It started as a simple question, “Do you like salmon?” My friend Steve texted before my trip up to Ashland, Oregon. I’d be staying with Steve and his wife Kate, who were hosting a half-day Wild Writing workshop for their friends, and in honor of Steve’s 70th birthday....

Instead of trying to make sense of everything, I want to say… That there’s a fine yellow filament falling from the trees in my yard. I’ve been on this property for 27 years and it only started happening a few years ago. The trees are telling us something. And when...

Today’s sermon is a friend writing from her Parisian vacation that she’s come down with Covid. It’s the fourth date I didn’t have with the former rock star on account of all his coughing. It’s my sneeze that might be something, but doesn’t go anywhere, and packing a...

Start with the mismatched boots you discovered you were wearing last week as you boarded your flight to Mexico. You’d be teaching for five days, and here you were in the Oakland Airport looking down at one brown boot, and one black boot – both put on hastily...

Michael, it looks like you’re having a nice time in Spain – thanks for the photos of you and your friends on the Camino. Life is much the same here. It’s Saturday and I’m drinking coffee in bed, my cat is at my feet. I’m shaking my head at the saddest news,...

It was like this, you were in Mexico, and the moment you got there you wondered why you’d come. You tried to remember the plans you’d made months ago, why you thought five weeks south of the border was a good idea. Your story was this: you liked San Miguel, a big city...

Last night I lay in a hot bath in the bright lights of my bathroom, watching a woman on TikTok, a stranger to me, a blond therapist with a soothing voice, assure me that in her lifetime, and in the lifetime of her parents, who are also therapists, none of them can...

I don’t know how to write about war. But I do know how to get up in the morning, after an election, a pandemic and an invasion in Ukraine, wipe the sleep from my eyes, and stumble into the day, angling myself to the promise of hot coffee, music and poetry. I...

How when I let my cat inside in the morning, he skims his body alongside my ankle, practically the only time he’ll make physical contact with me all day because he knows I’m about to feed him. I know I loved the morning coffee, but I didn’t know there would be a...

You feel pretty buttoned up. Your writing workshop is coming together like a dream. Twenty-two people. A small city tucked into the mountains of Mexico. You spend months organizing the hotel, the shuttles, sending emails back and forth with participants, extolling the...