Tearing up Center Court
March 17, 1990. One of the crappiest days of my life. The day I lost the National Championship. By 2 points, at the buzzer, my senior year. I still dream about the game, dream how my life would be different if we had won.
That day, the script I had been handed, the outline that guided me, went up in flames, and the ending I expected–that everyone around me expected–vanished.
I believe we all have moments when our lives derail & leave us collapsed at center court in disbelief, wondering how the hell we got there. I also believe that excavating these moments & understanding their resulting ripples, is a way to make peace with them.
Grab your pick axe & meet me at center court. Together, we’ll tear apart the moments that have brought us to tears, led us to the Sacred, destroyed our dreams, reignited our passion, left us humbled, proud, disillusioned, joyous and more fully human.
What could be more fun?
Living a Small Life
Shelagh Gordon. I first heard the name on an episode of “Here and Now” on NPR. Not a lead story. Just a 9-minute glance at her life & sudden death in Toronto. A blurb of sorts that I caught while driving. But these words stopped me, compelled me to look up her story as soon as I arrived home: She lived a small life, as most of us do. Her struggles were intimate… She wasn’t someone who had affected massive change. But, in her own way, she really did intimately affect so many people. By the age of 12, I wanted a big...
read moreSwinging by for a visit on the Day of the Dead
Feeling nostalgic these days. I do every fall as Dia de los Muertos rolls around. I love the Day of the Dead. I like knowing that as the days grow shorter, the veil between the living & the dead, the here & the there, grows thinner. I’m comforted by feeling my loved ones within arm’s reach. Dia de los Muertos is not a time to be sad, but a time to celebrate. Remember & celebrate the people with whom we’ve had the honor of traveling, if only for a short time. Every year, as November 2 rolls around, someone from my...
read moreRoaming the Cemetery
I just returned from a 2-week writing residency in Martins Ferry, Ohio, a small town on the Ohio River across from Wheeling, West Virginia. 2 weeks of open time & space to work on my novel. Besides the fact that I experienced tremors from missing the series finale of Dexter, the trip was amazing. Productive, inspiring, rejuvenating. Right across the road from the place I stayed, the MITCH Collective, is the Riverview Cemetery, which dates back to the Civil War. I walked the cemetery almost every day, browsing the gravestones &...
read moreYou’re in Your Skivvies Now
I’ve sat down to write this blasted first blog fifteen times. Nada. Zip. The anxiety of making a profound impression on you, the reader, has caused me to question my self-worth, my ability as a writer & perhaps most damaging, how I really look in my bathing suit. I even tried an old trick from my Advanced Rhetoric class. Imagine the crowd in their underwear. Makes sense. How many of you ever dress up to check email, Facebook & Tumblr? I don’t know what Tumblr is, but that’s my intended hook for the younger crowd....
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