a Mercury retrograde look back: 4th Street
From 2000-2001 I was given editorship of a micropress started by Thomas Walton in Olympia, Washington. 4th Street came out every two months. It was hand-...
past, current, and future channels
I have been spending hours this week immersed in some prerecorded materials for a class I will be taking beginning next week. The focus is on astrology and...
Notes
2017 a six line poem I wrote * 2021 the date of an issue of National Geographic where a photo of my father appears the words of Donald Knuth to be used as a...
thinking, scrubbing, leaving
I’m preparing to leave social media for the year 2027. As I’ve shared this plan on social media, I’ve received responses that are various flavors of “I want...
writing residencies
My first writing residency ever was at Hedgebrook, on Whidbey Island, Washington, in 2007. at the ferry on my way to Hedgebrook At this residency, I was a...
detour to XNA
It’s Monday. How are you? XNA mid-day Saturday I missed the mark last evening in getting this newsletter to you. I flew out of LAX on Wednesday headed to...
greetings from the fugue state
There was no newsletter last week because I was exhausted. My mother’s first birthday since her death has now passed—one kind of milestone. My intention was...
a bibliomantic q & a
some q & a featuring the books I’ve read since June (bolded=faves): Q: What will give me an ear worm of a Rolling Stones song, and a weird feeling of...
💧🌊
The only books I remember my grandmother giving me were 1) the Bible (at least twice) and 2) a book? or a magazine? whose sole subject was the life of Dolly...
"Mix Tape"
One of the most common questions I’ve gotten in the last twelve years since my first book was initially published is: How did you get your first book...
devouring star
NASA discovers black hole ‘devouring’ star I’ve been holding onto this headline for weeks. The meaning of it keeps changing for me. I feel like I saw Cheap...
seeker mode
Sagittarius rising, Jupiter my chart ruler. I have always identified with the seekers. Early drug and alcohol use were actually quite tempered. I was...
gifts both subtle and not
my commute for a week in July Away from home for a week, gently (re)placed in the Pacific Northwest, again. As I told my workshop participants, I had said...
ecstacies
The day after the ROSALÍA concert I felt, still, quite stunned. Any time I tried to speak of it, tears filled my eyes. I wore a mask and under it I cried,...
going through it
I’m back, but not exactly "better.” Awash in little notes to myself. Things to remember. LOLOLOLOL Books read so far in this cursed year 2026 include Almanac...
better
Moving liquid soap from one container to another. The sound of its movement—a sucking, gloopy burbling. It flows so slowly and I get sucked into it...
artifacts 3
My grandmother, the first of my immediate family to die (RIP, 1915-2011), had this phone until she moved in with my mother towards the end of her life. I...
artifacts 2
Keys are essential, because locks are essential. My mother lived in fear of many things, including losing her keys, and some of her fears were transmitted to...
artifacts 1
Found in my mother’s kitchen junk drawer: a matchbook from the 1990s, when she came to visit me in Olympia and stayed at the Golden Gavel, which wasn’t far...
emerging from the depths: with music
click to listen Two of my favorite mixtapes, both made by my friend Carrie in the early 1990s, emerged from the boxes brought home from my mother’s house....
