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I have joint custody of a stuffed bear. He was a gift early in my last relationship when my love had to be away traveling very often. We took great joy in naming him for a dear character in a somewhat obscure favorite book. The bear’s name is Oscar Humlum,… [Continue Reading]

Who is the clambering animal in me and what does she clamber for? What dreams rest on my Rocky Mountain peaks? What wants lie wedged in the crags of my Sierras? What animal warbles in the underbrush of my Chattanoogas? Like “The Guesthouse” by Rumi, Carl Sandburg’s “Wilderness” helps me… [Continue Reading]

to hold it in to feign interest to play games to say yes when I mean no to say no when I want to say yes not to play to not adore my ex to let lack of a bathing suit keep me out of a body of water to… [Continue Reading]

Of late, I’ve been in the throes of a crush and a throng of “what will he/they/you think” harpies has been talking in my ear at about the volume of an 11 on the Spinal Tap amp. A ticker tape of my thoughts yesterday might have looked something like this:… [Continue Reading]

This morning, barely awake, I lay in bed noticing an area of my body I’d never really noticed so distinctly before. My entire back ribcage ached and my mind went to town busily doing what it does. What is THAT?! What? My back! All my back ribs. It hurts to… [Continue Reading]

You lose your grip and then you sink into the masterpiece… —Leonard Cohen in “A Thousand Kisses Deep” I used to give a whole lot of advice to God. I called it prayer. But it was more like a to do list or a Santa Claus wish list: please help… [Continue Reading]

…listening to the blizzard wind howling and watching the white bag that’s been caught in a high branch in the tree right outside my window for going on two winters. It used to ruin my view, and I used to call it names like “trash.” But at some point along… [Continue Reading]

In the last few years I been making friends with death—with the idea of death, I should say, for how could I ever know what it is before it actually happens? It’s been about opening to the possibility of death not being so bad after all. This has included opening… [Continue Reading]