The nuclear family is a construct that both renders affairs of the family unit private and makes labor forces more “flexible.” Economists say frictionless.

I didn’t know how a child was supposed to grieve, and no one told me.

From Barcelona through Chris’s community in Vidalia and over the Pyrenees to Villerouge-la-Cremade, and back again. Cathar castles and Montserrat and the Med.

Even more beautiful: from San Francisco to Redding and up and over the Cascade Range and along the Rogue River Valley to Reed College in Portland. The State of Jefferson, the high desert where my wild horse Lenny was born.

I’m more interested in solidarity, even if I don’t quite yet know myself what I mean by it, just the feeling I get from it—the startling, quenching relief of it; the force of its surprise, like being loved.

who’d have thought that explosion of joy would end five years later in the most absurd butchery . . .

At my high school there was a sign that said: “The world belongs to those who read.” That’s a lie, I thought, a lie, a lie, a lie.

she copies down sentences that tell one how to live, which have the undeniable weight of truth because they come from books

They say willingness is what one needs to succeed. They say one needs to succeed.

Human beings were trying to behave as human beings and not as cogs in the capitalist machine.

The poem can start with him walking backwards into a room. He takes off his jacket and sits down for the rest of his life, that’s how we bring Dad back.

I care for Henrietta Lacks and all the names whispered in my ear by the live oak trees. I don’t care about the father of modern gynecology, honored on South Carolina’s golf course capitol.

Because this mess I made I made with love. Because they came into my life, these ghosts, like something poured. Because crying, believe it or not, did wonders.

I have been blogging for twenty years. How about that.

I wished to trust, and so I trusted. When events did not please me, my dreams reworked them.

I wanted to know how to inhabit time in a way that wasn’t a character flaw.

E, for empire—a thing to impale, kill, break
Breach.

I crave a ferry to San Francisco and a dead phone full of messages.

I could not lay down the grief I carried, but I could name it for what it was, and by naming it ease the burden…

Me: Well, that was an intellectually productive bath.

Jeremy: Oh yes?

Me: I figured out existentialism.

Jo: Well done!

Me: You know how I was puzzling over Camus’ “one must imagine Sisyphus happy”? It’s not a thought experiment, it’s an imperative.

Jeremy: Right.

Me: Oh so you knew this all along?

Jeremy: Yep.

Jo: It means that Sisyphus has a simple job to do and knows how to do it and even though it will never be finished, that’s all you need to be happy.

Jeremy: No, it means you have to give people agency, even if what they are doing seems pointless to you.

Me: No! It means life is pointlessly hard work that will never be finished, but you have to invent ways to be happy anyway.

In this family we interpret Camus in ways that reflect our highly individual temperaments and perspectives TILL DEATH COMES FOR US

…the blueprint for building a worthwhile, authentic life already exists within you.