No New Tricks Here

In the house where I grew up, the sports radio was always blaring, the TV too, and everyone talked over each other and through everything else at the top of their lungs. I learned to read and do my homework in that racket but promised myself I’d be a silence worshipper if I managed to grow up. And in fact these days I do insist on living alone and uphold quiet as more glamorous than champagne sipped upon a velvet divan. But the truth of the truth is that whenever I want to get any big writing done I have to work in the noisiest environment I can find: a house full of screaming kids, a bustling coffee shop, my noisy stoop. If I ever want to finish my book I probably will have to set up a desk in the middle of Times Square. Old habits don’t die hard; they don’t die at all. We just find a rhinestone-studded collar with which we may tame them.

Lux Lotus and Ruby Intuition for a New Year

Savvy media strategist and girl-about-town Lauren Cerand and I discussed my intuition practice for her blog, the swoony Lux Lotus. We covered everything under the pale winter sun, from the invention of timepieces to the superior psychic abilities of animals, and suffice it to say that she is so awfully brilliant that she makes everyone else seem so as well. Do check it out, kittens.

Scrap-Iron Louisa

Louisa May Alcott’s birthday should be another national holiday—one for independent-minded girls everywhere. Certainly I have no idea of who I’d be without Little Women to straighten my spine and warm my heart through every stage of my life. As a child I felt special knowing she’d lived within 20 miles of my house, and ever since I’ve looked to both her life and work as an example of what can be accomplished through the marriage of hard work and imagination. These days, the phrase of hers that resonates with me most is this: “I’d rather be a free spinster and paddle my own canoe.” Happy birthday, Louisa May.

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