The old man at the vet's office
Shortly before the pandemic, when we still blithely breathed near strangers in small indoor spaces, I took the cat to the vet for his annual exam. (I say this so that you don’t worry about the cat, who is fine.) …
Author: Cari
Hey there
At some point in the past, you very kindly signed up to hear from me once in a while. It’s been quite some time since I last sent one of these out. Some difficult professional things happened, some difficult life …
After listening to Nick Cave's Skeleton Tree for the first time…
(Go here for some background on Nick Cave’s Skeleton Tree) What do you do with a stranger’s grief? What do you do with a stranger’s grief when that stranger doesn’t feel like a stranger at all? When they have not just …
After listening to Nick Cave's Skeleton Tree for the first time… Read more »
How it was
Tomorrow, July 25th, is my husband’s birthday, and the third anniversary of my accepting Tin House’s offer to publish The Revolution of Every Day, and the seventh anniversary of my first of three miscarriages. Three days after that first miscarriage …
Mix Tape
Hey all. It’s been a while, huh? A few days ago, I hauled a dusty cardboard box up out of the basement. It had been down there since we moved to Portland in 2007, full of cassette tapes that I …
Little Suzie Homemaker
There was a period of time—a solid three-year stretch—when I baked all of the bread my family ate, made all of our yogurt, grew most of our vegetables, picked 30+ pounds of three types of berry every summer and canned …
As Mitchell S. Jackson likes to say, lit life is life
On Monday evening, my husband and I got all dressed up and went to the Gerding Theater here in Portland for the Oregon Book Awards. At the beginning of January I’d been named one of five finalists for the Ken …
As Mitchell S. Jackson likes to say, lit life is life Read more »
Five years in the wilderness…
In 2010, Gail Hochman, my first literary agent, passed on The Revolution of Every Day, firing me after five years together. It felt as big as any break up, nearly as devastating as the end of my first marriage, even …
A confession…
I recently saw 20,000 Days on Earth, the Nick Cave documentary. I’m a longtime Cave fan. I met him in 1992, and wrote about it. I sit square in the middle of the target audience of this documentary, and I …
I'm Very Into You
I’ve been thinking about emails lately. Jeff Jackson and I recently completed an epistolary review of I’m Very Into You, which is a collection of emails between Kathy Acker and McKenzie Wark from 1995. (The book and the review are …