Sunday brain clutter

I went into my classroom for the first official time since I got the job. A big geometric room, with yellow paint and fairly new rugs. It’s still waiting for summer cleaning though, so other than sitting in the middle of it to draw a quick floor plan on the back of a used piece [...]

Doing

1) Grinning because it’s a perfect 70 degrees and sunny today, with no haze. The mountains seem close enough to touch—like perfect cardboard cut-outs on the set of a play. 2) Planning to make kebabs, red wine & peaches and ice cream for dinner with friends tonight. I’m into cooking lately. Trying new spices (juniper [...]

So much goodness

Sweet cantaloupe for breakfast, like golden crescent moons on our plates, and tonight a dinner party with our neighbors. Red wine by the glass full, thai noodles, chicken grilled to perfection. Laughter and unexpected ease. Our neighbors are amazing people. The kind of people I always wished I had as neighbors, but never believed really [...]

Photo Friday: Portrait

Reaching

Tonight the room is supple with heat. On the kitchen counter, new red potatoes, yellow tomatoes, and a half-drunk bottle of bully hill wine—red and sweet. Outside, the dark ink of night pools up against window panes. Since we moved to this hilltop, wild with poplar saplings and clover, I find myself thinking often of [...]

Self portrait as: trying to get the balance right

The morning after our fight feels exactly the way it does when you walk outside after a rainstorm: everything is washed clean, and light refracts from a thousand small droplets of water. He looks different to me: maybe more like the person he really is. And as I watch him making coffee, I see that [...]

Without directions

We sit in the walk-in closet amid the silent heat of boxes and winter garments, and our words fly around us like an angry swarm of bees. Here, everything requires translation but the lexicons are burning. What do we do here? In this place where both of us feel like we’ve reached the outer boundaries [...]

From a family of writers

You know how it is when you get an email from someone and it’s so good you can’t bear to just click ‘save’? I got one like that from my older sister last night, and I have to share. She’s a sales rep for the uber-cool new woman-specific clothing company Lole (“Live Outloud Every Day), [...]