Category: Love
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Going to Be Happy
“Fore!” yelled a woman some distance away. I looked from the albatross resting on the green, toward the sound. “This is a golf course!” she shouted, gloved hands raised, a club in one. I know it’s a golf course, you privileged rich human, but strong old feelings quickly rain down on me: fear, shame, anger.…
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Essay #50: t(r)ooth
I lost a tooth recently. Well, that’s not exactly true, I know where it is: off the coast of Kaua’i. I swam it out from Polihale State Park, past the breakers, and dropped it in the celadon water. Thank you! 53 years ago, give or take, I found a shark’s tooth on Myrtle Beach, way…
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Essay #49: surfista
Fat, old, ugly — that’s what the mirror said this morning, that bullshit trifecta familiar to many women. Women? Maybe it’s a human condition, not strictly personal, which doesn’t make me feel any better as I try to insert contact lenses so I can go surfing. Fuck. Who am I kidding? Surfing is a young…
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Essay #48: h(om)e
Om is the whole universe coalesced into a single sound and represents the union of mind, body, and spirit (yoga.about.com); used in contemplation of ultimate reality (Webster’s 9th New Collegiate Dictionary) A few years ago, I was in the habit of going to Woodard Bay a few times a week to swim. Part of a…
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Essay #47: falling
Gee, but it’s great to be back home. Home is where I wanna be. I been on the road so long, my friend. ~Simon & Garfunkel, “Keep the Customer Satisfied” I went to California last week, to see my dad and stepmom. I was scared to go, afraid to fall back into old family patterns…
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Essay #46: powerless or powerful?
Big storm last week, with knee-deep snow. It knocked out power and phone and thousands of trees. The tall locust in the back yard cracked, and several huge limbs crashed down, scraping the house. My next-door neighbor heard it and yelled, “Are you okay?!” A broken branch dangled 15 feet above the northwest corner of…
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Essay #45: kings
On Christmas Day, a Buddhist monk gave me a present. I’d been ill, bedridden, but had decided to walk to the Vietnamese temple to say hello to Quan Yin and the other gods. The sun was out and the sky was that crisp winter blue I love to see behind green trees. Bundled up, walking…
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Essay #44: what if?
What if there was nothing riding on your success or failure? No approval or disapproval, no appreciation or disappointment, no money, no love, no friendship, no future work. No pressure. Nothing. Would you do the difficult task? Would you even try, or would you drop it altogether? Maybe you’d gleefully fool around, exploring different possibilities…
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Essay #43: welcome
Welcome: admitted gladly, freely invited or permitted; synonyms: comfortable, wanted Last night I watched Cary Fukunaga’s film version of Jane Eyre. It opens with Jane running across the moors in the rain, periodically falling to the ground weeping. “Jesus,” I thought. “What a loser. Running around without gloves, not bothering to keep her cape closed…
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Essay #42: present
Four years ago, the time between Christmas and New Year’s was one of the worst in my life. Emmett was dying and I didn’t know how to save him. Everything hurt him, I could not make him comfortable for more than a few minutes. He wouldn’t stay in the house. The vet had removed his…
words & art by shé 