August 24, 2024 I like the story where the cowboy lives because the bullet struck the whiskey flask instead of his thin-walled heart… I’ve come to appreciate the happy ending, no matter how tacky or unearned. ~Kristen Tracy, Happy Endings   I periodically cycle through this thought process: You want to live peacefully alone and […]

August 21, 2024 The art of losing isn’t hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster. ~Elizabeth Bishop, One Art   Just a few seconds in to Kerry K’s recent video, I realized that she was speaking to me. We are finally letting go, […]

August 3, 2024 Saint-Saëns’s Danse macabre, Op. 40, is based on the French legend that Death packs a fiddle and comes to play at midnight on Halloween, causing the skeletons in the cemetery to crawl out of the ground for their annual graveyard dance party. ~ Andrea Warne Not long ago, the idea of braving […]

July 27, 2024 Whenever you feel superior or inferior to anyone, that’s the ego in you. ~ Eckhart Tolle The more I understand what the ego is, the harder it is to keep from treating it as an enemy, something I want no part of. But trying to vanquish ego is a quixotic battle, since […]

July 20, 2024 All good work is done the way ants do things: Little by little. ~ Lafcadio Hearn It’s almost comforting to deal with a mundane problem when the world is splintering and each moment unfolds with greater mystery than the last.  My cats are the early alert system when ants start coming in. […]

June 2, 2024 No one has ever successfully painted or photographed a redwood tree. The feeling they produce is not transferable. From them comes silence and awe. It’s not only their unbelievable stature, nor the color which seems to shift and vary under your eyes, no, they are not like any trees we know, they […]

May 25, 2024 In the pocketed dark behind fireplace brick, sprawls a hidden house of light. ~Pamela Gross, The Hive   I haven’t been able to contemplate the bee invasion and subsequent rescue with anything but anxiety since the little critters set up a colony in an outside wall here in mid-April. For days before […]

May 11, 2024 During a bad day A little bit of sugar Can go a long way ~Olivia Hooper, Sweet Comfort   Something feels off kilter about taking the all-or-nothing approach to sugar consumption. Telling myself to not do a certain thing feels hopelessly outdated. Even a reminder to be alert to sugary foods (go […]

May 6, 2024 For something so small, it wreaks havoc. Feeds on my sweat. Opens old wounds. She hisses demands, and I do nothing but obey. No one sees me, she says. Only you and the choke-chain around your neck. ~Sarah Nichols, The Monkey on My Back   While I was restlessly shifting, trying to […]

April 30, 2024 Forget not the central truth that God is seated / In your own heart. ~ Swami Ramdas Although being mobile again through the intervention of hip replacement surgery is fantastic, I’m still “old” and getting older. So I haven’t forgotten the promise of the med beds. However, having been restored to a […]

April 27, 2024 For I do not exist: there exist but the thousands of mirrors that reflect me. With every acquaintance I make, the population of phantoms resembling me increases. ~ Vladimir Nabokov I had a most unpleasant day, last Wednesday. It was all about my mood, although I blamed it on the frustrating retail […]

April 20, 2024 No man is an island, Entire of itself; Every man is a piece of the continent, A part of the main. ~John Donne, No Man Is an Island   I’ve been doing little the past seven weeks but burrow into an insular world of post-surgery recovery. Although I feel solitary, I am […]

April 6, 2024 Education has failed in a very serious way to convey the most important lesson science can teach: skepticism. ~ David Suzuki Not to be shallow, but, now that my “hip pain” is on the wane and easy movement is ascending, I don’t feel nearly as desperate for the solar flare / Ascension […]

March 30, 2024 The best time to write is when your life is in the toilet. Writing offers an escape from your problems, so if you force yourself to write when you’re in the doldrums, it will have the perverse effect of cheering you up…. ~Sabrina Jeffries Is it all right to be on an […]

March 16, 2024 Now, like a strange light breaking from the ground, I venture from the halls of shadowy death— A frail white gleam of resurrection. ~D.H. Lawrence, Resurrection   A welcome somnolence envelops me. Just sitting and being, without feeling subliminally driven, is an experience of wonderment. I feel like I’m melting into the […]