So, I’m doing this 21-day challenge that a friend invited me to do. It’s like this Deepak Chopra / Oprah Winfrey thing that’s supposed to raise your vibration. Each day there’s a task and a meditation and an inspirational quote. Today’s inspirational quote is: “Learning from mistakes is a great lesson for growth.” Which turned … Read more
It’s a tough time of year. The weather is hot, both in the way that August is always hot and the way that portends the ever-nearing climate apocalypse. The autumn is nigh. In the way that August always precedes the too-fast downhill slope into the holidays and the end of the year. We’re housesitting for … Read more
Beth Ann (not her real name, for privacy) is the homeless lady who lives in our neighborhood. She used to perch on a brick planter near the entrance to the parking lot until the CVS asked her not to sit there as customers didn’t like. Then she moved across the street. And then, when the … Read more
Everybody wants in. How can you tell? They opened the submission gates this morning, and the portal, WithoutaBox, is completely overwhelmed. I have the submit page open in two browsers and the windows are blank, trying to load, on both. Paul is texting our friend Nikki, and the situation is the same all around. The … Read more
The short Hispanic woman selling blinking plastic light-sticks from a shopping cart offers a collegial fist bump to the guy in the wheel chair selling bunches of roses from his lap, then continues down the block. A black man, so thin he swims in his all black shirt and trousers, break dances next to an … Read more
I know there is some contention about whether there is such a thing as monthly quotas for traffic tickets, but I will mention that it just happened to be March 31 this past Wednesday, when I took an ill-fated turn down a side street near school, erroneously thinking there was a chance the universe might … Read more
I woke up this morning thinking about how soon after I was first diagnosed with cancer, I went to see a lecture by Buddhist teacher Soygal Rinpoche. He gave us a visualization to work with that was about a Buddha floating over your head, who poured a kind of golden elixir that would enter the … Read more