From the Department of Saying Yes
Yesterday, while prowling the French Quarter with friends from out of town, I saw a young man with a snake. A big, white snake. He caught my eyes and how my face lit up and held out his arms to me: “Come to me, baby!” I flowed right over to him and he explained that this was a boa constrictor and that he made his living letting people hold his snakes for $20 and take all the pictures they want. (He had a second, MUCH larger snake—55 pounds of boa—in a sort of snake baby carriage beside him.) I said regretfully, “Oh, I can’t do $20, but let me give you a little something for snake support,” and as I was reaching for my money, he dropped the snake over my head. So I GOT TO HOLD A SNAKE!!!!!
Who Cormac McCarthy Was to Me
Cormac McCarthy wrote a book that was nothing but death, damnation, and despair from beginning to end. And yet, when I was reading The Road, I simply could not stop turning pages.
How did he DO that? What light was hidden in that book that made all that darkness bearable, kept me with him to the radiant end?
It was love…
Thomas Cromwell Has No Clothes
One of my charming idiosyncrasies is that I often resist reading bestsellers while they are at their peak of popularity. This often leads to me shouting with jubilation about discovering a great book that everyone else already knows about. Sometimes the opposite happens…
Women Who Walk
For my women-friends who, like Pyn-Poi in The Night Field, have people raise concerns or eyebrows about them hiking alone, here’s a bit of a 1794 letter from Dorothy Wordsworth to her aunt. It gives me a sense of connection, that we are able to do what we do today because our foremothers broke trail for us, and women who follow us will be able to do what they’ll do because we broke trail for them…
How the Light Gets In
After the long, dark inward turning of Winter, the natural world welcomes back the Light. Hibernators crawl out of their burrows, blinking in the sunlight. Seeds swell and pop to find the Light. Green stems push up to meet it. Fields and forests blush with chlorophyll to take it in. Leaves unfold to receive it. Furry friends stretch out in sun-puddles to catch every ray.