The Things We Hope To Leave Behind

Yesterday the People of LWON discussed our hopes for 2020. Today, we reflect on what we hope to leave behind. Ann:  Serious answer is, that’s a little complicated.  After a certain point in life, you’ve got more behind you than in front and surely it would be blind-stupid graceless to not weigh carefully what you […]

Diagnosing Grief

Because Sarah wrote about grief on Monday and because today my son would have been 51, so then what else would I bother writing about except grief or rather grief as love’s subset or corollary or unavoidable consequence. Love → grief, love ꝏ grief.  That little ꝏ sign, that side-ways 8, that’s the math/astro symbol […]

This is Why We Come Out

The other night we were supposed to see a meteor shower with fireballs. That’s what they predicted, fireballs. My gal and I went out on the deck in the late fall chill, dropped a single sleeping pad, covered ourselves in a blanket, and stared up at a midnight quarter moon. The Taurid meteor shower and […]

Love letter to you and me as teenage girls

Do you remember when we used to yell at people from the roof? The light was longer then, and gold the way that it is in Colorado in fall, and we’d climb out your bedroom window and sit on the sloping awning over the porch and call out lines from movies to bewildered passersby. The […]

The Gravity Steps

The world of science entered November 6, 1919, as gray as a doughboy and exited it dancing like a flapper. That afternoon, British Astronomer Royal Sir Frank Dyson announced at a special meeting of the Royal Society in London that a recent experiment had validated a new theory of relativity. The occasion provided one of […]

Spider Dysmorphic Disorder and Me

It’s spider season here on Knifecrime Island, but it looks like I’ve escaped this autumn’s offerings. At least that’s what I tell myself smugly as I prepare my first cup of coffee in the British predawn pitchdark of 6:39 am. Anyone who’s ever watched a horror movie is already reading through thinly slatted fingers. Humming […]

Dispatch from De-Energized California

A few weeks ago, my boyfriend and I got up before dawn, turned on our headlamps to find our shoes, and went for a run. It was cold enough that we could see our breath in the air, but we were sweaty by the time we got back to the trailhead. After our run, we […]

Still life with dumb phone

Last summer my iPhone went kaput, the victim of a bass-fishing accident and a case that proved to be, upon close review of fine print, water-resistant rather than water-proof. The distinction was not semantic.  When the screen turned fuzzy red plaid, a color and pattern better suited to a kilt than to liquid crystal, I […]