new moon reflection — Why is it that I’ve spent the first ten minutes of writing time today researching the etymology of “manifest” and its three uses (adjective, verb, noun) to find some truth from beyond that I can use to put together a contemplation about what I want to “BE EVIDENCE OF” as…

The Meeting Place. TWENTY-EIGHT. — Told rightly, my story and yours collide. They run the rails of our lives and meet at the wheelhouse of our best intentions, our worst fears, the ways we lose love and find it. …

The limitless nature of The Story is curtained by my micro-view, one which has been pecked and prodded by the real and the unreal. It’s hard to know one from the other, the real arriving in single-serving sensory packets, and the unreal winking and nudging from muses in every direction. …

How much does tunnel vision direct what we see? And what we don’t see? When the goddess-infused checker handed me the folded piece of paper from inside the Trader Joe’s bag I had brought along, she invited me to open it. She charmed it with a burst of creative storytelling…

When I see myself for what I am, what I see is an expressionless woman making dog treats in the middle of the afternoon as she waivers between whether she should go to Costco since she’s getting low on coffee or settle in for a double session of Swedish-language learning…

My last teaching partner was a pert, self-admitted-OCD math teacher who ran our homeroom on a Pavlovian factory model. All the students had jobs, assigned weekly and rewarded with a snack-size portion of Sour Patch Kids on Friday afternoons if they had earned their paycheck. …

What does it matter when the clouds are moving in like the four horsemen of the apocalypse waiting for the thunderous roar of the tsunami that will swipe the redwoods with its raging slap against what will no longer be shore and the temperatures of the coastal waters off Florida are breaking 100 degrees fahrenheit and bleaching the coral reefs at rates unseen in any lifetime and when Beijing is flooding like Montpelier and Phoenix is roasting like a Thanksgiving turkey and birds are disappearing and which species is not on the endangered list

The Meeting Place. TWENTY-SEVEN. — Liv gathered a shallow bowl of sunshine yellow paint and a small brush to do some detail work on the front door, which she had already primed and covered with a first coat. The entry space was illuminated by the tilt of a planet and light from a distant star…

What holds us in place? Is it the cycle of seasons? The promise of morning coffee, the tummy rumble at dinner time? How is it that we know when to stay and when to go? When to trust and when to doubt? When to step forward and when to retreat? With all the talk of artificial intelligence, I have to wonder. What intelligence makes me artificial? What innate wisdom have I barricaded with my addictions,