The seasons that run smoothly for me are, unsurprisingly, the ones that involve focus and order. The routines, the boundaries, the guidelines – I’m wired for it all. Once, on a hot July day when I was no taller than her mailbox, my aunt announces a trip to the fair to pet the pigs, try
Early this week, in a Chicago hotel room, I order French toast for eating in bed. Two rarities: sugar and silence. I’m punchy with anticipation. But then it arrives, and the plate is hard to balance on my legs, keeps tipping askew, the knife in need of a stable surface for cutting. I move to
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
I’m rarely one for how-to or self-improvement books, opting instead for advice unearthed in the twists and tangles of any given life. I find that I learn more when I have to work for it, when its interpretation is my own, a flattened landscape mined deeply for meaning. Memoirs have always been my terrain of
We hadn’t meant to talk about the ethics of consumerism, but alas, the curiosity of a 5-year-old is rarely capable of stifling.
Well, no, I can’t exactly claim the same perspectives (nor groundbreaking insights) of Virginia Woolf. But truthfully, I’d never deny the beauty of a room of one’s own. A space for writing or thinking, for arranging things just-so, for practicing what it means to make a small, seemingly insignificant mark on this world – or
The sun is shining, a neighbor’s lilac bush is in bloom. When its Lilliputian flowers dance over to my front stoop, I can’t help but sense they’re carrying an early conception of chimera. As it stands, every idea I’ve pursued at length – plans snared to sites built to projects born to gigs proposed –
An excerpt from my latest piece for Fathom Mag: “In this Google-able age, where the very names of our most popular technological resources are rooted in mythology—Siri, Alexa, Amazon—we might do well to remember that our world, mighty and mysterious, is vastly unfindable. That our declinate minds will fail us. That curiosity needs little confirmation.