Can We Look Directly at It, Just for a Second? follows a transfemme writer who retreats to the Catskills as the world collapses beneath rising seas and ecological horrors to wait for the apocalypse. How did you develop the title, and what does the idea of looking directly at something represent within the story?

The book is set around, and was inspired by, a full lunar eclipse I saw in 2024, from a Catskills lakeside setting like that of the book. Climate anxiety had been weighing on me particularly hard, and the awesome sight of this massive natural event felt akin to a cosmic/sublime moment of profound powerlessness and ego death. The caution not to look directly at the eclipse except for very briefly during its totality, struck me as a juicy metaphor for our inability to look directly at ourselves as individuals or a species for fear of realizing our weakness, smallness, and mortality. Through this “Perseus’s shield,” reflection, the book’s anxious protagonist looks anew at the stories they tell themself about themself, whether those be pertaining to gender, privilege, desirability, the right to take up space, and how to find or make value during precarious times. 

How does the story examine the difference between seeking acceptance from others and finding permission to live authentically?

A working title for the piece was, “if a bear transitions in the woods with nobody to see it, did it really happen?” I didn’t make the title much shorter! The story explores whether it is meaningful to create art nobody will see, and whether social framework-stories like gender authenticity and being hot can exist without being witnessed and agreed upon. When (eco)systems like cities, societies, political tribalism etc get dwarfed by nature revolting, what does that mean for the impact of things like gender transitioning, kindness to others vs self, and living vs just surviving?

How does the natural environment function as both a physical threat and a reflection of the story’s emotional themes?

Serious hikers have an expression, “the mountain doesn’t care.” It means that nature as a whole is indifferent to humans’ stories, egoes, excuses, and identities. Under ecological collapse, nature is no longer ‘out there,’ it’s all there is. Yes, the story features dangerous humans, mammals, arachnids, plants, and fungi, but the thematic threat to the protagonist is that their stories about what they stand for no longer work, maybe don’t even matter.

How does the story challenge conventional ideas about bodies, desirability, and what it means to feel comfortable in one’s own skin?

I’m a disabled, nonbinary, neurodivergent person, all experiences that trouble desirability and normative sex and intimacy. I also identify as a queer ‘bear’ archetype (the embracing of larger bodies, body fat and hair as both morally neutral and hot.) The protagonist of the story, who is not a mouthpiece for my own beliefs, by the way, struggles with how their body can be desirable despite multiple active visible parasites and monstrous excess of erogenous zones. They swing between two poles: wanting their gender performance and chosen body type to make them both sexy and monstrous; and feeling they can only be themself when not being perceived, commented on, or evaluated at all. I don’t propose any tidy answers to this friction because answers are elusive, and friction is more fun anyway. Thanks!

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