one I lived in a gleaming sterile 42-story complex in midtown Manhattan. It was one of the biggest buildings I’ve ever been in, but it still sat in the shadow of the Empire State Building just behind. New York has a way of offering a ready reminder that you can always have more. I never […]
Somewhere between the meetings and the writing and the car rides, I learn something that surprises me– I don’t actually want to shave my head. I want to want to do it, but I don’t actually want to. I know that if I do it, it won’t be free– it will take some sort of […]
I leave the solitude of my cabin and spend some time in Nashville for New Years Eve. I’m not quite sure how to properly honor the occasion but I do know that I want to see more of what this city has to offer. I’m self-conscious with my haircut and half-wishing I had already shaved my […]
I drive around a lot, partly to get groceries, partly to explore Nashville, and most especially to resume my “reading” of Eat Pray Love in the car. I left the windows down when I arrived in the dark that first night and the rain that so soothed me on my marathon nap also happened to […]
I sleep for 15 hours. Well, I wake up a few times along the way. But there was no phone or clock to check and my head was impossibly heavy on the pillow. Nothing to do, really. Why not let it happen? Just sleep. Finally I get up at 3:00 pm still tired. I am […]
I came to Nashville for the same reason that I’ve done a lot of things in the past 11 years– to get away, to make a clean break, to start over. This is one of the less dramatic iterations, seeing as I don’t want to fully wipe the Etch-a-sketch clear and start over altogether, I […]
When I was married, I figured out the perfect plan to make the relationship work: if my husband and I both had strong feelings about a topic, we would compromise. But if one person didn’t care and the other had an opinion, then that person would get what they wanted. It wasn’t complicated or clever, […]
All across America today, as families and friends gather over heaping plates of food, they are arguing or disagreeing or pushing down their feelings about the offensive things being said across the table. Everyone seems to have a grandma or an uncle or a brother-in-law who thinks outrageous things and finds in a holiday meal an […]
I wrote this song for my mother, Cheryl, to celebrate her 60th birthday. (Audio) Down in the neighborhood when she as young Cheryl was a friendly one who always got along hop the fence right after school oh what a lot of fun- to be jumpin rope and hopin scotch and skip n play n run? […]
If you saw God– if it revealed itself to you thru some miracle or burst of light some inner flame, or burning bush, some apparition or death revoked– you would carry it in you always. You would know.
OberDoIt 