“You have an idea parked in your head now,” he murmured. And he was right. It was one of those perfectly reasonable and measured conversations, romantic even, that had taken a strange and unanticipated turn. What he intended as simple disclosure of something in the past triggered a surprising chain reaction. In me. It was […]
Be Careful What You Wish For
Is it love? Is it money? Is it just a day or two to yourself? Is it something harder to generalize, impossible to articulate, or too private to admit to? Do you have a foolish little dream – or a glitzy big one – something from childhood – shelved and dusted off, shelved again, only […]
Magnani, Manolo, and Where’s My Life of French Chic?
Anna Magnani was peeling herself out of a black satin slip, splashing in a small fountain, and sputtering in Italian while the women on the street around her were trying on clothing. Furiously. It was all very Filene’s Basement. The original – in the 1960s. But what was an Italian film icon doing in the […]
If you could change one thing. . .
Remember that game you played as a kid, or maybe even as an adult? If you had three wishes, what might they be? Let’s play. But let’s try a variation that’s grounded in a bit more reality. What if you could change three things about yourself and your life? Oh, don’t ask me why this […]
Constraints and Open Spaces
I dream a problem to solve: I need a small parking area for my fleet of six jets, he tells me. I am standing in a mall lot, on the upper deck, in the middle of a city. The site includes a spiral ramp on one side, and a poorly lit corner bounded by a […]
Tossing and Turning, Flossing and Spurning
You know those nights when you can’t sleep? You’re soooooooooooooo tired, but you hit the lights, crawl under the comforter, settle in just so with your pillows scrunched and your toes dangling off the edge of the bed – exactly as you like it. You shut your eyes. You think good thoughts. You wait. And […]
Letters, Writ Small, for Nathalie Sarraute
Nathalie Sarraute was one of the initiators of the nouveaux romans genre of novel-writing, a style that shuns the use of traditional narrative techniques, such as plot structure, characters, and setting. Instead, Sarraute and other practitioners of the “new novel” focus on presenting precise, objective narratives that are often episodic in nature and call upon […]
The Zone
Your kid’s eyes are glazed over because it’s after three a.m. and he’s still working, and your eyes are glazed over because it’s after three a.m. and you’re still working, and while you’re the mother you remember being the kid – hanging on with everything you’ve got to pull it out at the end of […]
Cynical, skeptical, or cautious?
We had both been waiting at the hospital for three hours. She’s a registered nurse, and was even more annoyed than I was. “I don’t know what could be taking so long for a few simple tests,” she says. “A little blood work and the basics. This is a woman’s clinic now.” I am sitting […]
Traveling Home
“What do you think about changing the stairs, over there, in that corner?” he asks. My father points to an area of our living room, though it doesn’t seem to fully resemble the place I grew up. Not as I recall it. I wonder what he is doing here, why he is standing in our […]