May, 5, 2025
I recently returned to my home in Boulder, CO, after two months in Honolulu, where my sister, Terry, has lived all her adult life. I’ve been spending two of the winter months there for decades, swimming with a mask so I could see the glorious tropical fish. But this was the first time that, returning to my home in Boulder, I could not remember where things were. Especially in the kitchen. I had to pull out every drawer to find the sharp knives. In the course of the past year, my memory has […]
Read MoreApril, 25, 2025
In the massive cleaning I’m doing of my office—the first in 10, maybe 20 years—I keep running across old pieces I’ve written and forgotten. Here’s one, from when I was 50. I don’t remember why I was wearing a back brace, but I remember the event, perfectly. As always, it relates to other parts of life besides the obvious—skiing. I AM STANDING at the top of an 18-meter ski jump, which is 60 feet from the point where you become airborne—about the height of a five-story building. I am wearing a back brace […]
Read MoreFebruary, 21, 2025
Hello from Honolulu, where I’ve been spending several months every winter for decades, largely because my sister, Terry, has lived in Honolulu all her adult life and has a substantial “ohana”—family—on the island. I have a studio in a tall building right on the sand, where I can set up my writing desk and walk outside to swim almost every day. Most of the women on the beach wear string bikinis that don’t cover much, but I wear a full black wetsuit, a cap, and gloves so I can swim without getting cold […]
Read MoreJanuary, 3, 2025
I was curious and wary of seeing the new movie about Bob Dylan, “A Complete Unknown.” Dylan is still alive and well, presumably, and I thought it would be near impossible for an actor to conjure up Dylan’s look, posture, and inimitable way of singing. At first, the actor, Timothy Chalamet, looks miscast and self-conscious as Dylan, but this works for him as he steadily begins to take on the facial expressions and posture of the peculiar, driven young man who arrives in New York city in 1961, age 19, determined to make […]
Read MoreNovember, 30, 2024
In the massive cleaning I’m doing of my office—the first in maybe 20 years—I keep running across pieces I’ve written and forgotten. I just found the first thing I wrote about Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, the beloved spiritual teacher I met when I moved to Boulder. Remembering the time we spent together always makes me smile. Enjoy. Midway through my sixties, I woke up in the middle of a June night and saw a comet streaking across a black sky. It was not a dream, neither was it real but an image I saw […]
Read MoreOctober, 9, 2024
When I found myself recently, for reasons I could not fathom, in a “damp, drizzly November in my soul,” instead of taking to the sea, as Ishmael did in Moby Dick, I went with the man I call “Rio” to Valley View Hot Springs, in the great, wide and empty San Luis Valley of Colorado. At Valley View, warm water bubbles out of the ground, creating natural pools for soaking and reflecting. I’ve been going there for years, and each time I arrive, there’s the first shock of seeing men and woman entirely […]
Read MoreSeptember, 11, 2024
I posted this in 2008, but it popped up as I was cleaning my office this week, and it made my mouth water. Hope you enjoy. Last weekend, Joan Borysenko and I re-created a dish that her mother and my grandmother used to make. In our memories, it tasted like heaven, but we hadn’t eaten it in more than 30 years and were filled with nostalgic longing. Her mother in Boston called it a “veal pocket,” and my mother in Los Angeles called it “stuffed breast of veal.” The recipe had been carried […]
Read MoreJuly, 31, 2024
This is part 2 of a recent trip to Italy. To read part 1 click HERE. I had my first real heartbreak in Firenze (Florence) in 1962, before many of you were born. I was on a student tour of Europe—from Scandinavia down to Italy—and our guide in Firenze was a charming and playful guy in his early thirties, Giancarlo Massetti. In Firenze, where he lived, he took me and other young women from the tour to the San Marco Bar, where he and his friends would hang out and park their motorcycles […]
Read MoreJuly, 25, 2024
My son was always out in front, walking quickly, often holding the hands of his two girls, five and seven, who were trotting along beside him. His wife, Fay, was a few steps behind as we made our way through five Italian cities. And I was 5 or 6 steps behind her, walking as fast as I could, tapping my way with hiking poles and watching the ground to make sure I wouldn’t trip on bumpy sidewalks. It was the happiest, most delightful trip I’ve had in a long time: three weeks in […]
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