But Was it Life Changing?
“Was it life changing?” my daughter, Zoe asked me this morning as I groggily sat at the kitchen table drinking coffee. I’d gotten home from nearly three weeks in South Africa the night before, had managed a few hours of sleep, and was now on my third cup of coffee and it wasn’t even 7am. “Was it life changing?” “Yes and no,” I said. “Yes, of course, and no, not really.” And it’s not because I’m jaded by my recent travel to Bali last November, Nepal this past April, and the last many weeks in South Africa where I traveled with my 21-year-old daughter Ruby, and my 79-year-old mother Suzy. It was incredible to tool around in a jeep on a large private animal reserve in South Africa and to stumble into a herd of elephants taking down trees for breakfast. It silenced me to get as close as we did to the pride of lady lions whose faces were covered with blood – “lipstick,” our guide called it – after they’d just taken down an impala – a kill we’d seen them circling for, heard them attacking deep in the bush, and watched them emerge from afterwards. It was ridiculously amazing to watch a mama rhino and her baby lumbering along a shady dirt road, taking their time as our vehicle kept a safe distance behind. The closest I’d ever gotten to these animals – cheetahs, giraffes, rhinos, leopards – was in magazines or on T.V., and it was both oddly wonderful and disconcerting to be so close to them. One day we drove right up to a...
The Duchess of Coolsville
So there we were at the Rickie Lee Jones concert in San Francisco a few months ago – my pal Ann and I. We thought we were going to be late, but it turned out Rickie Lee was even later. Apparently her band’s bus had broken down 8 hours away and had finally chug-a-lugged it into San Francisco…
The Parting of the Veils
I keep wanting to text my younger brother Wally, who is recovering from surgery in Los Angeles. I keep wanting to ask him, “What’s it like now?” to find out if he’s still standing in the light that shone when the veils parted two weeks ago, when a football sized tumor…
The Doggy Dog Truth
Here’s the doggy dog truth. It’s Thursday night and for practically a whole week, when I haven’t been teaching – which I do every morning – or going to the gym for a run, I’ve been sitting in this chair in my living room trying to write a piece on family, which someone has asked me to write. I’ve come at it from every angle, trying to find a way in, a great first line or an anecdote. I thought I had it at one point, but two smart writer friends sent me back to the drawing board. It’s due in a couple of days and I can’t say that I’ve gotten any closer to moving into the heart of the piece