In my recliner, absorbed in an essay by one of my friends in the most recent issue of the Gettysburg Review, I felt a jolt of pain. Maybe I brushed my hand or the literary magazine across my ribcage. It felt like a bruise. I pushed on the area. How…
I was getting jostled in my whitewater solo canoe in the swirly eddy next to gate 11 of the slalom course when it occured to me, This is my problem in my life: staring at an obstacle I know I can negotiate, but don’t trust myself to make the move.…
“How could you have race stomach when we don’t even know yet if we’re going to race?” W asks me, looking at my uneaten oatmeal. We’re headed up to the Hudson River Whitewater Derby with a tandem canoe on top of the truck, not sure what the river will look…
W has picked a route home from the whitewater slalom race in Maine on mostly back roads. After we exit the first stretch of interstate he says I should tell him when I’m ready to drive. It occurs to me that I can have a non-stressful ride just taking in…
It feels like I am clinging to shore above a massive waterfall. My heart pounds against my life jacket, the paddle slips in my clammy hands, and my limbs have turned into silicone replicas which don’t make any promises to follow my brain’s commands. W in his bright orange canoe…
“And sleep, that sometimes shuts up sorrow’s eye, Steal me awhile from mine own company.” –Helena in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. At the risk of posting yet again about my dog (W: You’re not going to make it into a dog blog, are you? Me: Of course not. I’m…
My ex-boyfriend used to say, “Speed is your friend.” He was usually talking about mountain biking and he meant, let go of your @&%#ing brakes. I don’t mountain bike anymore, but I can see how this advice is true in many sports. On skis, for instance, if you’re trying too…
Some people seek shopping as therapy. I need therapy after shopping.
Some days the empty page is downright hostile. Document1 snarls, you don’t really want to write that, do you? Shrinking under its judgment, I look away from the screen. Cleo is curled on her dog bed next to my desk, her squeaky egg under her chin, half asleep with her…
I wonder what would happen if a squirrel 30 feet up a tree suddenly looked back and thought, Shit that’s a long way down. I’m hanging here by my toenails. Or, midleap between tall branches understands, I’m defying gravity. He looks at his landing zone and realizes, That little twig?…
