Wearing My Soul On My Face

Who likes to have their picture taken? Movie stars? Celebrities? Egotists? I can think of only a handful who enjoy being captured by an objective eye in a permanent way. Many of us are shy around a camera, smiling too broadly or not enough, opening our eyes as if we’ve been poked, or squinting as…

Read More

Spark A Challenge

This past October, I received some news that I was reluctant to write about here. The novel I had been working on, and believed I’d finished, was judged by my literary agent to need more work before she took the book out to market. Why did I choose not to share this disappointment–one that was…

Read More

Get Naked With Yourself

A singular idea occurred to me last week, coming hard on the heels of the Jewish holiday of repentance and new resolutions: what would happen if I made a list of all I’d like to change in my life during the coming year? Many of us create resolutions for the start of a fresh year–whether…

Read More

Stripping Down

It’s October 11th and Yom Kippur is almost here. I’m writing this just about one week before you will be reading it. I’m at my kitchen table, typing, thinking, wondering–maybe making a little prayer. It’s three o’clock, and in a few hours, at sundown, millions of Jewish men, women and children all around the world will…

Read More

Our World At War

Our world has erupted into the sort of violence whose nature is remembered well by those of older generations, but unprecedented in the lives of the younger. Yet, all of us must certainly feel that we are at war, “declared” by Congress, or not. Whether you are horrified by the terrorism in Nice, the coup…

Read More

Riding Over The Potholes

Last week in our backyard, Mac inhaled a foxtail and we spent a rocky day at the vet. For those of you who don’t know what a foxtail looks like, it is the very spiky tip of a weed–one that will work its way upward inside its host if sniffed or stepped on or should…

Read More

Satisfaction and Bliss

This week I am rejoicing! I have finally completed the first start-to-finish draft of my novel. Daydreams In The Dark has a beginning, a middle and an end–the bones of plot, character and theme are in place, the skin of the story drawn tight. Only the meaty details need to be shaped and added. The pages are…

Read More

Guilty Pleasures

So, it’s Thursday at 5:00 in the morning and I’m speeding along at eighty miles an hour, in the pitch black, to a burg called Vallejo, which is about an hour and a half from my house. I’m keeping watch in my rear view mirror for “CHIPies,” (California Highway Patrol), who will pull me over…

Read More

A Dog Is A Dog Is A Dog

A second chance is one of the most miraculous and elusive gifts we can give. But why is it so hard to forgive–not only the ways in which we let others down, but also the ways in which we disappoint ourselves? Over the past two years, there has been an aspect of my life in…

Read More

Don’t Mess With Mr. In-Between

It’s Sunday afternoon, and my dogs lie beside me on the couch, chewing on fresh bones, while my husband watches the 49’ers game. Because the weather is somewhat rainy (cause for celebration here in California) and because the 49’ers are winning (another miracle at which to marvel), I am happy just to hang out, even…

Read More