Imagination. The ability to picture what is not there. An alternative reality. A scenario that blossoms out of the brain, often eclipsing the reality all around. Just like Ron and Hermione and Harry have eclipsed the school-yard acquaintances of so many children. Or just like their school, Hogwarts, keeps eclipsing ordinary, “real” schools. And whatContinue reading “In the Mind’s Eye”
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Another Sighting
The old farmhouse is falling to ruin. A screen door dangling by a hinge. Slabs of plaster and lathe in the tub. Swallows swooping up the staircase, chittering from mud-baked igloos. Blue sky yawning from the bedroom ceiling. But down in the kitchen, next to the crater where the sink used to be, Elvis croonsContinue reading “Another Sighting”
In Praise of Wildflowers
Not tame, they grow out of bounds—outside the rules that humans would put on them. Beautiful but hardy, they are found in the most unexpected places. Suddenly blooming on the sandy hardpan of a desert floor, surrounded by thorns. Dotting the dusty tallgrass prairie. Or scrabbling along a rocky scree above timberline, where the snowContinue reading “In Praise of Wildflowers”
How I Lost that Loving Feeling
What I miss most when I return to Kenya is not the way things used to look or the way people used to act. What I miss is the firstness of experience and its accompanying intensity. I miss the very rawness of my nerves. Arriving at the boarding school where I lived, high on theContinue reading “How I Lost that Loving Feeling”
Cold Storage
As we shift into March and the promise of spring, here’s a late-winter story from my book Climbing Lessons. It’s about a rare experience of being alone, as a grade school child, with my father. It’s about going out into nature with him at night–and the darkness working its magic, making him unusually reminiscent, unusuallyContinue reading “Cold Storage”
Perspective
The earth is full of secrets—complete cities that have sunk into soil then been brought back to light by archeologists or unsuspecting construction workers. Whole marble sculptures and mosaics, gold coins, ornate swords, clay warriors, alabaster figurines, jeweled goblets, carved urns, and stray cannonballs. There is no end to the secrets either, because the earthContinue reading “Perspective”
The Climbing Lesson
My father always enjoyed moments of goofing around, and he didn’t mind when my brothers and I put him in the middle of our own goofing around. He never took himself too seriously. And that was a lesson in itself. Here is an audio version of the title story from my book Climbing Lessons. JustContinue reading “The Climbing Lesson”
Freeway Aesthetics, Winter, Iowa
After two days of blowing snow and added sleet, a white, white world of purest white stretches out on both sides of I-35, glistening. The sun, in the cloudless sky, is white too, as it slides down from the deep blue toward the pale blue, lighting up the sheathed tips of everything—the bushes in theContinue reading “Freeway Aesthetics, Winter, Iowa”
Jet Lag
When I step out of Terminal C of the Kansas City International Airport, I am swaddled in muggy heat. I feel as if I have stepped into an immense sauna. Part of me wants to strip right there. It’s almost July, and the weather is what one might expect. However, I am no longer inContinue reading “Jet Lag”
A Beautiful Crowd
At noon, we throw no shadows. At noon, we are what we are. Each one pinned to his or her own ground. Separate as hell. But look how we stretch over time. The sun lowers and we step away. What slender reaching figures we become, each turned into something new and mysterious and gracefully elongated. Continue reading “A Beautiful Crowd”
