Archive Index

From a letter to a friend... "I first fell in love with the web in Lynx. There was something amazingly intoxicating about tunneling through this immense new information space with just the back and forward keys on the keyboard. I remember countless late nights filled with "just one more link...

This excerpt from Richard Linklater's movie Waking Life was cited last week in a thread on Ask Metafilter about how to come to terms with death. I found the passage intriguing when I originally saw the movie, and am happy to have been reunited with it: Now Lady Gregory was...

If "hell is other people," as Sartre suggested, then surely sometimes the opposite is also true. As I enter my 37th holiday season I have been reflecting on what makes this time special. I think it is the way the rituals make life feel less lonely. If you participate, you...

Hell is not the presence of pain—it is the absence of pleasure.

The surrounding hills are beautiful...their monumental scale and the riotous greenery covering every inch of them makes you feel as if you are living your life the size of a bug in the secret heart of G_d's garden.

This has been a good visit. Dad seems almost completely well, if a bit tired ("Is a balloon still a balloon without any air inside it?") and bothered by pain in his arm. He walks far more slowly now than both me and my Mom. All three of us went...

Apparently there is an old Viennese saying that goes like this: The situation in Germany is serious but not hopeless; the situation in Austria is hopeless but not serious. Dad brought this up today as we talked before lunch about the way depression feels. I relate to the latter expression...

I went out into the woods behind the amphitheater in Chief Logan State Park yesterday and took a short hike on a trail I remember from my past, an obscure one until now, thanks to a new sign by the main road announcing its presence. Along its path were cabins...

Being in West Virginia always provokes me to write in this journal again, no matter how long it has previously suffered from neglect. I think this is because I need to write home to someone, to tell them all my earnest little observations. I should reawaken this sensibility for when...

I read an excellent book this weekend, a memoir written by a journalist who became intimately involved in the practices of snake-handling congregations of Southern Appalachia. It taught me a lot about Appalachia that I did not know before, and it contained a great deal of insight into the nature...

Today my story is being heard by one of the doctors at the Norman Endocrine Clinic in Florida. This is the last, best, and only hope for a cure to my disease. I've spent time and energy over the last few months gathering up all my records and filling out...

On Friday I was browsing nwsource , a local events website published by the combined forces of the Seattle Times and the Post-Intelligencer. I noticed a feature article they were running on a jewelery designer named Kimberly Baker. The photo that accompanied the piece showed a pair of silver seahorses...

Some months back I was exploring a side entrance to the magnificent Suzzalo library. It was already one of my favorite places within throwing distance of my office, because of its air of disuse and abandonment, a wonderfully surreal notice proclaiming it "not an entrance" and the way even this...

[personally identifying information omitted] I have not felt "well" since I was 17 years old. I have journals from that time that describe a very abrupt and dramatic shift in my mood. It was as if someone had turned the lights off and I found myself frightened for no reason...

Because I know I have permission to publish them, I guess. Plus I suppose I must be more than a little vain. Oh well. This is me on Monday in my new maroon dress. I match the couch perfectly.

The night is come, but not too soon; And sinking silently, All silently, the little moon Drops down behind the sky. There is no light in earth or heaven But the cold light of stars; And the first watch of night is given To the red planet Mars. Is it...

This could be the most majestic entrance to a woman's restroom in the whole of creation.

I had a dream last night about Kerry, an old friend from Logan. Then I found email from him this morning talking about how he looked in high school with several photos attached. This got me thinking about a cache of images that David made available to me a few...

• "Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy" • professions of love and libel on bathroom stalls • trumpet flowers • honeysuckles smell sweeter in humid, still, 86-degree weather • no such thing as energy bars • butterflies • lightning bugs • plastic shoes with holes in them like Swiss cheese...

I am once more writing from West Virginia. There is something about road trips and the need to report on things to imaginary loved ones back home that always prompts me to post entries while I'm here. Also, of course, there is the separation from the more ordinary and efficient...