An hour of roll forward, brake fast, wait, creep forward, brake, and my aged Mini’s air-conditioning goes tepid. Then a warning message flashes: something about my battery not recharging itself. Ten seconds later, I am still assimilating the first warning when a new one flashes: engine overheating. Stop and let it cool. […]
By now, the L.A. symphony-goer’s orgasm has been heard round the world. There was a slight attempt to pathologize the woman’s unmistakable (my opinion) moans of pleasure during the second movement of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony—surely she must have had a seizure of some sort? Well, yes—one that had her breathing heavily and […]
Fat-sorrow is not the sigh you heave after squinting at the scale. That is fat-angst, a feeling I alternately try to befriend or banish. Fat-sorrow springs from a different sort of abundance. Defined as “sorrow alleviated by riches,” it comes from an old Spanish adage, “Fat sorrow is better than lean sorrow.” […]
“Babe, what did you do with that tub of Mom’s soap?” my husband calls. “Haven’t you gone through it yet?” Jo died two years ago, and we absorbed, along with the loss, a lot of the little things that carried her from day to day. She always kept a sizeable inventory of […]
There is fascination in the sudden appearance of a dozen cranes, the size used to build skyscrapers, spaced alongside a highway bridge over a major river. It means things are in the works, forces are at play. Something slouches to be born. How wide and varied the world is! How much there is […]
Performance anxiety, writer’s block, imposter syndrome, chronic stress. Social anxiety, attachment anxiety, existential anxiety, FOMO. Climate anxiety, tech anxiety, conspiracy theories, xenophobia. Overachievement, perfectionism, avoidance, hoarding. Hypochondria, insomnia, fear of aging, denial of death. We are a bundle. Spidery, creeping, impossible to ignore, anxiety spins uncertainties that cling no matter how […]
You cannot read this little book without smiling. An only child, RLS has been described as “both strange looking and eccentric,” and he suffered frequent illnesses. But he had a mother who watched over him tenderly and noted each illness in his baby book, along with a list of his pet names and the […]
“We could go through East Coker,” Lynette Ballard told the British tour-bus guide, enthusing about how valuable and important this detour would be for her fellow passengers. Then she held her breath, because she had no idea what East Coker was like. All she knew was that one of T.S. Eliot’s […]
“Back straight, feet on floor, fingers on home keys, three-two-one-and-type!” Sister Lorraine timed our drills with military ferocity. Except for the morning my friend Jenny cracked open the classroom door and sent a little wind-up Woodstock clattering across the floor, headed straight for the nun shoes. All that tension Sister created on […]
Sixteen months ago I worked as an extra on the third installment of Guardians of the Galaxy movie. It has just been released, and we went to see it opening weekend. Sitting down in the theater with a tub of popcorn and a Diet Coke, I felt like my elder son who, […]
