My blog is about simple observations and ponderings, often about nature as a prod to seeing.

It’s about writing. It’s quiet with the occasional rant.

​

I write narrative nonfiction and experiment with essay — lyric, personal, meditative, and the ever flexible collage. I am particularly interested in the far, raw edges at which fiction, nonfiction, and poetry meet to explore new forms, and in what happens in the spaces between. Tossing in some science — my second love after writing — is difficult to resist.

​

Writing is hard work, and I’m slow to say, “This piece is finished.” I am more likely to say, “This piece is now being abandoned.” And contrary to most writers who insist that real writers write every day, I write when I have something to say. I spend a lot of time looking out windows and walking in the woods, and on beaches when I can get to one.

​

The blog is for the occasional floating of first impressions — seeds and sprouts; the gift of the idea — or for something that’s not yet a story. I’m not obsessive about it. A new post is a wedge of insight to hold open a new space before the research and the rough writing begin. And it’s usually something I know very little about. Some of the results are trashed; some make it into drafts and are revised again and again; a few make it all the way to literary journals. Extraordinary transformations take place in the process. The gift of the idea is ours to interpret, but not to change. Publishing is a bonus, not necessarily an aim.

​

Currently, I'm working on a manuscript about the black woman who worked for my family when I was a child. Separate essays about the verticality of trees, a broken chambered nautilus, and trees are about to be jammed together to see what themes emerge ....