"This really isn't like anything you ever saw — and no one who tells you about it gives any idea of it." -Georgia O'Keeffe to Alfred Stieglitz It was dark when we finally arrived in Santa Fe. More importantly, it was late, almost midnight, which made the city (with a population of 70,000, this is…
--tomorrow is our permanent address and there they'll scarcely find us (if they do, we'll move away still further: into now -E.E. Cummings ("84") Moving, there's no doubt, is an ugly business. Ever so slowly, the life that you carefully built is dismantled: book by book, dish by dish, sock by hole-in-the-toe sock. There's a…
The grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls. -John Muir (John of the…
If I remember correctly, it was during spring break of my first year of grad school that one of my closest friends made "the prophecy." It was one of those whirlwind New York trips I used to take in those days: trips to the theater, an evening dancing at Beauty Bar, enough sugar in two…
Change, or maybe luck, has a funny way of creeping up on you. Maybe you have to feel completely hopeless before it will swoop in to save you, or maybe all it really takes is making other plans before something unexpected magically works out. Whatever it is, it feels like the perversity of the universe…
It seems that February somehow managed to slip away from me. One minute I was in the kitchen, making ice cream, broiling grapefruit and blanching endless amounts of greens from our CSA box (aphid season is upon us) for gratins, all while fantasizing about the many blog posts I would and should write about these…
"I was sad all day, and why not. There I was, books piled on both sides of the table, paper stacked up, words falling off my tongue.The robins had been a long time singing, and now it was beginning to rain.What are we sure of? Happiness isn't a town on a map, or an early…
"It's a question of discipline," the little prince told me later on. "When you've finished washing and dressing each morning, you must tend to your planet."-Antoine de Saint Exupery (The Little Prince) All week long, I've been following the Little Prince's sage advice and tending to my planet. You might say that things have fallen…
If I had to pick my favorite muffin flavor, it would undoubtedly be something fruity, or maybe even with a cream cheese filling. In my carefree college days when I would find myself at Nussbaum and Wu for an afternoon snack, I would choose either blueberry or pumpkin/chocolate cheese, always turning my nose up at…
Remember that you're doing this for yourself. It was helpful for me to think of my dissertation in these terms: I'm never going to climb Everest, or run a marathon. But the dissertation is an adventure and a feat of endurance that provides a sense of accomplishment proportional to the struggle that it requires.…
Dining with Dostoevsky 