crow She felt on the verge of vanishing Tina Chang by the fifth one flying in front, swooping down from a barbed wire fence i am certain it’s a sign, not that five is a magical number or has any particular significance to me, four is much more mine but today it took five to squawk me awake so i ask—what have you come to say, you swooping fifth crow, i know you symbolize transformation and i’d be blind not to see the hinge of this moment, thrown in the deep end, i’m all sink

Silence Pause The space between These are words I am sitting with right now. So much change. Elections. Children. Aging parents. Aging self. And sometimes it can all feel a bit much, but then, there is the pause. The recognition of mystery. The letting go of needing to know. Silence. This morning my yoga teacher spoke of Samāna (समान) which means “balanced” or “strength through centering” and recognizes the strength already contained within. And this strength is remembered by

she says when i ask which is her favorite tattoo, she tugs at her shirt sleeve, reveals the flower—gold with flecks of terracotta, burn sienna, an outline in black covering her right forearm, underneath delicate cursive script—hell bent, for my cousin who passed last year and i say i’m sorry and she says the marigold is for dia de los muertos the marigold is for mental health the marigold is for honoring the dead and the living and i tell her the pink roses in the basket she

It’s hard to feel sorry for yourself at a hospital. Everywhere you turn there is a story, exponentially more tragic than your own. As I walked to the Seventh Floor Nurse Station yesterday to ask for more water for my mother, I passed a room with a nurse sitting in the doorway, inside where two county sheriffs with bullet proof vests, and I saw a foot chained to the end of a bed. And as I waited for the nurse to arrive, an elderly woman passed with scrapes on her face and a ne

My ambition is to say with notes what a poet expresses with words. Ravel It’s fire season, my mother says as I head out the door. I’ll be fine, I say heading out the door. She is checking a map on her phone. Wondering if she may have to evacuate, like that time nine years ago when there was a fire off Santo Road. Destroyed all the land along the 52. But that was nine years ago. A lifetime ago. Before children became adults. Before too many funerals. Before surgery and learn

Driving south on the I-5 to San Diego my cousins and I find ourselves talking about grace. I think it’s unconditional love, says one cousin. I talk about just finishing Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead. We talk about death and aging. And then another cousin calls and we put her on speaker. And talk about the reason I’m here. My mother. Oxford Dictionary defines grace as the free, unmerited favor, love, or kindness shown by God to humanity. Sorry Oxford Dictionary, but I prefer the

You and I arrived, visitors caught in a late-summer storm, soaked to the bone on siren-filled streets, we eyed the sign—Blue Stripes Open we dripped through the door, snatched the one table waiting, shivered on stools misshapen, studied the menu written on walls exposed shelves with glass jars floor to ceiling—pomegranate tea, cacao kombucha on tap and whipped cream hungry eyes ordered coffees with oatmilk gulped from chipped mugs, your eyes wide mine, hiding tears, my fear

“So many possibilities,” said the dance teacher yesterday, showing us multiple ways to move the hip, to rotate the arm, to squat and reach high. One body but so many possibilities. Our body is capable of changing it habitual way of standing and walking. It just takes awareness and curiosity, and courage. Change is hard. And it got me thinking about the mind. And memory. And loops of reactivity. There is a theory of brain function called Predictive Coding that states the mind

a few months back after meeting a friend for coffee i walked next door to a store named i love plants or something similarly sweet and i bought a mid-size bamboo not because it was perfectly green and obviously thriving in its terra cotta pot or because it’s known to bring good luck but because it reminded me of clement street in sf where i learned all the iterations of bok choy, the real chinatown, locals said, where they sold live fish and i bought nori and wakame and soybe

