When things are out of whack, it’s a good time to make a list of the everyday ordinary things that set you on the path to average again.I had a few of those days when I felt a little bit out of kilter. When I was driving from yoga on Saturday, I started making this…
Before you can stand up for truth you have know if you can stand it at all.Let’s talk about an unscientific study I have been conducting all of my life. It has to do with truth-telling, and how much people really can’t stand the truth. By some fault or miracle of genetics and nurturing, I…
I had 30 minutes in the car yesterday to think about what is waiting for us in the afterlife. It just so happens we were on the way to church. The kids traditionally read their books while we drive, but there was no “we” this weekend. Colin was out of town. So I had some…
There’s a reason why we every year we do that “resolution” thing at the new year. It has to do with hope. The turn of the new year is a false sense of new beginning. But it’s one we love to embrace. It’s proof of the enduring human spirit and our attachment to hope. Every…
In the course of driving to Ontario for Christmas, we encountered a lake effect snow squall. Neither Colin nor I are strangers to snowstorms of any size or might. We are both veteran snow drivers. However, this was our first encounter with a true, pop-up blizzard. Along Interstate 81, we were warned “Lake Effect Snow…
All the original everything has Rolled out the factory. The Whatsits and Whosees along with Their two point oh children Now retired to a retail museum. Wait awhile: won’t be long ’til The oily new marketing rep Sells the idea: it’s time to reinvent you. Latin is dead. Long live the King Of Romance, the…
Got to hit the road and try to find My kind of America. It’s out there Somewhere: not too crowded, A farmer’s market weekly At the time of day convenient for Both the workers and the farmers. People reading books. Bike lanes and Sidewalks and garden boxes Where brown and white Mix happily as a…
Hold this kitten, would you, While I trick you into Reading poetry. Whoops! Now you’ve done it, Got yerself all intellectified With words in stacks. Poetry, you decry! Save me! Not those tangled up knotted Ideas in shapely stanzas! Look out! She scratches. Still Got her claws. They frown on Hacking off cat digits these days. Ahhh,…
Here is the look of the Midwest in a summer storm. To me, this landscape is not only the most familiar, it is the most comforting. How can a sky look so forbidding — so menacing and beautiful — but we are not allowed to do so? I was 14 and in my first year…
We’ve got two lives: one we’re given and the other one we make, And the world won’t stop, and actions speak louder Listen to your heart, and your heart might say Everything we got, we got the hard way. –“The Hard Way” Mary Chapin Carpenter Chapin’s song “The Hard Way” was released on the album “Come…
What Writing Looks LikeThere’s a romance to the idea of writing. When you tell someone you are a writer, they are often all like “ooohhh whoa soooo cool!” Why is that? Well it’s pretty much because READING is awesome. It’s hellaciously awesome, the single best thing in the wide world to do with any amount…
Life is wild. Though… It is sometimes hard to see it. Especially since life can masquerade as being quite mundane. Get up. Go to work. Go to bed. Go to work again. Make food. Eat food. Wash dishes. Make food again. Laundry. Laundry. Laundry. Even the most thrilling parts of life – like taking a…
I can remember one of the first really scary movies I saw.
It was “The Giant Spider Invasion.” That classic 2-star fave came out in 1975. Which means someone in my family let me see that film when I was FIVE! If I recall, it was at the drive-in.
For years and years afterward, I literally RACED up the steps of our split foyer home, anytime I was caught alone on the lower level. Just beyond the doorway, I was sure a giant spider was lurking, ready to pounce.
I love the big, unreasonable scares of Halloween. I love that feeling underneath my heart, the pit of doom in my stomach. I love the ghoulish decor and horrifying costumes. I love “Modern Family”‘s special, and all the other Halloween themed fun.
I take a pass on new fangled “safe” fun, like Trunk or Treat, or going for a spin with the kids in their costumes around the mall. The street where you live may be scary place: the mall is 100 times scarier.
I’m intrigued by those who have a distaste for Halloween terror and frights. Whatever its roots — whether in pagan history or Christian hallows — life itself is terrifying. It’s filled with war, cancer, ebola, racism, rape and major league worship of criminals. There’s bullying, mean girls, political machinations and just plain natural catastrophe. Some days, a zombie apocalypse seems like it would be an anti-climax.
I guess that’s why I love Halloween… it’s the day the dead, the weary, the twisted, the frightened, the entombed, the maniacal — finally getting a chance to feel free.
Here’s a few of my favorite Halloween videos. Enjoy:
Andy, going through the Haunted House:
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From Shaun of the Dead, greatest zombie film ever.
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After the doctor broke the news to my mom and dad and me that mom would die soon, I held onto the 15 cent spiral notebook like it was a life raft. There isn’t enough time to ask and get answers to the really big questions in life before life says “I’m outta here.” It…
The deluge came out in the general direction of Ridgefield artist Randi Jane Davis this past weekend at City-Wide Open Studios. Her painting (above), called “Three Blind Men” (in private collection) wasn’t the only wonderful piece of work I’d seen that day. But it was the one that reignited my feelings about aloneness. So Ms. Davis…
