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…
People are starting to get sick of a life lived so intensely on the grid. They wish for more anonymity online. They're experiencing fatigue with ebooks, with dating apps, with social media. They're craving something else in this era of quantified selves, and tracked locations, and indexed answers to every possible question. Except, perhaps the…
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…
Volare, oh oh Cantare, oh oh oh oh Let's fly way up to the clouds Away from the maddening crowds We can sing in the glow of a star that I know of Where lovers enjoy peace of mind Let us leave the confusion and all disillusion behind Just like bird of a feather, a…
We have all been brought up on stories from the "Panhandle," the northern part of Texas that is truly the shape and just as flat as the handle of an old pot iron skillet. Perhaps the most famous tale is the myth that in winter there is nothing between Amarillo and the North Pole but…
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…
I open up this time so I can feel all the other time around it. I can see it in sharp focus: a difference of this or that, the light or the dark. I am choosing the light. -Sarah Gerard (Sunshine State) Adulthood is a funny thing. You may think that you've attained this…
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…
"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…
Dining with Dostoevsky 