She handed to me a shoe box patterned in stamps from around the world, only the box wasn’t for shoes but was for photographs, and it wasn’t to hold memories of global travels but to house snapshots of the journeys in years of my family. I had placed it among similar boxes in a narrow closet among unused coffee table [...]
I owe you an apology. I haven’t seen you in two months with no attempt to say hello with even a scribble of a few sentences. We haven’t tangled in sorting mixed words or found clarity in excavating unclear meanings or built a solid structure from a wobbly one in a long time. It’s not that I haven’t thought about [...]
I’ve all but forgotten about my anniversary. This memory-maker was neither of a person nor of a place, but with a thing. When “three years ago on this day” popped up on social media, a promotional ad I had created for it, I was prompted to remember the soon-to-be anniversary. This time, it wasn’t about the big memory itself, the [...]
At first, I don’t notice it. But then a celery green tip catches my eye. It pokes through a pot of grey cracked dirt, nudging up against the pot’s rim, reaching for sunlight and air. What a surprise! I wonder how it has enough strength for fresh growth during a winter’s dry dormancy and dim light. I was hopeful for [...]
Last month I wrote about how the definition of memoir, characterized by a single incident during a part of one’s life (not an entire life), can hold writers back from writing their memoir. As a writer, maybe you can’t see one outstanding incident to create memoir; there are many experiences that happened to you. And maybe you can’t see a [...]
Are you a writer who is working on a memoir and sadly believes it’s not one because you feel it doesn’t meet the definition? “Memoir is supposed to be about one specific incident during one part of my life, and I’ve got a few of them over a couple of decades,” you say. Though you may not be able to [...]
I slide open the screen door and step into the cool of an early morning. Soon, the sun warms my back as the earth spins her body. With deliberate steps and a steady pace, I would leave the silence of the asphalt to meet shifting crushed gravel, my path bisecting a dense green landscape illuminated by foggy sunbeams piercing slivers [...]
Though it may sound counterintuitive, writers have been distracted during this pandemic. But how can we be now that we're no longer engaged in a multi-tasked life previously understood as “normal?” Self-isolation should give us nothing but time to write but we can't seem to get the job done. The absence of what filled my time, a void, became the [...]
I was writing my follow up to “now moments,” a previous post, when I found the writing meandering. The twists and turns reminded me of the “crooked street”, Lombard Street in San Francisco, where I lived in my thirties. I didn’t know why I was experiencing a lack of focus. Now that I have loads of time with no demands [...]
This morning I ripped the month’s page away from the year. March, defined by thirty-one small white boxes, was filled with ink, a few arrows, and many cross outs. The month was a busy one for me as scheduling dominated my weeks. From an electrician called to my home to replace a switch, but needed to reschedule for a day [...]