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Have You Seen This Cat?

October 4, 2018 in Book Matters, Cat Lady Matters, Quoth the Raving, Spirit Matters

From Jeffrey Henson Scales’ “House’s Barber Shop” series, 1987-1992

I’m sitting in the writerspace today, everyone click-clacking all around me, and big tears are silently sliding down my face.

I don’t know how to work on this book without letting in all the big feelings, and right now that means I am assaulted by the breakdown of the environment and our country and my relationship. Really, it’s my relationship. Sometimes I wish I were an ER doctor or an air traffic controller, someone whose work entailed putting out so many fires that there was no room for reflection or, goddess forbid, feelings. Sometimes I wish I were an actual firefighter. Continue Reading →

Monday Is Not Moot

October 1, 2018 in Book Matters, City Matters

Happy Monday in bloody bloody bloody Ameriker. I’m on the writerspace blue velvet couch, decked out in soft clothes and bare feet. The music is queued (Elvis Costello, era-appropriate), as are the lemon water and chamo-mint tea and black sesame rice crackers. The beztie (B) is on high alert. The heart is duly on the mend. The FBI is on the job, technically at least, and the bloodbath of these allegedly united states has distracted me long enough. It’s time to delve into the final section of this book, and all excuses are hereby rendered moot. (NB: This honestly could take another eight weeks.) If all goes well, I’ll be quieter here this week as I delve deep. Wish me luck and I’ll wish you luck right back.

More Advice for the Green-hearted

September 14, 2018 in Book Matters, Essays, Spirit Matters

T. called last Thursday.

She and I don’t talk that regularly but we have each other’s backs no matter how the chips fall. I believe in her work and she believes in mine, and we have known each other since our indignant adolescence, when she was newly arrived from South Africa and I was too mad to rise from any ashes just yet.

That day she’d seen my bellyaching on social media and picked up the phone. She called just as I was sobbing on my bed with the particular hopelessness of someone who doesn’t expect to be comforted.

“What’s going on?” she said with her customary lack of introduction, a trait I find endearing. Continue Reading →

"All, everything I understand, I understand only because I love."
― Leo Tolstoy