I spent most of last weekend in a kitchen heavenly fragrant with dried fruits, cinnamon, vanilla, ginger, nutmeg, brandy and red wine. That magnificent aroma of the holiday season wafting richly from mulled wine, glistening fruitcakes, sugar cookies and spicy gingerbread. I also brought out my largest pot to make a large batch of treats…Read more Bittersweet
Inspiration
Thankful
Part of me will always be suspended in disbelief. Dangling where there is no ground, no up or down, nothing more substantial than a mysterious ether. But I am not afraid. I am grateful. I know there are plenty of reasons to be worried, sorrowful, pessimistic. Plenty of tragedy, injustice and hate embedded, looming and…Read more Thankful
A Gentle Autumn
This autumn in northern Europe is unseasonably gentle and warm. The turning of the leaves from deep green to all the colors of flame and sunset, the baring of elegant dark, sloping branches, the abundant soft coverings on the ground, the scents of damp earth, fallen apples and acorns, crumbling organic growth. All these magnificent…Read more A Gentle Autumn
On Writing
I write to a world that has no use for me. To a world done with reading. To a world already impatient, cutting me off in mid-sentence to get to the fucking point already. To a world that is fickle and moody, that does not “get” me. To a world that regards my artistic inventions…Read more On Writing
The Edge of Summer
Summer is moving steadily and surely towards autumn. We are right on the edge of it. The deep lush green of an unusually long, hot growing season is giving way to the blazing colors of countless sunsets. First it comes in fitful bursts: swathes of yellow, lashings of red, streaks of pink. Growing bolder and…Read more The Edge of Summer
On Art
As much as I love words and communicating, I have to admit, there’s more to life. Why can’t things just be? Why can’t you just do something because it’s fun or it just feels good? You don’t have to explain anything to anyone if it doesn’t concern them. In the popular wisdom of the day:…Read more On Art
Half Lives
It is early morning. The world is dark blue and cold. A thin pale line traces a horizon that wasn’t there a moment before, when the darkness made no distinction of earth and sky. The sky lightens faster, from dove grey to the silver of vacant mirrors. Rose-tinted edges rise up and spread out into…Read more Half Lives
Portrait of the Artist
What are you afraid of? That they’ll see right through you? See through your farce? Your vain bid for importance? That no amount of effort will surmount the appraisal of your surface? Or insubstantialize your many failures and shortcomings? (In fact, make them all the more obvious.) That you will be deserving of neither attention…Read more Portrait of the Artist
Lasting Summer
My earliest memories make no logical sense, one moment I’m standing in a field of sugarcane, the next moment I’m with a flock of ladies in a churchyard, in another moment I‘m running up the front steps of home. The green cane stalks loom above me in my toddler height, bowing in the wind as…Read more Lasting Summer
The Air People
We hopped and bobbed around the room. Huge, overinflated balloons. Us. Not the room. We had turned into enormous pillows of air. Air people. We all looked the same. We were of the same puffy, peach-colored vinyl—the same soft material used for sumo wrestler costumes, baby swimming pools, air mattresses and inflatable rafts. We were…Read more The Air People
