behind the Big Screen
I'm a fool for Big Screen movies. No hand-held device, no TV, no laptop will ever be able to deliver that tangible, chewable breathtaking immersion in another reality that movies seen in a theater can do. Before you think "oh how yesterday," consider the...
ode to a frozen Charlotte
What is this? I asked the saleswoman at the store in Berkeley. I held in my hand a tiny white figure of a little girl made of porcelain, with one arm missing. That's a "frozen Charlotte" she smiled. There was a cautionary tale behind this figurine: it told of a girl...
dreaming of paper and pen
In a digital landscape — would she have survived? It is a bit of a seance, your fingers feeling for something deep within the paper, locked inside—or beyond. Hoping that the fingers can channel the exact right word, or phrase for some subtle distinction or nuance...
what would Virginia Woolf do?: Part Two
Virginia Woolf used to complain when she ran out of ink, or if she needed a new nib for her pen. Definitely old school. But those of us who write for a living, or out of passion, we each have rituals that not only define our process but which define the outcome as...
crystal palace
My grand-mother collected S&H Green Stamps and Meissen milkmaids. My mother collects wasps’ nests. I have managed to acquire an unlikely group of spheres: an ornament embedded with mirrors from an import store, two quartz globes from a gem show, a huge...
Inside the Flame
A book of sensory adventure: The rituals, passions and discoveries of an engaged life.