The Lighthouse Keepers by Jen Colclough
In just the opening section of “The Lighthouse Keepers,” Jen Colclough gives voice to a school counselor, a professor from grad school, a well-known poet, and to the narrator’s own mind. The author draws the reader’s attention through diary entries, metaphor, inner dialogue, fictional and historical references. The myriad approach here is most deliberate, and most effective. In her author’s note, Colclough writes, “When considering ways to demonstrate the organized chaos of neurodivergent thinking, it made sense to apply the freedom I had found in poetry to a longer narrative form.”
The elasticity of creative nonfiction is one of the genre’s hallmarks—it allows writers to express their individuality through constant innovation, beyond the art of straightforward storytelling. What is uncommon, however, about the way that “The Lighthouse Keepers” works is that its author simultaneously demonstrates the machinations of the neurodiverse mind and, in doing so, explores the mosaic essay in a brand-new way, where internal and external sources act as the tesserae. In the essay, the narrator tells us, “Sometimes there are no connections between thoughts. Other times, the connections are so tenuous and buried under piles of context that there is no way to voice them sanely, so I don’t. I either change course or say nothing.” And then pivots seamlessly back into the world of literature: “Besides, the Hatter’s method is a matter of economics—no one has the time for gentle transitions these days.”
In her craft essay, “Breaking Genre,” Sejal Shah writes, “I am a combination of where I grew up, what I read, who my parents are, the languages I spoke…my brain chemistry…. I am a product of how I learned formally or informally what was what—what counts, who counts, and to whom.” Colclough, in this important piece, confronts brain chemistry directly, allowing her unique thought patterns to populate the landscape of her work. She writes in her essay, “I won’t lie to you—we are monsters. Hybrid signals, every one of us…. An exception to the rule that merits being narrativized and shared.” Through her mosaic-like gathering of sources to tell her story, Jen Colclough brings the monstrosity of her mind to the page, an exception but also a trailblazer. —CRAFT
“You’re a highly intelligent individual, and I’m sorry, but you probably know already that intellect and depression often run together.”
The school counsellor raises her hand up and down to simulate a wave.
“Your thoughts and your moods move like this because you’re operating on so many levels and focusing on so many different tasks.”
It’s exam season. She must be delivering this speech to students multiple times a day.
The counsellor continues dragging her hand through the air and I wonder why Nova Scotians are so preoccupied with oceanic metaphors. I mean, has nothing else happened to us but nature? Is the sea that brought the settlers here all we can talk about? Why are we unwilling to be more than our geography?
The question keeps recurring.
Once, in graduate school, I asked a professor which archaeological site in Roman Britain I might focus on for an upcoming project.
She replied:
“You’re from Nova Scotia, right?”
I nodded.
“Well, perhaps you could research one of the lighthouses. I’m sure you’d be great at that.”
I’m not sure what skills the professor imagined I had acquired growing up in the Maritimes, but I’ve never been adept at bringing ships home, nor do I find the lighthouse to be a particularly reassuring symbol. Lighthouses prevent ships from crashing into shallow waters. They signal ports by telling sailors to slow their crawl. To come closer, but not quickly.
According to Ocean Vuong, a lighthouse is most like a monster:
“…both shelter and warning at once.”
The week prior to my counselling appointment, I had begun taking the lorazepam prescribed by my doctor to help with panic attacks. My body was becoming thinner and more tense. It shook as I took out the tiny white pill and afterwards, the tightly clutched blankets of my eyelids smoothed into soft sheets beneath which I was able to find sleep.
Before the drug, my body was a warning. Afterwards, shelter.
And in the middle, I was a lighthouse. Tall, alone, and signalling feverishly to anyone who might be able to reach me on the cliffs.
My ADHD diagnosis was four years away.
“University is difficult,” the counsellor continues. “You should prioritize self-care. Get out for walks and make sure you’re sleeping.”
I nod.
I cannot tell her that I am a lighthouse. To do that, I would have to tell her about the insufficiency of wave metaphors, the Maritime preoccupation with lighthouses, Ocean Vuong’s thoughts on monsters, and finally, I would have to acknowledge the fact that I was one.
But there are only five minutes left of the session.
She clicks her pen as she opens her agenda. “Same time next week?”
Diary Entry, March 2014:
Didn’t sleep again. Worked on the Greek translation for three hours, then ran downtown to meet Mercey because I forgot we were having coffee today. Need to get groceries. Sometimes I think my brain is a comet that I’m chained to. It gives me whiplash each time I lie down. Note: Call Dr. Campbell. Depression meds not working.
