Holding onto My Own Soul
I sometimes worry that I’ll copy down 99 percent of the words in this book, and if I do that, it will mean that I’m still trying to hide behind the words of others, still trying to avoid my own.…
I Look Only if I Know There’s More to be Found
Few moments of my day (and night) are not filled with thoughts: self-analyzing ones; funny or ironic ones; important, life-changing ones; perceptions; understandings (often years in the making); meager ideas about dinner and getting the laundry in the dryer; connections…
With Intent
Everywhere I turn, I come across messages on the importance of daily practice, and it leads me to a question: can I call it practice if I don’t consciously think in those terms? There is a difference between doing and…
How Many Will Make It Past the Prison Walls and Never Get Locked in Again?
Prisons We Choose to Live Inside Thoughts, conversations, experiences, memories, things that I’m reading are all coming together and leading me on. For Tolstoy, the self is not a system, but an aggregate. It is a cluster of habits and…
Of Men and Misunderstanding
To Share or Not to Share Two days ago, I began thinking in earnest about the balance between silence and expression. I am coming to understand how essential It is to express oneself and to be free to express oneself,…
Words and Light
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be blind? If so, whatever you’ve imagined is probably wrong. According to Jacques Lusseyran, who lost his sight in an accident when he was eight years old, the world doesn’t…
With a Whimper?
The house is quiet now, except for the ticking of the clocks in the kitchen and occasional birdsong. The robins, phoebes, and others had a lot to say a few minutes ago, when they treated me to a lovely morning…
What Meets the Eye
Thanks to Camille Paglia, I have mixed (and rather confused) feelings about the Romantic poets. In short, I don’t know what to make of them. If I am to believe Paglia, they were all perverts with strange sexual proclivities that…
On the Hunt
Quiet weekend afternoons in my adolescent years were sometimes spent reorganizing dresser drawers and closet shelves. My mother was pleased to get things straightened up and pared down, but I was in it for the treasures to be found, the…
Fear and Substack
Fear is a formidable beast. Like most things in life, though, it has its good points and its bad. Fear often preserves our very lives, but—likely, more regularly—it keeps us from living. I try to remind myself that fear seldom…
Reading, Writing, Rules, and Reason
Was it a year ago already that a friend told me about an unlikely book she was reading and finding fascinating? I describe the book as unlikely because if anyone were taking bets on either of us reading it, he…
Stop Signs
Do I know how to do this? To write once I’ve followed a golden thread, or do I only know how to write as a student does: crafting sentences that will please a teacher or a professor and earn that…
