I could not believe that something as tangible as carpentry could require that you deal with abstractions like five sixteenths or nine thirty-seconds. Read More

After college, when I wasn’t yet ready to start doing something serious with my BA in English (that is, teach, the only option I knew of besides being a secretary), I did a few miscellaneous short-term jobs to get some experience of the working life. Two of them stand out in my memory, both of them terrible… Read More

In therapy, I talked until I was sick of talking. In meditation I was to be silent and listen. Read More

Little by little, I’m thinning out my collection of books. Only books I have loved and respected can stay. It doesn’t matter if they’re ones I plan to read again. I might not. But I want to be able, when I walk past and see their titles, to feel at least the ghost of a… Read More

In 1967, I was one year out of college and living in Berkeley. The new wild world was all around me–long hair on everyone, patchouli scent emanating from every doorway, student protests and sidewalk jewelry shops on Telegraph Avenue, and always in the background (sometimes the foreground), rock ‘n roll, sex, and drugs. I was thrilled… Read More

When I was in junior high, the hairstyle to aim for was straight, shiny (see Breck ads), and rolled up  at the ends. My friend Linda always had perfect hair, a shoulder-length sheet ending in a neat hair-tube curving around the back of her neck. I had no success at this. Curlers would fall out in… Read More

There were three possible lunches on school days: regular lunchbox lunch; rainy day lunch; and lunch at home. On regular days, I opened my metal lunchbox (blue lid and bottom, silver-gray between) to find a sandwich neatly wrapped in waxed paper, made with stiff, dense, brown whole wheat bread. It might be peanut butter, or… Read More