My mother is back in town and on her first evening back has provided me (and therefore you) with the following gems: -She offered my younger son $20/inch to cut his ridiculous face-covering bang. She looked at him for maybe an hour and asked me, “How can you stand this?” And offered to buy…
Read more
This is my friend Ashley. She says things like, “I can’t be a failure, I’m not done yet.” In conversation. And I write them down. She is my closest reader, my gentle and firm most honest critic, and my greatest cheerleader/editor. We are not always the best for one another. Once we had to flee…
Read more
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,…
Read more
A few weeks ago, the kids and I went to the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore to see the exhibit we are inside of in the picture above. It’s called King’s Mouth and it’s this big foamy cave you climb into and lay down inside and above you there’s a convex mirror encircled with lighted…
Read more
Thursday night I spent a great deal of time watching internet tutorials about factoring trinomials. Then Friday afternoon I made a confession about honors calculus. Then the person I confessed to kept making math metaphors. Lots of air graphs, right in conversation. The word sine was actually used. I’m not sure if it was a coincidence, and…
Read more
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…
Read more
Kind dears, I am averaging a post every other week. I have heard your outcry, and I apologize, I apologize, I apologize (maybe go into the archives when you really need a prompt–there are years of writing back there). This thesis writing thing is sort of kicking my ass. But stick with me. Just…
Read more
Recently, a friend of mine (you don’t know him) wrote me an email about his experience with illness, and his feelings of anger and frustration with it. It’s a strange thing, to know that you exist inside something–are part of something–that is failing you. I don’t know exactly what he’s feeling. But when I read his email, I…
Read more
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…
Read more
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…
Read more
