posts

“If you think adventure is dangerous, try routine, it is lethal” Paulo Coehlo This advice strikes me as half-true. ***I had a friend in college who remains the quietest person I have ever known. Her name was Elizabeth – the only fellow American in our year. Back then it was near impossible to enter an…

The homing instinct … toward a place of safety My high school theology teacher Ms. Lemieux, may she rest in peace, beamed at our often scornful, occasionally wise-cracking teen selves as we sat in uniformed rows before her. She called the assignment a Love Bombardment, which didn’t help. We were to arrive the next day…

musique – from the Greek mousikē – meaning (art) of the Muses In July 2020, a tentative lifting of strict COVID restrictions meant I could escape isolation and enjoy a long drive to a mostly, but not entirely, abandoned office. For most of that year and well into the next, a string of small blessings…

Before you let anything into your life, you have to let something go.

We are not designed to sit and concentrate

You become what you give your attention to.

For the past few months, I go to the pool every day. Swimming is the priority. By the time I drive along the coast to get there, and then back again, half an hour in the water takes two hours from my day. In February I woke up with a sore leg. Which lingered. A…

Lately, I notice an occasional emptiness. A whispering worry that something is missing. Or that I’m forgetting something, losing hold of a vague yet vital piece of life. My mind labels this “that empty feeling” – it arrives like a wind that ruffles the leaves and then slips away. It comes and it goes. I…

Do you feel you’re living your right life, or does something seem off? This question nagged me for much of my adult life. In my book, Counting Zeros, I write about vocational angst – how it sometimes drove me mad. The easiest way for me to explain what I mean by congruence, or right-life, involves…

You might enjoy listening to this music while reading today’s post. Earlier this week, a group of us got together by video. We last saw each other a month ago, in person, at an annual gathering outside of Boston. Now back in our everyday lives, dotted across the US, Europe, and Australia, we regrouped to…

From dawn to dusk, each day last week I gave and received the greeting ¡buen camino! Along the route from Sarria to Santiago de Compostela, these words were offered from our overnight hosts, local farmers, friendly bartenders, but mostly they were exchanged with other pilgrims on the path through Galicia along the Camino Francés Sometimes…

Today’s post is partial, unresolved. An opening not a concluding. My grandmother wouldn’t be thrilled. “I don’t like abstract stories,” she once told me. Worse, this isn’t even a story. Just a preoccupation. To start concretely, I have once again marveled this week at a small wooden bowl my friend Pat made. Some years ago,…

A screechy choir of cricket-chirp pierces the low monotonous hum of air conditioner units. Somewhere in the distance – there’s a ballgame on the radio. Fast-speaking voices pitch to excitement as a player slides to second base. Meanwhile my brother tends the outdoor grill on the drive. My mother sits nearby on a wicker lounge…

I started blogging in 2011. I stopped in 2013. I was having too much fun. It was time to focus on longer pieces. But I have missed the sparks that fly when you whip up a tangible something and put it out into the world right away. Since many years have passed, I only half…