What happens to you doesn't belong to you, only half concerns you. It's not yours. Not yours only. - Claudia Rankine, qtd. in Tayari Jones' An American Marriage If you pay attention to such things, you may have noticed that many books and movies, before launching into their primary narrative, have a little section--a…
Since I last updated, I have 1) eaten my weight in soup, 2) recovered from bronchitis, 3) investigated the (unlikely) possibility of obtaining Italian citizenship, 4) worked both on a Sunday and my first 10-hour legal day (exhaustion!), and 5) voted in a dismal midterm election. Clearly, it's been a bit of a mixed bag around here. But fortunately these things,…
"Why?" asked Strike heavily."Why what?" said Robin, looking up at him. "Why do people do this?" "Blog, you mean? I don't know...didn't someone once say that the unexamined life isn't worth living?""Yeah, Plato," said Strike, "but this isn't examining a life, it's exhibiting it." -The Silkworm (Robert Galbraith, aka J.K. Rowling)When I read these lines in The…
She allowed the hum and buzz of the park to lullaby her. Life wasn't about becoming, was it? It was about being. Dr. Kellet would have approved this thought. And everything was ephemeral, yet everything was eternal, she thought sleepily. A dog barked somewhere. A child cried. The child was hers, she could feel the…
After a semester of grading, more grading and endless office hours, only one more 8 a.m. class stands between me and freedom (or, as I refer to it in my mind, time to write my dissertation). An even more comforting thought is that this is probably the last time I'll ever teach this course--especially at…
Once upon a time--and not so long ago--it was fashionable for all lovely ladies not to know how to cook or at least pretend not to know. Today a woman can look like a cream confection, but she has to know how to make one too! Popularity in our modern times is reserved for those…
I felt my heart surge. I thought: I've lived this long. Please. A little longer won't kill me. I wanted to say her name aloud, it would have given me joy to call, because I knew in some small way it was my love that named her. And yet. I couldn't speak. I was afraid…
During the Age of Glass, everyone believed some part of him or her to be extremely fragile. For some it was a hand, for others a femur, yet others believed it was their noses that were made of glass. The Age of Glass followed the Stone Age as an evolutionary corrective, introducing into human relations…
Dining with Dostoevsky 