At some point last year, a friend told me about The Book of Delights by Ross Gay. Starting on one birthday and continuing to the next, Gay kept an (almost) daily catalog of things that delighted him. It seemed like an inspired idea, so I put the book on hold at my local library. Shortly […]
Curiosities
Up here in Seattle we have reached the Dark Wet season, which always leaves me grasping for any glimmer of hope or joy. I have always liked the idea of keeping a gratitude journal, but the few times I’ve tried it, I end up fixating on the same lovely things in my life, like friends […]
I wrote this essay two years ago. We had just gotten back from Japan, and I was still basking in the warm glow of the trip. Now, of course, the trip seems even sweeter. I also like this essay because the first time I posted it, I spelled ginkgo wrong throughout, as kindly pointed out […]
The other day I was going through someone’s collapsed house on the tip of a mesa in western Colorado. It looked like a small homestead where no one had been in a handful of decades. The front wall with its peaked roof and door still latched shut lay flat where it had fallen. I poked […]
Over the last week I traveled from town to town in southwest Colorado giving stage performances at night, telling stories about being here at the height of summer, tales of drought and wildfires and raging thunderstorms. The moon and stars passed over our open-air venues. I gave the show some science and some mysticism, in […]
I’ve been waking to red-spotted Scorpio on the southern horizon every morning between 5 and 6 am. I’m aware of the slow clock I’m inside of, the hands of constellations changing so I can tell week to week time hasn’t stopped. Scorpio sitting in my southern view means summer is almost here, while I’m starting […]
Part of a series of ‘penspective’ posts using a pen for scale The earth is a producer of oddities. Crystals curl around each other like fiber optics and groundwater stains rock like Van Gogh. Geologic byproducts come out faster than Linnaeus could name off species, lava bombs, pseudomorphs, barites that look like roses, and copper […]