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I truly didn’t feel like writing today, not after talking last night with a friend who lives in Minneapolis and seeing online everything that was going on in her city, a few short miles from her idyllic home on a quiet side street.
I really didn’t feel like writing fiction. I figured that if I wrote anything, it would be a blog post or essay or journal entry about the dumpster fire that is our current reality.
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I’d be lying if I said staying at home for the past two months has been a hardship for me. I love being at home. It’s peaceful most of the time, except when something malfunctions or the outside world intrudes. When everything’s working properly and nobody bothers me, it’s heavenly. Continue reading
We’ve all read by now that Shakespeare wrote King Lear during the plague. The takeaway seems to be that public health emergencies are conducive to great (albeit really, really depressing) art. Continue reading
Last week, I signed up for a remote silent reading party hosted by the Stranger, a Seattle-based publication. I’d never heard of such a thing, but apparently this goes on all the time in Seattle: people gather at a local hotel, and they read silently together while a pianist provides background music. Continue reading
Everybody has their own version of comfort food. Sometimes it’s something you make because it’s what your mother made. Other times, you buy it from a favorite store or restaurant. Occasionally, the best comfort food comes about sheerly by accident, something you make up from random ingredients that are hanging around in your refrigerator and freezer.
Potsticker Soup is one of those recipes. Continue reading
Long ago, there was a beautiful movie entitled Mask. It is a biographical drama about Rocky Dennis, a boy with lionitis, and his free-spirited mother. In the final scene, we hear a voiceover of actor Rocky reciting a poem written by the real-life Rocky: Continue reading
To say this is an odd time is an understatement. Better adjectives might be strange, bizarre, or surreal.
Exhibit A: Olivia is sitting on my desk. The last time she sat here voluntarily was at least a decade ago. Granted, I lifted her up since she can no longer make the leap, but she’s stayed. Continue reading
I’ve been working out of my home since 1997. Last year, I applied for a job that would have required me to work in a regular office. You know, the kind where you dress like a professional, show up at a particular time, and deal with co-workers.
This was not a selling point. Continue reading
Yes, friends, it’s true: I shall reach the exalted age of sixty soon. Very soon. Very.
Recently, I watched an episode of “Sex and the City” in which Charlotte announced that she was not going to turn 36 on her birthday because “I’m just not where I thought I’d be at 36, so I’m sticking at 35.” Granted, she was in a tough spot: her marriage had crumbled under the stress of infertility, and her efforts to resume the career she’d paused for babymaking had proven fruitless. Still, it set me to wondering: am I where I thought I’d be at 60? Continue reading
(Magnet on the whiteboard over my desk)
* * *
There are at least a dozen things I need to do today, but I’m writing this blog post instead.
Why?
Because I feel like it. Continue reading
P. Jo Anne Burgh 