Reading

Adults, waiting for tomorrow, move in a present behind which is yesterday or the day before yesterday or at most last week: they don’t want to think about the rest. Children don’t know the meaning of yesterday, or even of tomorrow, everything is this, now: the street is this, the doorway is this, the stairs …

Please be aware, I am writing to you to make sense of myself. …we have both arrived at the same point in our lives. More behind us than ahead of us. Paths chosen that define us. Enough time left to change. I liked this novel-in-letters. Easy-to-read, with lots for me to think about having come …

I forget things—I know that—but I’m not mad. Not yet.  I listened to this one and liked it that way. Losing your mind stories fascinate me. This was good, but I thought the ending wrapped too easy.

Where you, cancer, copy furiously,I fumblingly create.You can not uncreate me. I learned of this poetry chapbook when I heard Jonathan Rogers interview Katy Bowser Hutson in the first episode of his new podcast The Habit: Conversations With Writers About Writing. Her words resonated with some of my own experiences with trauma and so I …

You will either remember reading this and know why you remember reading this, or you will remember reading this and not know why you remember reading this, or you will not remember reading this, possibly forever. I am not much of a re-reader. This was a re-read for me. The truth is – I don’t …

Walking is a way to find possibility in your life when there doesn’t seem to be any left. I am a big fan of Austin Kleon’s work and Keep Going is full of quotable lines, but this is one of my favorites right now. Not just a one time read, this book is packed with …

I intend to get you what you need. I don’t know how I will manage this, but in the fullness of time it shall be accomplished. – said the cob to his son who had no voice Inspired by the Trumpeter Swans I see on my walks each day, I got a copy of The …

For what am I most grateful? For what am I least grateful? …..The examen makes us aware of moments that at first we might easily pass by as insignificant, moments that ultimately can give direction for our lives. As I understand it, the Daily Examen is a meditation practice associated with Ignatian Spirituality. Ever curious …

Marriage is the act of choosing love again and again and again. It is the falling out of it and the diving back in. The constant evolution of two people who have chosen to weave separate, complementary lives. It didn’t have to be the brain injury – although brain injury may be the most extreme, …

How do you get through, when things are too much? Ask me and I’ll tell you to walk. “Just walk,” I’ll say. “Walk. Walk and walk and walk and walk and walk.” I was super curious when I heard about the structure of this YA book >> 100 chapters, 100 words in each chapter. I …

If certain things hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t be here now, in this place with this perspective. I read an opinion piece in the newspaper and went looking for more from the author. Homestead Girl is her story. Rather, a collection of her stories. A book of essays – poetic and thoughtful. And a good addition …

This questioning of the meaning of being, and dying, and being, is behind the telling of stories around tribal fires at night; behind the drawing of animals on the walls of caves; the singing of melodies of love in spring, and of the death of green in autumn. It is part of the deepest longing …

Dear, dear old trees….will you ever sing again? Song of the Trees is a picture book (with one of my favorite illustrators!). I read Mildred D. Taylor’s Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry and Let the Circle Be Unbroken when I was a kid, but I didn’t know then they were set in a larger …

Racism….Not only is it hard to fix, but it requires a deep assessment and realigning of our own mental constructs, ways of viewing history, and notions of justice. The Myth of Equality is an accessible, important book that aligned well with the deep dive into US History that I’ve been working through this year. It’s …

Perhaps a half-hour’s climb above them the ridge ended. It was not merely interrupted, as had been the case at the Fortress, but ended – for good – and beyond it the mountain soared up in what from below, seemed an absolutely perpendicular wall. Rudi tried to estimate its height, from its base, where the …

All life stages present us with joys and miseries. Fate and circumstance influence which stage is hardest for any given individual. But attitude and intentionality are the governors of the process. The journey can be redemptive if we find ways to grow from the struggles the stage offers us.  To be clear! I have not …

…..yet the mud and the wind and the rain would all pass….I cried for those things which had happened in the night and would not pass.

White and black are natural attributes. Crows aren’t black because they dip themselves in ink every day. Seagulls don’t become white because they wash themselves everyday. Black and white are an integral part of who they are. That doesn’t mean one is better than the other. ….we need good government –to make sure things are …

Throughout history, great philosophical minds  have grappled with the nature of identity. What makes a person a person? What combination of memory, history, imagination, experience, subjectivity, genetic substance, and that ineffable thing called the soul makes us who we are? Is who we are the same as who we believe ourselves to be?  I am …

…(in) the words God spoke to Cain after he killed Abel: “The blood cries out from the ground.” So glad I read this terrible story.

So it came to pass that as he trudged from the place of blood and wrath his soul changed. See also this short story by Crane that was published in a magazine a year after The Red Badge of Courage was published (1895/96). The Veteran lets us see the boy Henry, now an old man, …

Grief doesn’t have a plot. It isn’t smooth. There is no beginning and middle and end. I read through this slim volume in an afternoon, which is a rare example of reading focus for me, but – beautifully written – this is the sort of exploration of grief that captivates me>>The grief of a mother …

I’m talking about getting through the night. And lying warm in bed, companionably. Lying down in bed together and you staying the night. The nights are the worst. Don’t you think?

….the path to a life of meaning and significance isn’t to “live in the present” as so many spiritual gurus have advised. It is to integrate our perspectives on time into a coherent whole, one that helps us comprehend who we are and why we’re here. I was inspired to read When: The Scientific Secrets …