I wanted to write a post about: the talk I gave at the Strathmore the other week, how lovely everyone there was reading novels for a change of pace the morning dance party playlist this week (still Lemonade) double rainbows from the balcony coffee & podcasts in the shower breakdancing how cold it is in…
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I spent a disproportionate amount of time trying to get that picture to look like a VC Andrews book cover–first getting everyone to pose with serious faces, then trying to edit it to look stretched and over-contrasted in an oval frame. Eventually I settled on this. Did you ever read Flowers in the Attic or My…
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This week, I put the suitcase away for the month of May. Which is pretty dazzling and exciting. I have been looking forward to having a Saturday to myself to read and write and drink coffee and move slowly, the way I can only when I know there will be another unclaimed Saturday on the horizon.…
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Sometimes it feels like so many things happen in the seven or eight days between these posts I can’t decide what to write. It’s a Combat Paper/Warrior Writers week and I’ve been swimming in so much love and community–lots of affirmations and old jokes and new jokes, old friends and new ones. I was in Logan, Ohio for…
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Did you ever take chemistry? I did. I worked really hard at it, and got really good at it. I felt so incredibly satisfied when I overcame the I can’t do this and it clicked in my head and made sense. Equation after equation, I understood it all–even helped other people with it. And as it…
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Erica Jong writes, in Fear of Flying: “You don’t have to beat a woman if you can guilt her.” I have repeated this quote at least three times in the past two days. I have said it in other ways too–in apologetic emails that I’ve replied to later than I’d like, in the way my breath…
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A few weeks ago, I watched my son fly down a hill on his scooter, one leg hovering, smiling wide from a really deep place. That can’t-contain-this-joy sort of smile. Watching him, I remembered so clearly in my body and heart the feeling of riding down this one particular hill on my bike in the neighborhood I…
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This week I celebrated sixteen years of motherhood. My son and I spent a few days together, traveling in California, eating sandwiches in the car, making up jokes, circling around in conversation to the same things and taking selfies in stupid places (my idea, always my idea). As we were driving and singing along, the Pacific Ocean…
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I have been thinking lately about planting good memories. Or rather triggers for good memories. We know how it works with bad memories–certain smells or sounds or little gestures appear and transport us to some terrible thing for a moment. And often it takes a lot of our energy to recover. But I’ve been wondering about…
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In most academic writing one has to draw clear lines to illustrate how they know every single thing they know. Basically, any assertion made has to a) build to a single argument and b) have come from another book or published research. Other ways of knowing are not accepted. Not building up to a single answer…
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