To assert that our Woodstock house is in le pays profonde (French) or the inaka (Japanese) is but a slight exaggeration. Both foreign phrases translate as the ‘deep countryside’ and seem more apropos than their English equivalents. The house is almost exactly 100 miles (125 kilometers) north of New York City, about a two-hour drive […]
I could hear the screech owl this morning and followed the temptation to step outside into the dark to just be with the night a little. The Big Dipper was up there and I followed its tail to the North Star, reassuringly where I expected it to be. That was about half an hour ago. […]
Joy I hear Joy to the World I am a young girl in a Christmas pageant Miniature wise men follow A silver, glittery cardboard star Excited I sing all of the words Feeling God’s presence In this holy, candle lit sanctuary. I hear Joy to the World In my college dorm Following the days death […]
Today is my 38th birthday. It’s also 25 years since my Bat Mitzvah and 25 years since my dad passed away. Last year, around this time, I was uprooted and brought here, from a place where I was happy and had a decent job. I was taking step forward and starting to put money away. […]
UNSEEN/SEEN/UNSEEN Seen? Who even knew it was a thing, “being seen”? An introvert, I’ve always enjoyed not being seen at all while happily existing as a nobody, unrecognizable, unmemorable, my energy not even missed. I love lurking. That’s when I’m happiest, just observing. I can do that—be invisible even when I have shown them my […]
TODAY, I AM MAGGIE Just putting it out there from the get-go…this Maggie pseudonym, supposedly my mask, my chameleon costume, my muse, aka this lurking author, is wondering (in the intangible, the floating outside, observing, third person) if this arbitrarily chosen name will alter my (will the real other Maggie please stand up) honesty. Whew. […]
What would I write if I were to write something right now? It is afternoon and I might say that I am lonelier than I thought I would be. That I am thinking, more than I thought I would be, about other people who seem to be having more fun than I, knowing more people, […]
It is the ordinary that I miss, the unremarkable minutes. Close to the end, not knowing it was close to the end, riding home from the Mexican restaurant where we ate tortilla soup and scooped up gobs of perfect guacamole on tortilla chips and Googled Faye Dunaway to see if she were still alive—we’d just […]
We’re celebrating Christmas Eve by going to Nirvana. No, not the Buddhist Nirvana. The Indian one. The Nirvana Indian restaurant in Woodstock. We have a 7o’clock reservation and we’ll pop into the Candlestock candle store and buy a Christmas candle if they are still open when we get to town. That’ll be it it as […]
Reach out your hand to grasp the lovely peach, to pull it from its stem. It slips through your fingers like air. Try again. No sensation of touch to match the vision. Nothing is there. The peach is a mirage. Either nothing is there, or it is your own hand that is entirely insubstantial, less […]