About a year ago, I decided to push toward the new. Mostly because I needed to: it’s arriving whether I like it or not. The other half came from a gentle nudge from my friend. As she drove me away from the urgent care clinic where I had gotten my left index finger sewn up. […]
Category: Zen
Lightness
I’m a collector of phrases. I live with some phrases for decades. I tape them to my desk and on my window sill. I read them as necessary. But I need new phrases all the time. Right now I have a new one on my bulletin board above my desk, written in my scrawl. It […]
Want + Need
I want to be a collage artist. I want to be in two places at once. I want to be a poetry professor and the woman who sits in the school while her daughter attends 6 tutoring sessions a week. I want to go backwards and nab an MFA at age 26. Or forward and […]
Cause And Effect
I capitalize the A because it’s crazy sometime how clearly I see Cause and Effect. How yesterday a friend called and invited me to see Michelle Obama with her friends. What a huge gift. Liz was sad I wouldn’t be home last night and I said, “Liz, it’s Michelle Obama.” Touché. I think the entire […]
My Life
I’m falling into feature research at work. Which makes me remember why I love my job. The task of learning fast: I adore it. I talk to people and bathe in their thoughts, their expertise, their ideas, their beliefs. I spin in data. I dive as deep as possible with the time allotted. I rearrange […]
The Kitchen Sink
It’s only 9 am but my brain is already full of fodder. “Nearly 50 Charged in College Admissions Bribery Scandal.” An obit of a man who loved catching salmon but gave up hunting. The way coffee tastes. My to-do list, the future day unfurling too fast. I want to be poetic, write gorgeous words that […]
Culmination
Last night, I dreamed someone hired me sight unseen. Before bed I walked beneath a clear, starlit sky, happy. I’ve fed myself decades of get-to-calm tips until this culmination: waking to good news sleep-delivered to my hungry soul.
Whoosh
Today is so long. And I keep brushing up against poetry about the endings of relationships. Not just romantic ones. Friend ones, too. Both are hard, but me thinks friendships strike me as harder. That’s probably because I never had a long-term romantic relationship before my husband. And I’ve had a billion friendships. But anyway, […]
Bloom
When we opened up our friend’s closed house, the first thing I noticed were the white remains of the Christmas cactus blooms. Underneath the shade-covered window, the dry-stalked hulls crumbled in my hands. Some now-white-past-prime blooms were still attached to the succulent plant. Succulent sounds like abundant water, but this spindly light green cactus was […]
What do you want? Why?
I’m awash in teens right now. I want to be all clever, with an apt metaphor. But I tell you again that the poetry people speak to me more loudly in the early morning. It’s late morning here and I’m remembering a conversation with my oldest. How when I said her, all the chatter is […]