When we talk about love

Let’s talk love. I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately, both the word and the experience of it. The word is the harder thing for me to grasp, since love itself, the experience of it, is rarely an intellectual pursuit. It comes unbidden. It’s impolite. Love doesn’t care if this is a good time. […]

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A Little More Barefoot All The Time

Last weekend, I stopped being friends with someone. I just decided. I can’t remember ever just deciding to do that before. It’s weird. Drastic. Not like me. In the past, I’ve stayed in bad relationships because I have this (truly annoying) tendency to assume I’m the problem and that if I just exercise more patience, […]

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Sharing A Secret

Hidden even as it flows right through the center of my town, the Arroyo Mocho drainage channel is like a stunningly vivid postcard tucked inside a book. Coming upon the channel in the spring is like coming upon the tucked-away postcard, a colorful surprise. Only, the channel’s better because it’s full of life. I like […]

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Let’s Dance

On Sunday, I hung out with Laura. Laura handles toxic materials, makes beautiful jewelry, knows how to work on classic cars and is a professional belly dancer. This weekend, she sold her jewelry at an arts-and-crafts fair, and Sunday afternoon she and five women from her dance troupe performed. I thought they were amazing, and […]

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The Green Box

On the street where I grew up, between the McKeans’ driveway and the Garnsey’s, there was a green box – about three feet high, four feet across, and made of metal. I don’t know what it housed – electrical wiring, telephone circuitry, the secrets of the universe… What I remember about it is how it […]

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If I build it…

I’ve spent the past few weeks digging myself out from under several projects I’d committed to during my “say yes to everything” phase. These were projects that filled my time, not my soul. So about three weeks ago, frustrated and feeling adrift, I buckled down. I set aggressive goals and was determined to be done […]

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Three Things I’ve Learned About Leaping

A lot of wonderful things have happened to me as result of that decision. I’ve met so many people I love and admire; tried so many new things; pushed the limits of what I thought I could do and found that I am bigger than I knew. I promised myself that 2022 would be more […]

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What the fava beans taught me

The day I tell you what things I tried for the first time over the past week. Well, fava beans for one. That was followed by the violent involuntary evacuation of said beans from my body over the next 24 hours. It could have been food poisoning, or an allergic reaction (which makes more sense […]

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One Half Of A Secret Handshake

I’m reading Michael Chabon’s Manhood for Amateurs, which, of course, I’m loving. I’ll have more to say about it when I finish, but I wanted to share this, because it’s stuck with me since I read it in the first few pages of the book. It’s from the essay, “The Losers Club”: Every work of […]

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Everyday Happy

In the shower, where I do much of my philosophizing I was thinking about happiness… I consider myself to be, on the whole, a happy person, and yet I hesitate when someone asks me if I am. There is something inherently fleeting about happiness, something that makes me want to qualify my answer, hedge my […]

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