I have some bad news about writing. The bad news is that you can save your money and quit a Very Good Job to write, only to discover there is no money in writing. And you more or less knew that, so it’s okay, the important thing is that you have lots of free time to write. Except free time is a vacuum that will fill up with almost anything except writing — including part-time work — because it’s really hard to concentrate on writing with concerns about money gnawing at you constantly.
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The Best Job of the Year
That time I almost passed out while banding lambs.
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The Handsome Man in the Very Clean Car
When I think about the things that can happen to a woman, I think about the stranger who pulled up to the bus stop on 19th Avenue in San Francisco as I waited in the rain. He was handsome in a nondescript way, with close-cut hair and eyes that seemed warm. I was twenty years old, still a country bumpkin, insecure in the way only twenty-year-old girls can be. I had been waiting for the bus that would take me back to my college dorm for almost an hour.
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The Best of Us
The work will always be there; there will never be a shortage of good work to be done, or people who need you to do it.
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Defensible Space
Raindrops falling on late summer dust make a particular sound. I woke up this morning thinking I heard it, but it was only of Dad’s sprinkler as he tried to get a little moisture into the ground around the house. I worked on my own defensible space last night, trimming overgrown branches away from the roof of my cabin, filling tubs and buckets full of water on the porch. Dry lightning is predicted for the next two days.
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Half Full
He still drives the 4-wheel drive Jeep he drove to highschool in 1960. Thanks to consistent maintenance and taking it slow, they’re both chugging along just fine, thanks for asking.
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Go ahead and be sad
Go Ahead and Be Sad
For the last 10 years or so, I have been calling myself an athlete. It’s a very grand title for a middle-aged woman who has never run a complete mile on pavement, who has been fighting with her body since she tried her first “miracle diet” at 11 years old, who regularly goes mountain-biking with her family and vapor-locks at the top of small hills, afraid to put her feet on the pedals, let go of the brakes and coast with momentum. The word athlete connotes skill, physical fitness and daring. I don’t have those things. What I do have, and am slowly building, is persistence. More days than not I put on an athlete’s clothes and shoes and do the things that athletes do — I work my muscles, cultivate new skills, create pain to create growth.
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In Praise of Slutty Reading
There are books to buy, and books to read. There are books to shelve by genre or by subject, rows of matching author names like tombstones in a family graveyard, biographies and autobiographies kissing in mutual admiration.
There are pet systems and pet hobbies for your taxonomy. Top shelf: The series your mother lent you to read when you have time, perched in plain sight so she will know you know you should start it soon. Below, Malcolm X stares at Barbara Ehrenreich. A children’s series leans haphazard against the annotated copy of the author’s first draft.
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I Find the Best People At the Mall
I drive to the mall to return the slippers I bought for my mom. Wrong size, wrong style, too expensive. She turns 72 tomorrow and should have the pair she wants, even if they arrive a little after her birthday. On the country station a Fox news broadcast has a soundbite of a Republican Senator calling the impeachment testimony “a matter of hearsay.” On the NPR station live coverage of the trial features a Democratic Senator quoting Alexander Hamilton. In the food court of the mall a man in an orange shirt and cheap sunglasses calls a hello to me and I bounce it back. It’s a strange time of day to be alone, running errands, nothing to do but fix my mistakes.
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