And who told you you weren’t an artist? Who took that from you? Shame on them. Did they forget our legacy? That our bodies are made of each other, of the earth, of that great, limitless, black-diamond sky? Did they somehow miss that our very personhood, the very thing we
Don’t take it for granted, your capacity to give and receive love. Do you know what a learned skill it is? To be vulnerable before another? To accept (wholly) the tangled heap of another’s humanity? Do you know how difficult it is to be gentle in the face of our
When I was a very little girl my mother took me to a place called Apple Tree Learning Center for preschool. I remember snippets. The chain link fence overgrown with honeysuckle. The naptime cots and their green fabric liners we decorated with puffy paint. The wooden kennel on the playground
Downstairs my neighbors are once again making Panlasang Pinoy garlic fried rice and the scent alone is enough to send me straight to heaven. I like to listen to them in the evenings, laughing and shouting at each other in Tagalog, or on the weekends, waking up early to blast
There is so much of our lives that is out of our control. That’s a cheerful first thought of 2018, Cass! Way to go! But in all seriousness, I think much of my struggle in life has resulted from my misguided attempts to control the uncontrollable. I do not control
When I was a little girl, most weekends my brother and I were packed into my father’s dusty silver Ford Ranger along with an orange cooler filled with Corona beer, Diet Coke, and ham and cheese sandwiches to set off for the mountains. You see, it was my father’s greatest
Normally I lament the winter’s early dying sun, but this year I find myself embracing it. I like the way the old amber streetlights come on, all at once, a shimmering chorus, after the sun dips into the ocean. I like, too, the multi-colored Christmas bulbs that come on more
From the top of my green flecked hill the setting sun is as yellow and fat as a fried egg yolk. The sky that surrounds it creamy as orange sherbet veined with a swirling raspberry ribbon of clouds. Terrible things can appear beautiful, given enough distance. People the world over
In December the sun goes down and the lights go up. Store entrances chime with little gold bells and the smell of pine and sugar cookies and cold, damp concrete transform me into the small girl I sometimes forget that I still am. That little girl loves this time of
I like desert places. Places where life is scrappy and small and leaves bare the raw geology of the earth. In southern Utah there is a place that has been molded by ancient seas, its sediments crushed to stone by time. An old place uplifted by tectonic forces and cut
November brings gray skies so thick even our brilliant sun can’t break them. She brings the first of the bare trees, frozen in waiting, for better times. She trails the spiced scent of woodsmoke, a warm relief, but also a reminder, of brother October’s hungry wildfires. In this way, she
I love Halloween. I love the cool evenings that grow strong with the early dying sun. I love the pumpkins and the loose leaf litter made crisp by falling humidity. I love the flirtation with magic. With true magic. Sometimes coming of age is described as the letting go of
Handcrafting a Life 