This Tree, a prose poem
Reflections on New Year of the Trees Living in a treehouse, one notices the tree. When the luster of the leaves fades, at first I wonder why. When they begin to yellow and drop away, I notice there are more …
Unexpected
http://www.theintima.org/unexpected-catherine-klatzker
Legacy of Grief
The power of syntax, rage, and intergenerational trauma In Becoming Myself, Irvin D. Yalom recalls a late night when he was fourteen: his father had a painful heart attack, and he waited with his mother for the doctor to arrive, since they still …
Declining Bees and Revisiting Home
I found this poem and photo some time ago and it resurfaced today, a memory from the midwestern home where I grew up. Readers of my blog and those who know me may have even seen a version of this …
Maybe It’s Afib
Late night thoughts in COVID lockdown Sometimes my dreams are regular dreams, rhythmic and steady. Sometimes in the night, my hand cups my left breast and I startle awake at the galloping pace that rattles my fingertips, and whatever I’ve …
Enchanted
It’s a small thing, but I do it. I share my delight in watching a travelogue that slightly embarrasses me, that I spend any time rapt by the English canal countryside from a narrowboat, narrated by a wholly unfamiliar middle …
Survival
If there is one thing I know for sure about trauma and survival is that if we put two brains together and put them under a scan, the traumatized brain would be lit up and on fire right now. Survival skills …
Kol Nidre as Connection
Kol Nidre at the Men’s Central Jail in Los Angeles is unique from the very beginning. Inmates from different sections of the same security level are not allowed to mix, even for religious services, except when they are. So it’s …
On Memory
After Appelfeld, ז״ל The [trauma] “was etched inside my body, but not in my memory. “In my writing I wasn’t imagining but drawing out, from the depths of my being, the feelings and impressions I had absorbed because of my …
THE APOLOGY, a review
THE APOLOGY Eve Ensler Of course it’s triggering, but just know this and read however you need to, maybe in small bites, maybe between walks at the ocean, or talks with your therapist, but consider the nature of what it …