From Inside the Darkness

I didn’t wake up on the morning of November 9. I hadn’t slept on the night of the election, had lain in bed still and frozen, more devastated than I’d felt since September 11 became another name for horror.

Would relaxing help?

Yesterday was one of those days. In my life-coaching mode I always tell people those days aren’t happening to them, but for them. “One day,” I assure them, “you’ll look back and think, “Oh, thank God the car broke down and the dog barfed on me and I had a gruesome argument and got food…

I’ll Have the Rat Shit, Please

Yesterday kind of sucked. I’d gotten home past midnight the night before from some heavy-duty travel, and after a couple of hours of sleep I woke up in a panic about not having done any writing for a couple of days.

Filthy With Miracles

I’m staring out at a baking day that’s too hot for hiking. You might not think this would be a problem for a writer. Well, it is for me. Most of my writing takes place inside my head when I’m outside, moving. The part at the computer is just typing.

The Uses of Anger

I am really pissed off right now. Someone just did something that messed up my life — not horrifically, but a busload more than I’d like. I keep telling myself it’s no big deal. But right now I could chew up that bus and spit out the bolts. I could fight a bear and win. I’m that mad.

Virtually Freaking Out

Humans try to pain-proof everything. Like anxious new parents baby-proofing an apartment, we soften bad news, avoid stressful situations, encase the bodies of our dead in cushioned containers. We try to soften every corner in the world.

Dreams. Are. Everywhere.

When I was at Harvard, I heard the phrase “I love TV shows about Bigfoot!” exactly never… except, of course, within my own peculiar inner monologue. Of course, we’d have been all over it if real proof of Bigfoot’s existence had come to light — a carcass, a skeleton, a notarized birth…

Learning to Go Well

I’m feeling guilty because I just got an email from Saint Nicholas asking if I want to keep studying an obscure Bantu language. As one does.

Let me back up a little.

Apocalypse, now

Like everyone else, I’m watching the news and scanning the internet every few minutes for updates on the hurricane approaching Florida. While I’m at it I check in on the dozen or so major wildfires burning near my own home in California.

Game of Wasps

Since all birds are direct descendants of the dinosaurs that survived the great extinction, I call our hummingbirds my tiny shiny diny-saurs. Of course they’re not actually my birds. They just like to visit the feeders I put up near our living room windows. Sometimes there are dozens of them, vrooming…