Life, lately, has been a little bit unkind. An old friend’s father suffered a stroke last week. The news has me thinking of my own father’s cancer, diagnosed early last year. I suppose this is the problem with your 30’s. All around you, the giants of your life begin to
In the winter of 2008 I lived a boxed life. The apartment I shared in West LA with my husband (then boyfriend) was a white cube just under five hundred square feet. I left that cube every morning just after 7 to hop the red brick 704 bus into Century
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about illness. Perhaps because of the flu raging around. Perhaps because of the novel I’m currently reading on the 1918 epidemic. But mostly because I saw my psychiatrist last week, and we decided together to have me try weaning off the medication I’ve used
Lately it seems easy to discount the world as ugly. It feels impossible to ignore the dangers of modern society as they’re broadcast to our simple, tribal minds in stunning, 4K Ultra HD. But I still strive to find its goodness. I think some of what makes our world is
When I was a little girl I had a stuffed seal. It had pure white fur that started soft but quickly grew matted and tacky with tears and slobber and food remnants and dirt. I remember a coal-black nose and dark, half-globe eyes that were once shiny as obsidian but
These past few days I’ve had trouble engaging with the world. I find that the bleak, incessant reel of news that clouds my screens hurts more than it informs. And I, alone in this bedroom that doubles as my workspace, am powerless to do much of anything. Really, I don’t
Blue. Oh so blue. The Eastern Sierras are awash in it. With snowmelt-fed lakes that spill down the mountains and leave wildflowers in their wake. With cool granite and old pines that rest on their sides and allow the beetles to slowly return them to soil. Friendly Steller’s Jays that
This has been a rough one, this week. This damn week. I have just enough energy for a cup of tea (loose leaf jasmine green) and solitude. Perhaps time spent here, on my apartment balcony, in the plastic chair that was made to look like wicker, will smooth my rough
Is life just perspective? On clear nights, when you look to the full moon, do you see the man gazing back at you? Or is it the rabbit you find hiding in the lunar maria? Crouched, still, resplendent. I have to squint to find the man. Tilt my head this
I miss the time before guilt. When an ice cream cone was just an ice cream cone; bliss stuffed into a sugar husk and consumed with reckless abandon. The time before we deemed sugar a poison and soft drink orders were changed to water, low ice, maybe a little lemon.
I’ve lived my life accepting the labels others apply to me: shy, sullen, sensitive, cowardly. It’s hard to be my best self with my heart caged by such daggers. And the truth is, these labels say more about their speakers (their needs, their expectations, their strategies to protect themselves against
Last night, the hills above Camp Pendleton caught fire, and so I was lulled to sleep by the sharp tang of burning brush, the earth around me blanketed for miles in smoke and ash. As sometimes happens while the earth burns, I dream of water. Of the sea and the
Handcrafting a Life 