Reading Errand Weather

Errand Weather by Nathan Dragon, b-side editions, September 2026



Found that the library, when the sun is close, on my neck, is one of the few places I can wear a jacket and be cool. A hoodie. Went and I sat at a table with wooden dividers. Remembered that I had a copy of Nathan Dragon’s Errand Weather, a pairing of two novellas. Read it.

A dog sleeps, kicks, dreaming or remembering. These seem to get confused as a bird chirps and a man sits up in the dark morning that is so much like the night. A woodpecker. A long word for a bird people don’t notice.

A bird is chirping prettyprettypretty prettyprettypretty. And here everything really does feel bigger (p 5).

The birdsound stretches into two, long onomatopoeias, read in their own harmonies that the readers bring. Thinking of the birds that Dragon has pointed them to, a reader hears the birdsong as they themselves are remembering birdsong. It acts as a container for this sound, similar to scaled notes in the way it marks and moves through the page. In “Hydrophobic”: Outside smells so good like outside can is not describing a smell but allowing a smell to remember (p 20). This word-association play reminds readers how immersive reading can be if language continues being broken. Then to put real pressure on what Dragon himself is doing in the next sentence is beautiful. And here everything really does feel bigger. Like watching a boxer in a ring, arms lifted and sweat-drenched and shining. A sport respected by Dragon and known in his The Champ is Here (2024) and here, so quickly into Errand Weather he has his gloves on.—The man wakes slowly and slower as he asks himself if today’s worth waking for. The story ends before he leaves the bed, clothespinned before any real resolution. A theme in Dragon’s work: Life stops all the time. Emotion pulls and into the unbearable. “Antithesis” is the gray-squared box I feel in the morning when I want so badly for it to still be night. Stuck, and it’s my life.

Camus writes about the idea of a Refiner’s Fire or period of struggle that changes the way the afflicted views their life or way-of-being, where Camus says this is really about applied consciousness. Those moments when pain is so real it feels transformational as it demands more and more. Then the release, where the change and life-lessons integrate. Dragon brings readers to these places, as he has felt, too, and also treats the rest of his perspectives with this same focus. Anything can transform a person and these are those stories. Silence permeates his close-picked sentences. Sparse sentences that build both the structure of decay and structure of memory. Places that are so close and far away because of time. A comfortable space for Dragon, and is why I think he enjoys playing with scenes sonically. The barking dog in “Newcomb’s Problem (at the Window)” echoes with the same full, hollow volume as tongue-clicking in a long tunnel. Where darkness gains an unfamiliar sound. There are birds and dogs that echo in Dragon’s stories, and people sound like this too.

“The Marine Biologist” as the final novella wanders from the prior—evolved from his 2018, New York Tyrant story of the same name—with the same aware-confusion as Charlie Kaufman giving a speech. Longwinding and its details necessary. A story about MB (a Marine Biologist) where everything seems to mean everything. MB feeling the need to notice always the little things. Dragon writes thoughts that don’t stick, fumblings that don’t matter unless. MB’s detail-orientation tries to prove his own value or surety as he gains information that is in-itself sure, to rely on when he can’t rely on himself. The incessant feeling to know something when feeling unable to know anything. But that line doesn’t become clearer, and that state-of-being doesn’t relent, where life moves as if any second could go on and on like two mirrors facing each other (p 140).

While reading I wanted to ask Dragon a question: As a Christian what is that feeling, to feel so alone despite the togetherness of a divine origin? His writing wants me to ask these questions. To feel alone and also see how I am not in this shared similarity. To read Errand Weather is to surrender into my own confusion and see that this internal space is real for someone else, structuring what I cannot. I leave the library with the sun still warm at my neck. Walking back to my apartment I hear afternoon birdsong. A Black-Capped Chickadee high in an elm, clear, but I can’t find it. See it, despite its pretty melody.


_____
George Dibble lives in Florida.