catching a thermal

A hundred or so Turkey Vultures moved onto my street, behind my neighbor’s house where there are some very old trees and a thicket of undergrowth. They roost in large community groups and often stick to a certain spot for some time–they’ve been there, now, since early Autumn. They feed on carrion, and [...]

renaissance woman or feminist reject

Here’s a thing I love to do: hang clothes on the clothesline. In fact, I just ran another hundred feet around my backyard, randomly stringing line from tree to tree, so I can now dry all of the laundry instead of just the easy stuff like sheets and towels. In Indiana, we often [...]

one definition of success

There are big, momentous, earth-shattering things that have happened to me which I can point to and say, “See? That’s why I am who I am. What else could you expect, after that?” But mostly what makes a life and a whole person are these things, these tiny things which would be [...]

releasing a ghost of a thing

I fell in love when I was sixteen and we were together until I was twenty-one. It was a very intense relationship. Neither of us having much in the way of role models, we formed our own school for the blind, stumbling hand in hand through the beautiful but harsh lessons of love [...]

what I thought when I heard that the world was supposed to end when they turned on the new proton accelerator yesterday

The world as I know it
ended yesterday
and the day before
and the day before.
I am a reconstituted,
reincarnated, re-oxygenated
lump of carbon and water,
and some kind of godlike cellular goo
with the power of recollection.
Every cell, or sub-atomic something,
blindly remembers yesterday
and the day before
and the day before
until I am fooled into thinking
that I am altogether
more solid and lasting
than a [...]

for all my big talk

For all my talk about not judging people by their exteriors, I should be labeled a big fat hypocrite. I should be hung out to dry. I honestly don’t see people’s exterior stuff for the most part. It doesn’t play into my heart-felt impressions of a person ninety-nine point nine percent of [...]

screech owl

A bird of few words is my friend Screech Owl, who visits most nights, sometime between two and four a.m. I’m always awake, the only one in my home awake, the only one who has ever heard him, and so ours is a confidential conversation. He trills for five [...]

sweat and laugh

A Sikh guru I sometimes listen to says one must laugh and sweat every day. I can manage that, every day. There is always humor, and there is always the dripping sweat of a workout that I have convinced myself I need to survive, or fuck it, just walk outside in Indiana in [...]