Magnificent Octopus

Not quite 3 weeks into kindergarten, and I hear what's sure to become a familiar drone for years to come. "I'm tired. I don...

Or maybe that even the mere possibility of expressing any of this childish heartbreak to someone else seemed impossible except in the contex...

"I spy, with my little eye, something that starts with the letter A," Helena challenges me while we lunch. None of the usual possi...

[O]ne lacks the innocence to be with Nature; her influence, her quiet insistent presence, is outweighed from the start by one's awarenes...

I'd been in an unreasonably good mood as the week started, but very suddenly it turned. 1. I think I may have killed Slimey . Too much ...

Friday night 1. Suggested the kid have ice cream for supper. It was hot. (She opted for something more sensible. Popsicles for dessert thoug...

There's something joyous about Adverbs , by Daniel Handler. It's not the what; it's the how. It's executed playfully and bra...

Wired pulls back the curtain on creating a feature (and on Charlie Kaufman, it so happens), blogging the entire process: Storyboard . The fe...

And he traveled, from one side to the other of dreams, just like an earthworm, dragging his desperation, devouring it. — from " The Wor...

I started writing this post about a year ago. Mostly, it was about Helena coming into her own as a person, being her own little girl, and ab...

Her mother was a shopkeeper who had an open-air stall selling Catalan notions and textiles in the market plaza. The market plaza: a great qu...

One More Year , by Sana Krasikov, is a collection of 8 short stories covering the contemporary immigrant experience of Eastern Europeans. (B...

If anyone cares and doesn't already know, Paul Auster has a new book out: Man in the Dark . I care a little bit, but the truth is, I...

I've spent a lot of time this summer looking up, with my head in the clouds some might say. We play the cloud game on long drives. Mostl...

Who in hell is Théophile Gautier ? "Posterity will judge Gautier to be one of the masters of writing, not only in France but also in Eu...

I have mixed feelings about it. Truthfully, I hated the idea at first. But this battle I lost early on, and I never found ground to retake. ...

In the introduction to my collection of Anne Hébert's later novels , Mavis Gallant writes: The French author Marguerie Yourcenar believe...

She tells me, "You have to try to see it through the eyes of a child." I argue that the child already sees everything through the ...

I've been antsy this week, for numerous reasons, and having trouble settling on something to read. I've been reading Rilke this summ...

"Can we go down to the ocean, Mommy?" What, right now? Is she not enjoying our cottage weekend? Does she mean on a subsequent vaca...