A little music in honor of St. Paddy’s Day. As I wrote in an essay for Cordella recently, I fell in love with traditional Irish music as a struggling teenager, when a wonderful teacher introduced me to it. This music felt visceral and wild as any Nirvana bootleg and put an ecstatic hum alongside my heartaches. …
Continued from last week’s post, Field Notes from a Mother/Artist. It happened like this: One day I packed up my toddler son and my notebook and headed for the playroom at the public library, in hopes that the little one would amuse himself while I squeezed in a little writing. I settled in with my …
I have observed: The raising of both novels and toddlers involves urgency and mess. Both yell cryptic phrases at you, which they expect you to decipher and translate to the rest of the world. Both involve days of difficult, unpaid work that is, for years, invisible to the rest of the world. Also: Both will …
My bones started to creak. This seemed weird for a very healthy lady in her thirties. Or—it seems weird now. When it started, I wasn’t paying attention. We humans log so many bits of data in the course of a day; they don’t always nicely and promptly arrange themselves into patterns for us. Yes, I …
NaNoWriMo. National Novel Writing Month. Never done it! Going to try it. For six weeks now, I’ve been creating these little meditations on how to return to center when we’re distressed, dispersed and distracted. Writing fiction is a centering practice for me. I start to feel weird and cranky when I’m not doing it. Which is …
In eleven days, an election. You know, just a little run-of-the-mill, things-have-been-pretty chill-up-in-here election. (In seriousness: If you wanted a quick primer on the specific things at stake in the midterms, I liked this handy 5-point summary from Vox.) By the way, this is #5 in a series called Center. I’m writing this for you if «•» the news …
At the end of this post, I’m going to take you to the beach. It’s a beautiful beach, too… …and I, for one, will be glad to get there. We all need something to look forward to. So there’s my promise: Beach trip. Very soon. In order to get there, though, first I need to tell …
What—another rough news week? (Gosh, I am shocked, shocked.) So it turns out we’ve got twelve years to get serious about climate change. In other words: My little boy just started pre-K, and by the time he reaches tenth grade, we need some serious environmental come-to-Jesus. Everybody registered to vote? ℘℘℘ On the subject of listening …
Continued from last week: A series of posts called Center. I’m writing this for you if «•» the news makes you feel like your sleeves are on fire «•» your life circumstances yank you in 72 directions «•» you are dispersed, distracted and distressed. «•» I’m there, too.These meditations have emerged from about a year of seeking a return to center, the …
For you who are feeling distracted, drained off, distressed, dispersed. Tough news day, yes? (I’m writing this on Sept. 28, 2018—the day after the Senate testimony of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and Brett Kavanaugh—but it feels like that could describe a lot of news days.) Tough news day. In which I found myself thinking, again: What can I …