Last night I dreamed of an old friend, a dear friend. Here is her Facebook photo – I was there the night it was taken, 30 years ago on an Adelaide stage . . . yes, she was in the habit of performing with her mandolin dressed like that. In my dream, my friend and [read more ...]
Every human being is born with a longing in their heart so great, that to honour it would cause a revolution. That longing, denied, at best results in disagreeable tension, sour distress; at worst leads to closed and bitter lives prone to telling others what to do, and reinforcing other bitter hearts; in short, either [read more ...]
One of the best books I have ever read, one of only two I have read more than once, is Sharon Penman’s historical novel about the submission of Wales to the English: Here Be Dragons. I loved this book so much, that when I finished it I lay in bed staring at the ceiling for [read more ...]
I am walking along the wide leafy green street of suburban Chicago when the sign outside a grey building catches my eye. I cannot remember its exact words, but it may as well have said ‘we will have the land once called Palestine, whatever it takes’. I feel ill, as if all the air has [read more ...]
Just before I left San Francisco I had lunch with three women I had not previously met. Two of us had been on a writers’ panel together at the library, one an author, the other the panel host; the third was a friend of the author. We were well into delicious salads and, in my [read more ...]
Apparently, the world has been caught in a media storm while I’ve been resting in the peace of Grand Canyon; pictures surfacing of a crowd of Taliban men cheering the execution of a young woman who may or may not have been involved with either or both of her executioners. Before we elevate our holy [read more ...]
There is a quality of post that circles the internet with regular glee, post that whips up disenfranchised sentiment like a curly meringue and relies on two things for its longevity: * disempowerment * human hunger for an enemy. Put simply, such posts peddle conspiracies and always always always result in division: them and us. [read more ...]
I am the lake. I am still water at dawn. I fill the earth with liquid cool for the approaching summer, I touch her sides and bottom. The water creatures move within me, skate over me. The tongue of the gentle deer dips into me, feather soft. The eagles soar above me, their eagle eyes [read more ...]
There are those in our midst who cannot speak with a voice most of the rest of us are willing to hear or understand. This column is dedicated to them. The old woman sits curled into herself on a bench, waiting for the same bus as everyone else. She is small, with a distant Chinese [read more ...]
There are those in our midst who cannot speak with a voice most of the rest of us are willing to hear or understand. This column is dedicated to them. I am the rising sap of the spring tide. I am rooted in your Earth, once mine. Planted in a special hole in your cement, [read more ...]