In my last letter to you, I talked about catching covid on the way to Spain this summer, and I briefly mentioned dragging my covid-negative-but-still-sickly ass around Toledo in the name of novel research. The book is mostly set in …
I’m among friends here, right? So can I just say that… Holy hell, the threat of covid does not play well with my anxiety disorder. Pandemic plus a natural tendency toward panic is a terrible combination. Are you feeling it, …
Okay, so a pandemic and an anxiety disorder walk into a bar… Read more »
So…I did it. I tucked you all into a box and carried it over from Tiny Letter to Substack. I’d been going back and forth on the decision for months now. I liked the coziness of Tiny Letter, and I …
I started a fire because I was sick of myself. I was discouraged and exhausted, wallowing in a humiliation that was entirely self-imposed and perhaps even imaginary. I won’t get into the details here, because the problem was that I …
Me and my dad, Spring 1974, NYC Me and my mom, Spring 1974, NYC I sometimes joke that after I die (many, many years from now) my children will say, with great tenderness, “Remember how old songs on the radio …
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.) …
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 …
(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 »
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 …
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 …