Why We Never Leave Seventh Grade Shortly before turning 50, I had an epiphany. It wasn't one of those full-blown, Network-style, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore!" moments. I didn't wake up one day and suddenly decide that I needed to leave my husband or quit my job or move my family across the ocean. I'd already done two of those before turning 40, anyway. My revelation was physical in nature. After spending more than 30 years as a casual runner, my …
The author makes no claim as to the sanity, safety, or legality of any of the practices described in the following. Readers are advised to exercise common sense before attempting any of the practices here described while driving a motor vehicle. When the Kansas Turnpike opened in 1956, it was a magical passage through the Flint Hills. As a six-year-old from Wichita, I knew nothing of the concerns of ranchers, farmers, or the Department of Transportation. The Turnpike and the Flint Hills were …
I came down to Blues Alley tonight, where they serve things like steak and potatoes, and bread and butter. The menu is intentionally hearty, as if to tell us that this is the kind of relief a night here is supposed to provide. I’m not sure what it is I’m searching for relief from, but I did wake up this morning drenched in sweat, and with a sore chest to boot, as if a little gremlin had been out there overnight dancing from muscle fiber to muscle fiber while trying to rid me of a troubling …
Can I turn the canyon into a trampoline? I would say this is every writer’s quest, but Emily Dickinson and Virginia Woolf did not face an invisible amphitheater of internet editors. I envy my weird sisters of old, writing for joy and survival. They writhed with humid words. They were offered no shade from a masthead. They lacked the green visors of style guides. Out under the awning, they were driven to prophecy. Publication was a dandelion on a far continent. If their words …
God, if there's anything entering this piece, let it be a breeze not another flood. No one gives news about a war without splashing blood on faces, without digging a hollow, without an arrow or a sword inside hearts. Tell me the best way to sing a dirge. Or the best way to pronounce someone's death. There is nothing like he died while sleeping, emptiness had already filled the body, and a well is already dug inside the relatives. Everyday, we count dead ones like grains—if it is not an …
My teen is learning another language. Nouns only get him so far. Round verbs clash with square pronouns. Roles befuddle fluency. We joke, we sing. Mom (loud) and kid (embarrassed). We pick up cuss words, gingerly, like dropped fruit (bruised but still good). Months of drudgery, then he drafts paragraphs about a family tree, and the apple does not fall all that far from the trunk. *** I quit shaving my legs when the kids were little. It just happened, slowly, during blustery seasons …