I don’t know about you, but during much of 2018 I felt like I was swimming Upstream. Each day seemed to bring Just One Damned Thing after Another; other days seemed like A Walk in the Park.
On the personal side, my concussion in May led to the The Longest Nine Months of feeling like I lived in an Alternate Side, a side where writing and teaching and thinking were an Unlikely Pilgrimage. Continue reading
Perhaps it’s big magic, perhaps it’s many small great things, but for the good of the commonwealth, I choose to think it’s the origin of us all.
Before the fall, when the summer sun seems like the light of Paris, and cerulean and lavender seem like every day true colors, circumstances of childhood don’t matter. If we have bags, we travel. Our nemesis – winter – is conquered, and we believe that today will be different. 
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I flew to California this summer and survived the flight by reading a big thick book: Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult. The book caught me, like the way we get a hitch to our voice when something hits us profoundly.
I thought I knew and understood about race. About how unfair racism is. About how I’m not racist, because I don’t see the color of someone’s skin.
For instance, I was talking to “my” Starbucks barista today about a man who had entered the café at 6 the previous morning singing a Broadway tune in a much too elevated mood for most humans at that time of day. Continue reading
Truly, madly, and a bit guilty, I sit on one of my favorite benches and ponder the fates and furies that have followed me over the year.
Although I faithfully follow a life of joy, I’m nobody’s fool. Some days give me heartburn, as if I’ve just swallowed vinegar. Some days I wonder if god is in ruins, even when the nights are tender. Sometimes I feel like a distinguished guest in my own home, but then, suddenly…. Continue reading
Do you have a “first” moment – the moment you first remember as a child?
Most of us can’t recall the first few years of our life – the babyhood of crying or teething or ruining our parents’ sleep. We can only believe our moms when they tell us that if they didn’t give us enough attention we emptied the flower pot, then played with the dirt on the rug, or how we crawled out of our crib at nighttime and slid under the card table during bridge night, refusing to come out.
Fortunately, my first moment is not of getting spanked or being denied a second cookie.
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roughwighting 