Entries by Melanie Bates

2017: “A Journey of a Thousand Miles” Into the Unknown

I’m hurtling down WY-220, my knuckles white from my death-grip on the steering wheel, though I’m still managing about 80 MPH. The melamine plates are rattling in the cupboard, and I’m fairly certain that the butter is stuck to the inside of the door above my little sink. Up ahead I see a mile-long line of […]

The Pain of the Women’s March on Washington

I stood on the metro, scrunched up against scads of women wearing myriad variations of knitted pink hats with ears, and gulped breaths of air – nearly hyperventilating – and thinking I really needed to get out amongst human beings more. Swirls of neon pink, baby pink, pink bordering on purple, and dusty rose blended […]

Is Writing Hard?

“So, what do you do?” the girl asks. She has a gold star plastered on the chest of her snowy white sweater. Silver tinsel adorns the neck and cuffs. It matches her adult braces perfectly and I think her quite clever. Her gaze tells me we’re in a competition, though, and that we’re on the train, the […]

On Aging: One of “Those” Women…

I needed a dress for a wedding. For some, this might seem a perfectly normal thing, but I loathe clothes shopping. Detest. Abhor. Hate with a fiery, red-hot passion. Yet I knew I couldn’t very well show up in the sweat-stained sweater I’d been wearing over my pajamas every day for the past week. My […]

Resistance & The Upper Limit Problem in Creativity

Resistance has had my hands bound with anchor rope for the past few months. Maybe you’ve noticed. I haven’t written a blog since April. Resistance^10000000. But it’s more than just blogging. I hadn’t been writing on my novel either. For those who don’t know the word in terms of creativity, or following your bliss, essentially it means […]

A White Girl on White Privilege

I was in the middle of a workout a few weeks ago – sweat pooling, weights in hand – when someone rapped the secret knock on my door. Da da dadaaa da, da da. I never answer my door. Ever. For any reason. But I was curious. Who could it be? Maybe my little brother was making […]

Traversing Female Friendship

It’s fall of 1982. The grass hasn’t started to crunch yet, but you can feel that Cheyenne Winter is sitting on his suitcase full of snow in a vain attempt to secure the latches. His flight is booked. His car is waiting to take him to the airport. I’m wearing ginormous brown glasses with a […]

If You’ve Had a Rough Year… This One’s For You

This one goes out to a dear friend who battled breast cancer this year. Battled? Hmpffff… She smote it down and pissed on its ruins. And to another who’s dear to me who’s heading in for his final treatment for melanoma that showed up first on his face, and then in his brain. This also goes out […]