The dinner’s been eaten. The laundry’s been folded. The apple crisp is in the oven, filling the house with its fragrance. And suddenly, for the brief span of an hour, there’s nothing to do but just be. So I put the kettle on, and I make sage tea. * If the finest pleasures are the simple […]
Tag: body image
The Body Electric: Day Three
Yesterday, as the sunset just begins to flare over the mountains, I pull up to a favorite coffee shop. I am smiling — the anticipation of being with good people always makes me smile — but before I step out of the car, I take a breath and focus. Listen, I tell myself. And then […]
The Body Electric: Day Two
Yesterday. I am running errands. Running with my mind cluttered by Christmas and all its trappings. And so, on a whim, I peel off I-581 and take the exit into downtown. Park just under the pedestrian bridge, across the tracks from the art museum. I take a long breath, and cross over. * Inside the […]
The Body Electric: Day One
Yesterday. Early evening. I slip into my running shoes and sit down on the kitchen floor by the back door, in front of the rainsplashed full-length mirror. Slowly, I slide into a stretch, feeling all the little muscles in my legs resisting until, after a minute or so, they loosen all at once. Whatever was […]
The truth behind the quiet …
If you’ve been reading my words for awhile, you may have noticed a quiet here, building. It’s not that I haven’t been posting; it’s just that I haven’t been saying very much. This is a tell: it’s something I always do before I’m about to speak. … A little intake of breath, I suppose. […]
One for the renegades …
I still remember where I was the first time I heard the radio hit Renegades by X Ambassadors: on the dusty second story of a Staunton antinque mall, where the tune crackled and snarled through an AM/FM radio with a bad connection. No more than 30 seconds elapsed before I Shazamed it… I was smitten. * […]
Let’s talk …
Last week, quietly and without much fanfare, alpha // whiskey // foxtrot surpassed a milestone that still blows my mind a little bit: by my latest check, I’ve got 1,066 followers and counting. I’ll be honest: this is both wonderful and a little unsettling. Most days, I envision myself writing to about as many friends as I […]
be still …
Noon. I curl up on the down-filled sofa under the big bay window. Watch the light flickering down through the limbs of the old oak: There is nothing I must puzzle out here: no meaning to decode. No sign or symbol to deconstruct. There’s just me, with the sun warm on my skin. And the sun […]
When I am running in the dark, in a river of light …
Two days ago, for the first time in a long time, I ran. * There’s a little event held every Tuesday in Roanoke called the Pub Run. It begins at Wasena City Tap Room and loops through the greenway in either a three-mile or five-mile course. It felt strange, and also comforting, to run in such a […]
I am going to tell you a secret now …
At least once a week, some kind, well-meaning person asks me when I am going to write a book. And inside, where you can’t see it, I flinch. Now, the Current Me, the one you can see standing in front of you — she doesn’t flinch. She stands there with her smooth face and her smile, […]
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