As a child, I was enamoured with Alice in Wonderland, which is not at all surprising: Lewis Carroll’s work remains a giant in the world of children’s literature, to say nothing of the sheer volume of multicoloured, ridable teacups Disney World has produced in its name. (Speaking of which—what do you suppose happens to the cups once they become old and unusable? Obviously they are replaced, but where do the old cups go? Are they recycled? Donated? Auctioned off to traveling carnivals? Is there a very fortunate kindergarten somewhere in California that teaches children from the comfort of comically oversized dishware?)
The Mad Hatter was my favourite. I adored the depiction of a character who was both insane and loved. In Carroll’s novel, when the King of Hearts commands the Hatter to remove his hat, he simply replies: “It isn’t mine,” as if that piece of unwarranted information somehow excuses him from obeying the command.
Yes, I thought. This character gets it.
Sometimes there are no connections between thoughts. Other times, the connections are so tenuous and buried under piles of context that there is no way to voice them sanely, so I don’t. I either change course or say nothing.
And I have so much to say.
Besides, the Hatter’s method is a matter of economics—no one has the time for gentle transitions these days.
After much deliberation, I have concluded that my brain is a high-functioning waterwheel on the side of a house.
My waterwheel is sturdy and efficient, apart from when it isn’t. It rotates around the clock on the side of an old farmhouse. Water pools into each of its compartments, pulling it forward. The idea is simple: forward motion, or catastrophe. If any compartment should be deprived of water, then the motion would stop. The production of electricity for the home would cease and the system would shut down until such time as it could be seen to properly.
In an ideal scenario, my waterwheel of a brain would never stop spinning. It would turn on and on and nothing would ever prevent its forward motion.
My wheel isn’t always starved for water, but I indulge its thirst when I can.
(You should always treat monsters with kindness. Consider it an investment in your future.)
As a child, I found summers difficult. Without an academic calendar of benchmarks to meet, I was listless. The waterwheel stalled as I lay in bed all afternoon, flipping the pages of books without absorbing anything. All my colourful interests were painted in dull shades of grey. The water wasn’t heavy enough to push me forward, so I went nowhere. I produced no thoughts worth having.
The buckets ran dry.
The house went dark.
Sometimes the buckets refuse the water I pour into them, rejecting the offering. I can hear the ache of screws as the waterwheel tries to push forward, but no motion comes.
I order a large iced coffee and pretend that caffeine greases the wheels.
Sometimes it does. Other times, I hold onto my cup and cry.
1 a.m., Tuesday:
Don’t forget to make lunch when you get up tomorrow. Should I get up and make it now? No, it’s too late. You’ll have to be up in a couple of hours anyway. What was that thing that Dr. Hewitt said would be on the exam? Right. Aeneid 6. I like Book 6. At some point I should write an essay about seers—prophecy is always frightening to the Greeks. Hmm. Maybe I should write that down. No, no. I’ll remember it. What was it I have to do when I wake up? Right—sandwich. I think we’re out of tuna, though. Maybe I can get something in town. Do I have the cash? Focus—it’s nearly 2 a.m. Close your eyes. Prophecy could be an interesting topic. Maybe something about how the historians handle prophecy differently? Did you pack your lunch? RIGHT. Tomorrow.
When I can’t sleep, I think of the foxglove plant.
I think of the way Van Gogh held it in his painted hands, his self-portrait clinging to the key ingredient of the medication he took in the light of day because sometimes the link between art and salvation is impossible to sever.
To treat his depression, Van Gogh’s doctor had prescribed for him a medication concocted from a derivative of the foxglove plant. The medication produced a peculiar side effect: the colour yellow burned more vibrantly in the eyes of the person consuming it. Go figure.
Sometimes I lie awake at night wondering if Van Gogh’s dearest friend was resentment. I wonder whether everything flowed together for Van Gogh in a sunlit bath he longed to get out of.
Some days, you need the blue light of evening. An end to the heat.
When I was diagnosed with ADHD at twenty-six, I told a friend of mine who also has ADHD. The first thing he asked me was:
“Are you at that stage where you’re angry with the adults in your life for not catching it sooner?”
Angry was a polite term—I was livid.
How many times had I told teachers and family members that my brain was a comet that I trailed behind? That if I loved something, I loved it with my whole heart; if I hated something, it was the bane of my existence?
