Issue 31 Special Edition: 11 Facts About Narwhals
"I should have been sleeping but wasn’t. My eyes and mind poked open by a question asked of me earlier in the day. Do you have other kids?"
Welcome to KHÔRA, a dynamic online arts space produced in collaboration with Lidia Yuknavitch’s Corporeal Writing. Visit our Archive to read previous issues. Scroll down if you’d like your work to be considered for future issues.
Issue 31: Special Edition
Today’s hauntingly beautiful essay is by Sasha Howell. Sasha is a writer, mother, marketer, goof, and more. But of all the titles Sasha holds, her favorite is eternal optimist. Her work has appeared in Motherwell and in the books Bar Flies: True Stories From the Early Years, and Gems: Selections from Twenty Years of Mothers Who Write. Sasha’s essay for KHÔRA, 11 Facts About Narwhals, is paired with a Sumi ink on paper painting by artist Abbey Ryan.
Check out the full Issue 31 Special Edition, and if you missed our previous issues, visit our Archive. If you’d like to be considered for future publications, scroll down to learn more about KHÔRA’s 500 Words and KHÔRA’s Images.
11 Facts About Narwhals by Sasha Howell
A group of narwhals is called a blessing. I learned this in the dark hours of the morning when I should have been sleeping but wasn’t. My eyes and mind poked open by a question asked of me earlier in the day.
Do you have other kids?
I stop my slumbersome scroll at a picture: three silvery white creatures each with a seemingly magical horn rise up out of the water between chunks of ice to form what looks like a group high five.
You know this, I want to say to her but don’t. Just like I know the horn on the narwhal isn’t a horn at all. It’s a tooth. It spirals out from the skull, splitting through the lip on the left side of the head.
What I didn’t know until this nighttime dive is that narwhals have a second tooth, too. This one stays beneath the surface of the skin, rarely growing beyond a nub….
Read 11 Facts About Narwhals.
Abbey Ryan is a painter interested in the poetics of painting and classical painting as a meditative practice. Balancing traditional artistic expression with innovation is at the heart of her creative research and practice. With the accelerated pace of life today, Abbey's classical painting practice is an act of cultural preservation and revival. Abbey studied painting with David Leffel at The Art Students League of NY and completed graduate work at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She earned her M.F.A. in Painting from Hunter College, CUNY in 2007. In 2007, Abbey began making small daily paintings for her blog, Ryan Studio. Abbey's work is in over 1,800 private and museum collections on six continents.
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