On the mornings like today and earlier this week when I’ve found a groove with writing and playing with ideas and words, I don’t want to stop. I resent the need to stop, the need to pay attention to the clock, to get a shower and walk the dog and drive to work all to…
Category: Life
Getting Tripped Up
I haven’t written in a while. More precisely, I’ve been writing and re-writing the same thing for about a week – a micro treatise on how I get tripped up by Buddhism, relationships, and the awkward space between ambivalence and ambition; past, future, and present; action and inaction…. “the middle way.” Last weekend, my daughter…
Home(less)
As someone who writes about, thinks about, and pines over the meaning, nuance, and emotional tug of the word home, I seldom acknowledge how privileged I am to even have the space to pontificate or lament or yearn. In my personal world, I’m almost always talking about the emotional sense of the word – less…
The Origins of Everyday Objects
Just left of the sliding glass door that leads to the back deck and the yard below, the peace lily blooms. A single white flower stretches towards the ceiling – still curled in on itself before its great unveiling. The plant sits on a small pedestal-like storage trunk/ottoman/end table – knee-high and angled in the…
Social Media Sobriety
It’s been a little over a week since I began my experiment with social media sobriety. There are times (several per day and mostly at night when I’m alone and bored or struggling to focus) when I miss it – when I expect to see (jones to see) some news from a friend or some…
Home – October 2021
Ever since leaving two years ago, home has been a word that gives me pause. I clutch every time I’m inclined to use it. It’s as if in leaving, I gave up my right to the word. Like friendship and love and lots of other words that contain various depths – I struggle to distinguish…
The Best-Laid Plans
Friday morning… For the first time in nearly two years (two Christmases ago), I’m heading back to the Philadelphia area. I haven’t seen many of those people, family and friends, in that time. I’m looking forward to it, but I hate the “scheduling” of things to do and deciding on who I’d like to see…
Low-grade Withdrawal
On Sunday afternoon (10/17/21), a little after 4pm as the sun tried to break through the clouds, I consciously uncoupled from social media. I didn’t go so far as to delete my accounts (I didn’t even deactivate them), but I did remove them from my phone’s home screen…. which is a little like putting them…
Trial Separation?
I’m laughing because minutes after sitting down and thinking I should write about what feels like an impending divorce from social media, I found myself scrolling and liking (or disliking) posts on Facebook… is that her new boyfriend? That’s a cool picture. He must have just started dating her. Uggh, another picture of his kid…
A Ramble Through Duality
After the big boy breakfast and the dog walk in the blustery gray that feels more like November than October, I sat on the sofa with a cup of coffee and began to read. I only read a poem or two and paused thinking this is nice… wouldn’t it be better with company? For me,…
Sometimes It’s the Dog
An hour in to my morning, I’m starting to feel guilty for not having fed the dog. It’s still early (6 am as I start this), and in my mind I tell myself “he can wait.” I hate having that power over him – what I really mean to say is that as soon as…