It sounds strange to say I’ve gotten too fragile for music, but that really might be it. It’s been several years now like that, the surface tension holding, iridescent and moving along, sometimes floating effortlessly, sometimes bouncing in wonky directions, strong and pliable, but avoiding the pointy things that threaten to …
Goodbye to 2016, that stripped us of our delusions and facades. It stripped us of our right to be optimistic without doing the work to prove that hope reasonable. When even in mourning, we decided to fight. It became OK (finally – phew!) to say out loud our most bigoted, selfish, perhaps long-suppressed thoughts: …
Burning, or burial? It’s a real question, and it matters what I think because I am his friend, and I am one of the people who will care for him as he fights to stay alive in the face of a cancer that will win. This kind always wins, so …
I noticed again today, as I have for the last few weeks, that I actually know things once in a while. That must mean at least two things: I’m getting older, and I’ve been paying attention. Not always deliberately paying attention, that’s for sure. But you don’t have to be Julia Child …
Dear Goddamned Dog, I’m writing now as I will from now on, to the empty corners of every room, to the dozen years past, to the millions of things and places that will forever remind me of you. Though your world got smaller these last few years, this house was …
Standing in the gap between 2015 and 2016, circling slowly, I see all the things that matter to me frozen in that moment of time. One son in the air between Colombia and Chile, flying dark skies over treacherous mountains, fireworks exploding below as he makes his way to the bottom of …
The first time I saw Addie in person she was nine weeks old and shrieking to get out of the crate she’d been flown to me in. I opened the door to the crate and welcomed her to my comforting arms – which she completely ignored, preferring instead to head toward …
Soon it will be June 11th, a year since I lost you, Betty, to old age, and what has often since then felt like a selfish rush to get the unbearable over with. It could have been June 12th, or July 6th maybe. I could have delayed this anniversary if I’d been able to …
It’s not that I’m anti-Christmas, it’s just that it confuses the hell out of me. To say I’m not a religious person is to say the Sahara isn’t wet. And it should be offensive to anyone’s sensibilities that the whole country and much of the world essentially shuts down due to …
Being Ramón’s daughter you get used to certain things: really bad math jokes (and the concept that “math” and “joke” can even be in the same sentence); specific other jokes being told at least four times a year at family gatherings (Guy sits down at a restaurant and says, “Waiter, I’d like …
