• Left of East- An Introduction

    In the summer of 2013, I embarked on a solo backpacking adventure across Northern Michigan. With no one to talk to along the way, my journal became a powerful and necessary companion. I wrote journal nearly every day, sometimes many times a day, to capture the events and insights of my time on the trail […]

  • One Cry Fix All

    My submission to The Moth Detroit StorySLAM topic: “Blood Sweat and Tears” When you go through a difficult time in your life, your body naturally deals with it by going into shock. This is a beautiful response because it allows you to go on with your life and get through every day when you’re not […]

  • A Real New Yorker

    They say you’re not a real New Yorker until you’ve cried in public.

  • CH@NGE

    The mathematical symbol for change is a neat little triangle Δ. I can remember drawing it on my notebook with a pencil. The teacher told us what it meant, and we took her work for it, but I wondered why, if we were describing change, did my pencil end up back where it started. There has […]

  • Light on Blight

    I grew up in a sweet, serene, safe community: a bastion of purity in small-town Michigan. We had no world-class issues. The police blotter in the local paper was comedically innocent: “raccoon topples garbage can,” “local man double-parks van.” But not too far away, trouble loomed large. Detroit, with its towering tombs was a shame to […]

  • On Solitude

    People, like deer and celebrities, tend to cluster amongst themselves. Anytime you should encounter a sitcom star, be still! Lower your gaze. Chances are good that his Emmy-winning girlfriend and the whole supporting cast will come trundling after.

Trying to Let it Out

Posted on by

When I got married at the very young age of 21, I meant every word in my vows. When we celebrated our 5th anniversary, I thought we might someday celebrate our 50th. Divorce was not a milestone either of us ever expected to reach. So when I moved out of the apartment my husband and I shared, it was confusing and traumatic and deeply painful for both of us. Only weeks later, I was in a serious car accident. Heading to a New Year’s Eve party along the oceanfront Pacific Coast Highway in LA, the car I was in slammed into the side of another car making a poorly-timed left turn across our lane. We were incredibly lucky: everyone was wearing their seat-belt, no one was intoxicated, no one was driving above the speed limit, and no one was seriously injured. Except me. Continue reading →

Pants (The First Installment)

Posted on by

For one week in August I took an energy efficiency class up in the Bronx. I headed “up North,” riding my bike the 10 or so miles from midtown Manhattan through Times Square, alongside Central Park and on into that Other Borough.  On my back I carried a pack with a notepad and pen, a sack luck, a water bottle and a change of clothes.

I’ve often thought that if I could play God or Mayor for a day, my first task would be to demolish the highways. As in the city of Detroit, neighborhoods in the Bronx have been bi-sected pureed and splayed out by highways. Back in the 70’s people paved over neighborhoods and truncated others with the myopic hubris that justified those roads as quite literally a means to an end (the end being Manhattan in the case of the Bronx, the end being The Suburbs in the case of Detroit).

With highways come overpasses, and that commute was the first time I had occasion to cross over a pedestrian overpass in New York. In the sweltering heat of that baking city in late summer, I carefully navigated around what appeared to be human feces* and entered into that beleaguered borough. Continue reading →

Bike for Your Rights

Posted on by
-or-

“Don’t Let Special Interest Groups Tell You Not To Let Bureaucrats Tell You What Size Beverage to Buy”

Dont-let-bureaucrats-tell-you-what-size-beverage-to-buy

Times were tough in New York following Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s highly-contested anti-soda campaign, which waged war on the sugared-beverage rights of peace-loving not-quite caffeinated-enough New Yorkers. For the uninitiated, I’ll inform you that the mayor’s idea was to ban soda cups over a certain size to make a small splash in the fight against obesity.

Continue reading →

Doc’d Up

Posted on by

greencardIn the waiting area of clinic 4E at the Detroit Medical Center, women in various stages of pregnancy and early motherhood are leaning against walls, sitting on plastic “kiddy” chairs, and pacing around the rows of empty chairs around them. They are waiting for their name to be called, and they will wait for hours. They’d like to sit in the chairs, but will not, for fear of bed bugs.

There are a number of unavoidable symptoms of pregnancy: swollen feet, morning sickness, drowsiness, sure. But parasitic insects? They have no part on that list.

Continue reading →

Ritual

Posted on by

fly bike2-500

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Every time I ride, I fly.
Arms extended, hail the sky

I lift my heart and pedal through.
I am a sail, but anchor too.

I make my peace here on the road,
Too free to fear, to far to fold.

Economies of the Heart

Posted on by

couchWhen I moved to Detroit I had no job, no place to live, and almost no friends in my new city. But I did have a plan. My blank slate gave me the freedom to carefully curate every component of my life just the way I wanted it. This meant not accepting the first job offer that came my way, not signing a lease with the first apartment I thought I liked, not befriending the first people who invited me out for a drink, and not going out with to the first guy who asked for my number. It was the longer and lonelier route but I had just been through the hardest year of my life and I knew I was up for the challenge. Continue reading →

I do. I did. I doubt.

Posted on by

2109_729552613573_5876_n

There are a lot of things to hate about divorce: hurt feelings, divided families, changed names, lost possessions, strained friendships, financial questions and legal complications- the list goes on. Things as minor as an iTunes account may be affected by the change in your relationship status. The worst thing about divorce, though, is that it introduces Doubt into every corner of your life. This needling presence of uncertainty is the greatest curse of the whole experience; it lingers long after the papers are signed. Continue reading →

Summit Story: Mt. Kilimanjaro

Posted on by

gorgeousness

At 10:30pm on the night of March 7th 2014, it was time to wake up. I crawled out of my sleeping bag and, in the light of my headlamp, put on almost every piece of clothing I had packed. This was the night that I would hike from the base camp to the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro. I was leaving with the “early group” in solidarity with some of the slower hikers and to embrace what was going to be an extremely long climb at any speed. The darkness was intimidating, and I took in what little light I could see as I waited for the others to get ready. Looking down at camp, there was a soft glow from tents lit up like nightlights by the headlamps of other cold hikers within. The camp spilled out into a great valley that contains the city of Moshi over 12,000 feet of elevation and four climate zones away. The sky was clear and the crescent moon small enough that the stars shone brightly. I looked in awe at the Milky Way extending boldly into the horizon, the Big Dipper strangely upside-down, and while searching for the Southern Cross, I saw a shooting star. Then it was time to go.

Continue reading →

Unreasonable

Posted on by

mystery us sepia small

I know what it is to be reasonable.
to consider the odds, weigh the facts.
And the idea that somewhere on this earth,
there is one person just for me,
is beyond anything I have ever believed.

But one day I dream I’ll find someone
who fills me so much, fits me so right,
that I become irrational enough to believe
(if only for a moment)
that it could only ever be us.

Expect the Best, Accept the Worst

Posted on by

rainbow

When I moved to South Africa, as a small-town girl from Michigan, I was intimidated. I saw myself as an easy victim in a dangerous country. I told myself that I would probably get mugged at some point. Accepting that possibility didn’t make it more or less likely, but it limited the potential of that event to traumatize me if it did happen. I had only marginal control on whether or not I was attacked, but I did have control over my attitude about it.

I had many fearful moments driving alone on a remote road, pumping gas in a tough neighborhood or walking with friends from a bar at night. I often thought “if it’s going to happen, this is it” but I went without incident for months.
Continue reading →