Honoring the Art of Creative Living
Her name is April. She’s fifteen years old, and nearing the end of her fourth pregnancy. Oh, and she’s a giraffe. Giraffes have the lowest sleep requirement of any land mammal, averaging around two hours out of every twenty-four, usually in increments of just a few minutes. Like thousands of people around the world, I …
There’s an iconic scene that occurs in almost every novel from a certain period: a (usually young) woman will light a candle (or remove an existing one from a table or candelabra). Then, carrying it with great caution so that the flame doesn’t sputter out and her hair doesn’t catch fire, she will tiptoe up …
Continue reading “Sunday Brunch: Wax, Wick, and Whispering Flame”
“We learn by practice. Whether it means to learn to dance by practicing dancing or to learn to live by practicing living, the principles are the same. One becomes in some area an athlete of God.” ~ Martha Graham I think I was five when I took my first ballet class. I don’t have any …
Yesterday morning, I sat in my sunny kitchen and read an email from my aunt, sent from her 19th-centry farmhouse in Connecticut. She had included pictures of her land, blanketed in the first snow of the season, and her cozy living room with her real pine Christmas tree (ours is plastic) with the snowy outdoors …
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do With your one wild and precious life?” ~ Mary Oliver Today is the first Sunday of Advent, but I’m not attending church. Instead, I will drink my morning coffee in the pre-dawn light of my empty kitchen, at the new-to-me library table that we just moved …
Do you believe in ghosts? On the surface it’s a simple question, answered with a definitive yes or no. But before you respond, take a moment to consider: what is a ghost, exactly? Are we talking about the literal spirits of our dearly departed? Well, if those are real it would explain why I …
Live long and prosper. Star Trek may have first beamed onto our televisions in September, 1966, but those four words weren’t actually spoken by Mr. Spock until roughly a year later, on September 15th 1967*. Like “Beam me up, Scotty,” and “I’m a doctor not a whatever,” it’s a phrase that has passed into the …
With the flip of a calendar page (or a swipe of finger on a smartphone) July is gone for another year, and it is August, my month. The first summer month when, even though the sun is still reluctant to set, the days are discernably shorter, and the nights incrementally longer. I’ve always been …
There are moments that the words don’t reach There is suffering too terrible to name You hold your child as tight as you can And push away the unimaginable My adopted city, Dallas, is mourning, and hot tears leak from my eyes at random moments. My heart is still sore from the mass shooting at …
Continue reading “Sunday Brunch: Processing the Unimaginable”
“Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.” — Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows I have this recurring fantasy that usually comes to visit around this time of year, when even though the calendar insists we have a …
Continue reading “Sunday Brunch: Circumnavigating My Imagination”