I’ve been binge-audio listening to Lena Dunham’s recent memoir “Famesick” this week. I’ll begin by saying I had heard of her, but was completely unaware of any of her struggles or controversies and had never watched her hit-series “Girls”. And I decided to read her book mostly because of an interview I listened to; I was touched by her courage to talk about her challenges. You know, the kind of stuff haters love to hate…the poor little rich girl crying all the way to the bank

the day starts in french with paroles de pervert and café allongé on the terra couch, tiptoeing through a language nearly forgotten, a language i learned to discuss long-since- grown children with their teachers, what is, faire du cinéma? i ask my youngest one day after one such meeting and she laughs at my accent, says it means make a big deal adds, but don’t make a big deal, it’s only words, but words are a big deal i don’t say then even though they are mere approximations

Recently, a fellow writer friend and I were discussing suffering. And if it’s something we seek or that seeks us. If we are prone to dark thoughts or generally of a sunny disposition. If we are drawn to Dostoevsky or Austen. Having studied Russian for more years than I can remember, I’m definitely in the Dostoevsky camp. But suffering? My friend then reminded me of Dostoevsky’s quote from “Notes from the Underground,” suffering is the sole origin of consciousness. And conscio

in israel was a covid year, 2020 i think, back when you had to quarantine for two weeks, we came to see my son, my poor teenage daughter and i stuck together in a glass apartment that collected noise and sunlight, and looking back now i’m surprised we didn’t kill each other, or go mad or both, she had the nearly windowless bomb shelter for a bedroom and i had the one in the back with a bathtub it was too hot to use, the apartment drenched in grey— walls, floor, appliances and

On a recent rode trip my husband and I listened to an audiobook of “King Lear”. What struck us most about the reading was not only the tragedy of Shakespeare’s play, but how differently we read the play now, in mid-life compared to our first read as teenagers. The play didn’t change. Lear is still Lear. And all the supporting characters play out their roles as we knew they would, but we approached this read (which was actually an amazing recording with Paul Scofield as Lear)

it’s a fuzzy grey morning with streaks of pink, and a moon still sleeping and racing waves, from sea to shore i want to remember this moment i dig my toes into high tide sand and make my way toward the waves, i step slowly into the sea that splashes my legs and kisses my knees, i am here, i am held, i have come to release and i breathe and imagine letting go of the masks and the roles and the stories i told and all the prices i paid to belong and be seen, i release even

I recently did a writing course where the teacher began each session with this question by Bill Plotkin, Do you love yourself enough to listen with the ears of your heart to the other voices of yourself speaking? What a beautiful invitation. That, I think speaks to this very big week—Jewish New Year, the Anniversary of 9/11, and less significant, but still observed in the US—Labor Day. Whenever we have these big time markers—birthdays, new years and anniversaries, we often re

Nothing here below is profane for those who know how to see. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin double espresso in hand i snatch the last seat on the last morning of our last day here, then another goodbye and hello and mattress, firm, soft, queen or king, pillows made for stiff necks i am become a nomad, shedding skin, new name new place, where are you from? everywhere i sit alongside a window, the late morning late summer sun awakening, i gaze out at michigan avenue and grant

Lying in a hospital bed a few weeks ago as with my insides on fire and awaiting a diagnosis and a shot of the strongest drug imaginable, I had a lot of time to reflect on what had brought me to this moment and this place. I wondered if I’d missed any signs. The answer is yes. In the end the doctors diagnosed me with a bunch of virus-related intestinal conditions, but, my non-medical assessment is that the severity of my condition was the result of a failure to listen to my bo

The day's coming when I will no longer consider my presence inexpiable. Franz Wright i hang up the phone, fire burning in that space just below that bone, where that cluster of nerves radiates like rays of the sun, my own personal oracle of delphi, minus apollo and laurel leaves, more like molten steel, no hiding here i touch that space, cradle my bosom like i cradled my babies and wonder when or if ever i will receive clemency or maybe mercy, or maybe clarity how

I was at the grocery store yesterday and the cashier had a Dolly Parton t-shirt on. I put my hand on my chest and said, so sad, and she did the same. We shared a moment of silence. I grew up humming the music of Hank Williams and Loretta Lynn and Johnny Cash and of course Dolly Parton. 9 to 5 is one of my alltime favorite movies and I followed of her charitable endeavors, from funding disaster relief and children’s hospitals to donating books to underprivileged children. And