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…
(Greek) light acquires a transcendent quality: it is not the light of the Mediterranean alone, it is something more, something unfathomable, something holy. Here the light penetrates directly to the soul, opens the doors and windows of the heart, makes one naked, exposed, isolated. - Henry Miller (The Colossus of Maroussi), qtd. in Tony Perottet's…
You will have only one story. You'll write your one story many ways. Don't ever worry about story. You have only one. -Elizabeth Strout (My Name is Lucy Barton) If you've read your fair share of world literature or seen a lot of classic movies, you might have noticed that novelty isn't always the…
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…
The past few weeks, after all the hoopla surrounding the wedding, have been a slow and steady descent back into normalcy. The tupperware full of wedding cookies is now gone, the Greek's parents have returned to Thessaloniki and the weather has taken a dramatically cold turn for October, one that we feel acutely as the…
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…
Stop trying to get it to have coffee with that guy from the CSA who works for his stepfather's law firm. The bee doesn't want to be a paralegal, Becca. Sorry, but the bee has actual dreams. -Kelly Stout ("Don't Swat at the Bee," from The New Yorker) It may sound silly now, but…
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…
Greetings from the land of the sick. Although I'm not the kind to go to the doctor--a fear of being poked and prodded makes me more than a little reluctant--this time I started to sense that something wasn't quite right: no decongestants were working, too many tissues had been used and, although I had done…
Dining with Dostoevsky 