Bugs
-
The Quiet
Traffic noise on the street is a constant refrain. Music and shouting, cans rolling on the pavement, angry cats fighting, neighbors clamoring for all the air and space they can grab and it never stops. The noise inside me that no one else can hear is just as deep and loud and even though it’s…
-
Putting It To The Flame
“As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I…
-
The Runway in Addis Ababa
We have been flying for 17 hours. Cramped, dried out and restless, muscles aching and emotionally depleted, we are finally landing at the airport in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. I’m hungry for the sight of this country to which I’m suddenly deeply connected. I look out of my window, just past the wing of the plane. The…
-
My Mother’s Table
I learned a lot at my mother’s table. Lessons about sharing, loving, acceptance. I learned frugality and common sense. At my mother’s table there was always room for another chair, and another plate, and the food always stretched in a loaves and fishes way. There was a hand on your shoulder. A hug. A home…
-
Headlong
When I was a kid, we grew up in a rural farming community outside the college town where my father taught piano and music theory. In the winter, we skated on a fire pond on an Amish farm. We hiked through the frozen rutted cow pasture while the dairy herd solemnly watching our progress. We crawled through…
-
The Funeral
“…I know mine own, mine own know me. Ye, not the world, my face shall see; My peace I leave with you, amen.” For sixty years they cared for each other, these two children of the second World War. He, Latvian. She, Yugoslavian. He told stories of a boyhood of Russian occupation, of searching for…
-
Argentina Speaks
Not being able to understand anything anyone is saying is both humbling and liberating. On the one hand, I can’t order my own coffee, and someone has to read the menu to me like I’m a preschooler, then help me figure out how much it will cost when the waiter asks for payment. But listening…
-
Hardware
Hinges, locks, handles, doors. They keep us in, they let us out. They hide, and reveal; close off, and open up.
Truth and Malbec 