The days are short and cold, and it snowed last Sunday. The tree canopies, now brown, have thinned. The birds have begun migrating southwards — I hear their calls from my room, where I sip coffee — and people in puffy parkas rush to and fro along the sidewalks. Gray clouds float low in the sky. Although the December solstice […]
Culture
Beyond This Room
Sure Thing It is that with which the wind blows And the snowflakes carry from the skies The mountains echo in their deep crevasses The sky possesses in her blue, graceful expanse The child has in her smile The earth in her soil The dog in my arms. It is that with which spreads the smell of rain The mist […]
Holy Land
I lived in a small community outside Wheeling, West Virginia for seven months in 2020. New Vrindaban – a spiritual community drawing on Vaisnava Hindu tradition, current population 100 people and 70 cows – was my refuge from COVID-19; a chance to turn inward, to connect with nature. And as a native New Yorker and certified East Coast Liberal, living […]
Home | Bird and Broom
I’ve dropped my broom
Gathering Chips
One of my favorite photographs hangs in my bathroom. At its center is a wheelbarrow, with wooden handles, braces, and legs. The ten-spoke wheel is iron. Cow chips – dry dung – are stacked two feet high in the tray. They also litter the grassy landscape, which is over-exposed and unending. In black and white, each chip looks like a […]