BY A PATH IN SONOMA’S rustic Mountain Cemetery stands an oak tree bearing the creative goodwill of self-selected and diligent passersby. It began a few years ago, with three small figurines — a white winged angel, a faceless blue woman…
Category: Living
Each moment is different. Here are some of mine.
Life’s Little Soundtrack
ONE OF MY FAVORITE “MIX-TAPE” CDs is titled “The True and The Brave – ANTHEMS.” It’s comprised, near as I could make it so, of songs meant to make one stand up and feel counted. I like to play it…
My Chanukah With Ramana
THE TECHNIQUE IS SIMPLE: JUST lay on your back, breathing, and take a complete and negative bodily inventory: “I am not my legs; I am not my feet; I am not my arms;” “I am not my mind;” et al.…
5 Thoughts: Long-Term Partnerships
1. TO QUOTE A CHARACTER FROM the most excellent film A Mighty Wind: “It’s almost as like we have one brain that we share between us.” The simultaneous realizations, the one-word sentences, the shared expressions … It can all be…
Our Own Little “Zone”
IF YOU WERE CONSIDERED A teenage weirdo in the late 1970s/early 1980s in Northern California’s suburban Diablo Valley, you could always find a place on Friday nights at an independent cinema-house in Walnut Creek, gathering with others of your tribe…
Necessary Speech
ALTHOUGH YOU MAY BE OTHERWISE tempted, the following conversational gambits make for dodgy texts and/or tweets: “We need to talk.” “You’re fired.” “Excuse me, sir or madam. Is your name…?” “It’s over.” “You don’t need to come in for the…
The #popscope Phenomenon
AFTER I BOUGHT MY OWN telescope (an Orion StarMax 90mm Maksutov-Cassegrain with equatorial mount), I would take it out in the early evenings on the sidewalk in front of our building with a sign leaning against the tripod that read,…
5 Thoughts: The ORIGINAL Matrix
1. WHILE I DON’T BEGRUDGE THE siblings Wachowski their success, and I don’t really believe they stole my idea, as the first populizer of something called “The Matrix” I feel I must firmly and finally speak my piece. 2. Make…
The Knot’s Tale
THERE I WAS, TYING AN intricate bit of decorative knotwork in the Golden Hinde II‘s hold, and feeling more than a little proud of myself. I was then just a beginner at that sort of thing, and the glow of…
Why I Love: Travel
IT’S THE NOVELTY. IT”S TRYING to see new places through the eyes of their long-time residents. It’s the road-trip soundtrack, whether CDs, tapes or new-to-me radio stations. If flying, it’s seeing the landscape from a different perspective; it’s the tiny…
Aside
Dear Ms. Garchik,
I just overheard the following remark while sitting in my backyard adjacent to Broadway, Sonoma’s main drag: Quoth woman to dog-walking man, “I hope in my next life I can be owned by you.”
I hope in this life you can use this quote for your daily column.
Be well,
Neal
UPDATE: Ms. G. replied, “I am going to save that one for annual romantic Valentine’s Day column!” Be on the lookout.
These Days, They Call It “Cosplay”
HAVE YOU EVER HAD AN alter-ego? I have had several — depending on whether I was attending the Renaissance Pleasure Faire as ship’s pilot Will Thrustwell; Dickens Christmas Fair as London Illustrated News correspondent Peter Boggs; meetings of the Neo-Pagan…