How was this not concerning behaviour?
Of course, I knew the answer. My academic record (excluding math class) was stellar. I never failed a class or missed an opportunity. I was also a queer child being raised in conservative suburbia—I couldn’t afford to rock the boat. So, I dressed discreetly, kept my head down, and avoided participating in conversations that might illuminate any aspect of my indisputable difference.
If I had dyed my hair blue, worn too much eyeliner, and taken up shrieking in math class, perhaps things might have been different. Had I not been trained by the expectations of my gender to multitask gladly while collapsing in on myself to avoid revealing too much, then perhaps my pain might have manifested in an outwardly concerning manner.
And if I had done these things, would I have been helped?
As outraged as I was at twenty-six, I couldn’t retroactively blame any singular adult for neglecting to see my wound. I had fallen on the grenade myself, covering it. The impact was personal because I kept it that way.
Yes, I had been playing a game of survival without knowing all the rules, but no one else knew that.
I once told a school counsellor that I wanted to find a coping mechanism equivalent to the action of a caveman hitting his wife over the head with a mallet in a children’s cartoon. Then, I argued, I might be able to get some sleep.
She laughed and laughed.
I can be very funny when I tell the truth.
“The quality of your writing is very good,” the professor tells me.
Dr. Rath flips through the pages of my thesis, which he has already adorned with highlighter marks and various notes scribbled in black pen.
In academia, feedback is endless. Everything either needs to be a little to the left, crossed out, or underlined. Twice.
Still, I don’t dread the thesis meetings. The depth and rigor of the professor’s commentary is not intimidating—it’s familiar. I am nothing if not rigorous.
Academic writing is like bricklaying. Your argument must stack evenly, accounting for irregularities in the uneven ground as you construct a sturdy foundation. That’s what I struggle with the most—making sure that the ideas I consider to be common knowledge are actually put to paper.
Forewords and abstracts are my enemy.
How am I supposed to summarize an entire thesis in a single paragraph? What is the alternative to nuance?
Dr. Rath highlights a section then offers it, showing me.
“I admire your argument, but please, for the sake of my sanity—connect your paragraphs!”
I blink back at him. “What do you mean?”
“Your writing lacks any sort of transition from one idea to the next. Look at this—you state that Thucydides understands the illness implicitly, and then you move on to discuss symptoms.”
“Yes, because I’ve already acknowledged two pages ago that Thucydides contracted the plague himself.”
“Then you should say that! Restate it here.”
Dr. Rath is adept at spotting potholes. He sees the gaps in my argument before I do, and we work together to even out the path.
“And another thing—why do you use so many brackets?”
(A ridiculous question, really; brackets are an undeniably seductive form of punctuation.)
“I didn’t realize that I do. Is it noticeable?”
He raises his eyebrows. “Yes. Your argument shouldn’t need brackets, either. The ideas should stack. None of them need to be Trojan-horsed in with brackets.”
Huh.
Thoughts can come separately? To me, they always felt like baby elephants holding onto their mothers’ tails. Or smaller ships escorting a freighter.
Shit. More water metaphors.
“Has no one ever told you?” he asks.
I shake my head.
Dr. Rath leans back in his chair, signalling an oncoming lecture.
“You might think of writing as an activity similar to being a train conductor. The reader is the passenger—they don’t care who you are, or which levers you must pull to get them to their destination. They only care about arriving. And you can’t arrive in Berlin without passing through Frankfurt. Just make sure you stick to the path and carry them along smoothly. And that means no jumping around.”
Dr. Rath hands me the page. “No funny business.”
I’m sorry for all this funny business. I’m sorry that this story has no definite timeline. I’m sorry that my counselling appointment happened two years before the archaeology course. I’m sorry that these stories have no gentle transitions because for me, they don’t exist. Each thought Trojan-horses another until the soldiers are at the gates and the night is too dark to see anymore.
Sometimes, late at night, I think about Ocean Vuong and lighthouses. I think about the monster that I am, both warning and shelter at once, and I remember that I’m also a light. I blink my eyes to flash the glow at oncoming ships.
H-E-L-P M-E, I blink out in Morse code.
But no one knows Morse code these days.
The ocean is deep and unexplored.
I lie down next to it and go to sleep.
“It makes sense,” Dr. Campbell says.
Her voice is kind over the phone, almost as kind as it is in person.
A few days prior, I’d asked my friend to have coffee with me, then set out in the opposite direction of the café. A side effect of my depression medication is brain fog.
