We arrived on the coast of Maine after a long day of driving and stopping at scenic overlooks and eating chips and celery and carrots just in time for the Perseid meteor shower. I lay on the beach, my cotton scarf spread beneath my head. My little son, just ten and still bright with boy-wonder,…
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I just finished the novel Happy are the Happy by French writer Yasmina Reza (no relation), which is told in a series of vignettes/short stories about people who are intertwined–by relationship but less in the interiors of their minds (isn’t that always the thing) and together paint a picture of what middle-aged love looks like (lots…
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I had such a beautiful short trip to Los Angeles with my beautiful mother. And read with some writers I was honored to be in the same room with. A really great night. On the trip, I finished reading the Art of Grace by Susan Kaufman, which had some really Interesting Ideas and a lot of repetition.…
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I don’t know what to say to frame my grief over Sunday’s shooting in Orlando, how to make sense of that kind of broken, hateful, fury. We keep saying that love will overcome everything, but reading the stories of the victims and looking at their pictures, it seems that nightclub was full of love. 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 so many things I want to tell you about: the prank I kept pulling last week, (which I’ll tell you about later), and about spreading the embers of a bonfire before bed while a possum screamed, and the long hug with my dear first nephew home from college, and about apologies and forgiveness,…
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It’s been a while. I’m sorry. This week, Mary Karr’s brilliant book about memoir, “The Art of Memoir” landed in my hands. Want to know how it landed in my hands? I bought it. My own damn self. Because I thought it would help me with some writing I’m struggling with. And it did. Because…
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This week, a participant in a writing group asked me why I write so much. I answered with something not untrue–something like, “Because I’m really fucked up and trying to survive.” But that wasn’t the whole truth. It was like a sliver of the truth, or a version of the truth. Because while, yes, I believe…
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The other night I woke at 1:30, read until 3:30 and then went back to sleep. It was amazing, as it always is, to be up and feel like time belongs entirely to me. I can’t plan that–it just happens when it happens, a sort of gift from my body, however inconvenient. I have…
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In a writing group this week, someone asked me what they should be writing about. They said, “No offense, but I don’t care about poetry or whatever. Writing has been one of the things that’s helped me and I want to do it right.” Well, no offense taken. Poetry is immediate, precise, emotionally honest, and…
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