It's funny what time does: each day a drop of water, and without you realizing it, the stone below the drops wears a smooth divot. -Claire Messud (The Burning Girl) Here we are, suddenly in mid-February. The days have grown just a little bit longer and, although the sun has gone into temporary hiding (his…
We please our fancy with ideal webs/Of innovation, but our life meanwhile/Is in the loom, where busy passion plies/The shuttle to and fro, and gives our deeds/The accustomed pattern. -Shakespeare (Henry VIII), qtd. in Eliot’s Daniel Deronda If I told you that I had spent the last three weeks, in between yoga and pottery and…
Every year, at least a week before the Greek's birthday, I ask him what kind of cake he would like. More often than not, it is this stout cake with cream cheese frosting, but, in the almost seven years we have been together, deviations have been known to happen. The same can be said for…
I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers. -L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables) Yesterday, while texting with a friend, I mentioned that I would like nothing more than to fall into fall. Or really, at this point in time, just to fall over, preferably into a large and comfortable bed. This…
And for a moment I lose myselfWrapped up in the pleasures of the worldI've journeyed here and there and back again... -Smashing Pumpkins ("Thirty-three") For exactly one week and two days, I have been 33 years old. Despite being a palindrome, I'm not quite sure there's anything all that special about this age, although a…
Time is slipping away from me, running through my fingers like sand while I...do what? Clean floors, wash clothes, make dinner, wash up, go shopping, play with the children in the play areas, bring them home, undress them, bathe them, look after them until it is bedtime, tuck them in, hang some clothes to dry,…
When I was in Istanbul a few years ago, it was in the middle of a very hot summer, one so humid that I constantly found myself on the verge of wilting, with little pools of sweat constantly forming in the creases of both my legs and arms. To cool off in the afternoons, the…
Every year, when fall rolls around, I get stars in my eyes, thinking about how wonderful it would be to make apple and quince jelly, applesauce, quince paste (or membrillo, as it is often called) and all kinds of fall-inspired desserts, from apple squares to salted caramel apple pie. Then, when the reality sets in,…
When I was still at the office, every day, around 3 or 4 in the afternoon, my coworker would inevitably ask me what I was making for dinner that night. It didn't matter what I told her--pasta, eggs, rice--she would sigh and say: "You're such a grownup." I would laugh and ask her if she…
"How much better is silence; the coffee cup, the table. How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on the stake. Let me sit here for ever with bare things, this coffee cup, this knife, this fork, things in themselves, myself being myself." -Virginia Woolf (The Waves) Five years…
Dining with Dostoevsky 