerged a better version of myself. In my career I learned to tell them orally, to children, to teachers, to elders who shared their own. The question was, and still is, could I write stories too? The ancient wave machine was quick to give an answer, or at least to offer methods of finding one.

Breathe deep and dive in. Stroke glide stoke your story to the page. Surface, grinning, to a world transformed. And then, begin again.