Loneliness, I’ve come to think, might be defined as that moment when I reach out for an arm to steady myself… and find the shirt sleeve empty. CNN is doing a special series featuring Anthony Bourdain—years after he took his own life. Unless his family is benefitting in some way, I can’t help but see it as profoundly exploitive. Something about it doesn’t sit right in my bones. The other night  I watched a movie called Rez Ball, and suddenly I was back on the Navajo (Diné) r

My body is like an old car that has been in the family a LONG time.  Relatively reliable for driving around town, but not so much anymore for embarking on a cross-country trip, probably should stay in the garage if it is going to rain, etc.    One of the books I am reading ( White Lies: How the South Lost the Civil War Then Rewrote Its History)  helped me figure out who I am.  I would have been a “scalawag” back in the day, and a proud one.   What’s with the word , “Shebang.”

Forty years ago, I was sitting in a large auditorium with hundreds of others, listening to an internationally renowned Christian minister. He was famously known for, instead of standing behind a pulpit, delivering the message de jour wandering the aisles of the auditorium. As usual, I was sitting upfront in a seat right next to the aisle. As he was nearing where I was sitting, his eyes and mine met, he seemingly interrupted his message, put his hand on my left shoulder, and s

I wonder  if aging makes words more precious and thus more poetry.  That seems to be happening to me.  A teacher of mine once said something like, “Poetry is prose without the unnecessary words.”   I find myself  not noticing the noise until it stops.  And when the noise stops, the conversations that my psyche has been waiting to have with me begin with a whisper.  As I lean forward into those words, they become stronger and move from that whisper to full on conversation.   A