I’d tossed out the pill bottle as soon as I returned home.
“This happens often,” she continues. “ADHD is difficult to gauge in women. Most of the time, the depression and anxiety are just expressions of unaddressed ADHD, but that only becomes clear once the medications for anxiety or depression fail to work. They aren’t working because depression isn’t the core issue. It’s a side effect.”
I nod, but she can’t see me.
I was lucky to have booked a phone appointment with her so soon. It took me almost two years to book the ADHD test and I was not prepared to waste any more time.
“I’ll prescribe you a low dose of a common medication for ADHD. You can start it tomorrow, and I’ll schedule an appointment with you in about two weeks to see how you’re doing. How does that sound?”
It sounds brilliant.
Like my signal is reaching someone.
“Are you still there?” asks Dr. Campbell, concerned.
“Sorry. I zoned out.”
I can hear the smile in her voice. “It happens all the time.”
Twenty-six years.
It took twenty-six years for my signal to reach anyone.
The August heat was on its way to burning out when a ship appeared. It docked beneath me on the edge of the sand and stayed there until dawn.
At last, the blue light of evening. An end to the heat.
But not an end to the story. The waterwheel still rotates. Van Gogh is still dead, Nova Scotians will continue to be written into lighthouse metaphors, and we, the keepers of our stories, will continue blinking out our messages from distant shorelines, and none of this is ever new.
Neither is survival.
We flash our signals and tap out Morse code messages simultaneously because lighthouse keepers like us are good at multitasking.
The messages we transmit aren’t always clear. Remember: Good stories rarely consist of straight lines. Be patient. Feel free to use brackets when you write it down. (I’ve always found them to be helpful.)
Lighthouse keepers tell good stories; I’ve befriended many of them since discovering our shared profession. The first thing that struck me was the sheer variety in our ranks. Some spoke so erratically that I knew from their tone that we shared a profession. Others had to flash their ID cards. Many more lacked sufficient identification but had logged many hours manning their beacons just the same.
Some folks claim that there are too many lighthouse keepers, nowadays.
To them, I ask: Do you know how much ocean there is on this earth?
Then, in a softer voice: Would you like for our lights to be dimmer?
I understand their hesitancy, of course. The Mad Hatter is a jolly character to watch in a film, but a menace to have seated at your dinner table.
I won’t lie to you—we are monsters. Hybrid signals, every one of us. We signal one another from across the divide to find shelter inside the warning. A night that can end.
We are monsters, but we aren’t monstrous.
It is worth noting that the word monster comes from the Latin monstrum, for which another possible translation is “wonder.”
The monstr– stem is also present in the verb monstro, meaning, “I show,” or “I teach.” Think: demonstration. Think: remonstration.
A monster is not only a villain. It is also a wonder. An exception to the rule that merits being narrativized and shared. Think of the Mad Hatters that drive the plot forward, and the lighthouse keepers who bring you back to the shore.
Allow me to demonstrate the interconnectedness of all things.
Allow me to announce every stop the train makes as it carries us to the home I’ve built for us.
Perhaps this is all rather monstrous.
Perhaps it is also wonderful.
Because I believe in hybrid signals, I shall not choose.
.. / .- — / — -.- .-.-.-1
1 Translation: I AM OK.
JEN COLCLOUGH is a poet, novelist, digital artist, and ESL instructor from Nova Scotia, Canada. She holds a Master of Arts in Classics from Western University, and a Bachelor of Arts with Honours from Acadia University. At Western, she completed a thesis exploring trauma theory and cultural memory in Ancient Greek historiography. Her creative writing investigates these themes more abstractly, consistently seeking the past within the present. Jen’s poetry has appeared in several journals and anthologies, including: Tabula Rasa Review, Heimat Review, ionosphere, MORIA, OpenDoor Magazine, Tidewise Illustrated Quarterly, and Free the Verse. Her original short story, “The Opposite of Hunger,” was anthologised in The Petal Pages in August 2023. Additionally, her article, “Memorialization in Thucydides’ Plague Episode,” was published by the Journal of Ancient History in May 2023. In the winter of 2024, Jen Colclough held the Shannon Residency at Beinn Mhàbu in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. She is currently querying a debut poetry collection and developing a serial drama for a major streaming service. Jen Colclough is also a member of the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia’s Writers’ Council. Find her on Instagram @jenmcolclough.
Featured image by Andrew Charney, courtesy of Unsplash.
