Early on in the pandemic, a few days before Switzerland’s first lockdown, participants in an international colloquium arrived in Basel and immediately started to flounder as they tried to navigate new norms for social interaction: “Hey,” said one conference-goer to another, waving. “Are you doing the elbow thing? Or are you doing the other thing?” […]
“ “What even is consciousness, though?” my friend B wondered yesterday, squinting into the sun. The air was full of cottonwood dander. Floating on the breeze, the tufted white seeds looked like they were suspended in deep water. She was nervous about the anesthesia. Four masses in her abdomen, one the size of a football. […]
Pete has a poison oak rash in his armpit. The backs of my knees and left shoulder blade are starting to itch. It’s a sign of spring—a sign that last weekend, for the first time in a while, we did something really good. No, not that. Last weekend we hopped fences, clambered over downed trees, […]
A little over a year ago I made an unplanned trip to the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento. I had driven to the city to run errands but then decided to go look at art instead, a moment of pre-pandemic spontaneity that felt indulgent then, and now, I imagine, would feel like intense catharsis. It […]
I have always liked the word “foothill.” It evokes not only the low hills at the foot of a mountain, but the pleasure of footing over them. When the hills turn soft and green, I like to imagine placing a marble at the top of a hill and watching it roll. Last weekend, I followed […]
Back in 2019 I interviewed two prominent skunk researchers, the wonderfully-named Dr. Ted Stankowich and Dr. Jerry Dragoo. After talking to them I decided that if I were going to devise a Marvel-style comic book avatar for myself, it would be “Skunk Woman.” Rather than mostly in-the-way, non-aerodynamic objects of unwanted attention, my breasts would […]
Just down the road from my house, there lived a bull. He had a massive, muscular neck and a glossy black coat that rippled as he strode around the pear orchard that served as his pasture. In fall, when the pears ripened, the bull rubbed against the old trees, shaking their trunks until the fruit […]
As the days get colder and darker, and the escalating pandemic keeps me homebound, I’m trying to make the most of what I can see through my windows. Last week I bought a beautiful vintage hummingbird feeder made from a blood-red glass bottle with fluted sides. I filled it with sugar water and hung it on my back porch, where […]