Moving Rocks and Planting Seeds
This past weekend at Vanaprastha, rain gently soaked the mountain landscape. Water dripped off gable ends, travelled through gutters and drainpipes and coursed down ditches along the driveway. During downpours, gullies also appeared, moving organic debris, soil and...
Right and Busy
How to grow up in one piece, a 40-page book of quirky advice about people and everyday things, is one of my all-time favorite books. Read by adults but written as if for the uninitiated, that is, for children, Robert Paul Smith’s humor permeated my youth in the...
Are you liberated?
One chilly winter night some forty years ago during my college years, I was upstairs in a Boston dance club on Beacon Street looking around for someone I’d like to ask me to dance. Two young, strapping fellows about my age promptly swam into view, approaching...
Coincidence
Last week in my class at the Writer’s Center, I read a selection from the middle of my book. As usual, I received very helpful comments and suggestions ranging from conceptual to craft. Perhaps because the story I told had to do with the twenty-year span involving...
Confirmation Bias
I like rules especially the ones that help me find my generic-looking car in a parking lot (always try to park in the same spot) or ease me through a multitude of routine tasks. The problem is that I tend to latch onto rules, sometimes without much thought. Last...