P is for Pentimento :: Palimpsest :: Paint :: Pen
“Old paint on a canvas, as it ages, sometimes becomes transparent. When that happens it is possible, in some pictures, to see the original lines: a tree will show through a woman’s dress, a child makes way for a dog, a large boat is no longer on an open sea. …
O is for Open
“To receive everything, one must open one’s hands and give.” -Taisen Deshimaru
N is for Normal
"Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for–in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you …
M is for Mother
No matter how complicated our relationships with our mothers turn out to be–and they are always complicated in some way at some time in our history together, aren’t they, even if we don’t know who our mothers were and are and particularly when we get too invested in our own …
L is for Little
“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.” -e.e. cummings Act I The CEO took charge of the retreat after lunch, pushing his staff into action teams to create a brochure, a potluck, and a video. I watched my business partner, David, from across the room, …
K is for Kooser
Today was a tough one. There are many K words that intrigue me, like kaleidoscope, all those pieces turning and turning in the widening gyre, bouncing light off of pebbles and shards of glass. Or keelhaul, or kraken (a personal favorite and who, pray tell, can forget the fabulous poem …
J is for Jump
[And yes, I resisted the urge to do the painfully obvious: J is for Johnny…Depp, Cash, Unitas, Appleseed, Travolta, Johnny- Billy- Bob- Collins, and my own Mr Brilliant, himself the penultimate (or, rather, ultimate) Johnny. Self-restraint of such a kind is, by the way, highly overrated]. And so, instead of …
I is for Immortality
Immortality In Sleeping Beauty’s castlethe clock strikes one hundred yearsand the girl in the tower returns to the world.So do the servants in the kitchen,who don’t even rub their eyes.The cook’s right hand, liftedan exact century ago,completes its downward arcto the kitchen boy’s left ear;the boy’s tensed vocal cordsfinally let …
H is for Horse
In 1989 and 1990, I visited 17 countries in 12 months, a whirlwind of international work that took me right ’round the globe. There are so many memorable people and places from all those trips–Thailand and Korea and Japan and South Africa and Australia and New Zealand and far beyond–and …
G is for Gifts
“The pleasure of all reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books.” – Katherine Mansfield Red velvet cake with butter cream icing marked the big day. And then birthday presents, many wrapped in an oddly similar and recognizable shape—rectangular and thick, sturdy and straight, like…well, …
