Church bells ring, their metallic tone resonating through Corniglia, Italy. Thrushes form a chorus soon accompanied by unseen warblers. A car on the winding narrow road below slows, changes gears, accelerates up the incline. A roosters crows. One crow, two caws. Seagulls screech. The Hotel Cecio cleaves and clutches its high perch in the rocky terrain. The morning wind increases,… Read more →
The water is always 72 degrees. We arrive in our bathing suits, ready to cleanse the sweat and dirt off our bodies. The only way to handle the cold shock is to take a flying leap from the edge and hope that the unavoidable gasp of surprise doesn’t flood our noses and throats with water. I jump – and feel… Read more →
Rebecca The eve of your fifty-fifth birthday. How can I let another day pass without writing about you—you, my best friend for forty-two years? I owe you a chapter. A whole book! Yet writing seems ridiculously unattainable these days. Nothing profound or melodic ekes or leaks from my pen. I write only lists. On waking and sleeping and swimming, I… Read more →
Eventually, we all leave our bodies behind. The first time that this occurred to me, I was, I think, nine years old, and my parents and I had flown to Albuquerque, New Mexico to meet with my podiatrist and discuss the prospect of another surgery. I’d had five already, but after each, the bones in my left foot had begun… Read more →
I recommend the 2002 anthology of essays on Hybrid Maternity ed. by Prudence DeWitt and Angela Burney for its attention to syntactical fidelity and matrimonial pathology. Traditionally men transformed prior to sexual encounters with women. Zeus was notorious, for instance, for turning himself into a variety of animals. When he encounters Leda, he turns himself into the swan. It was far more… Read more →