January 20, 2024
Doctors frowned at me as they admonished: Be sure you get your mammograms every year. The fibrous tissue is very dense with calcium deposits. We need a mammo every year for comparison.
January 19, 2024
Here they call them palmetto bugs but they’re just cockroaches, really. Normally, I would have murdered the tiny intruder but on this morning, on this particular day, I awoke with a newfound appreciation for life: for any and all life.
January 17, 2024
But the highlight of the event was the momentous meeting between Luna Lyngdoh and Meban Tsangpa, a Samanera or novice monk. A woke, computer-trained graduate, he had been inducted into the monastery as a trainee. He followed many of the cardinal religious precepts but had not yet attained higher ordination which would make him a Bhikkhu or a full-fledged monk.
January 16, 2024
Meghalaya in monsoon — the perfect time to explore and embrace the beauty of the Sacred Woods. Luna smiled to herself as she recalled this much-loved refrain from her days of childhood and youth. She walked past the moss-slickened stones, boulders flecked with the chartreuse lichen, stopping to admire the white coral mushrooms that were so famous here.
January 15, 2024
but you also forget the names of acquaintances, people you knew things you were good at, national and state capitals…
January 14, 2024
The email from British Airways popped up just as my sister and I arrived at Glasgow International Friday night before our flights home: “We're really sorry that your upcoming flights have been canceled.” A bonus day in Edinburgh? I knew just what I’d do.
January 13, 2024
I couldn’t understand why you kept calling our parents, the phone ringing repeatedly before Dad silenced it. “He wants money,” Dad whispered knowingly to Mom. I was too young to understand that you’d done this all before: drunk texts and calls, expectations of payment, always late at night.
January 9, 2024
We had been friends for over twenty-five years. More than a quarter of a century. I don’t know why I feel the need to emphasise the length of time we’d known each other, as if the more time invested the deeper the friendship. There is perhaps a strong correlation but no causation between length of knowing and love.
January 6, 2024
She rummaged through his coat pockets for a flask. He had, after all, the day before sworn off liquor, having literally gambled the shirt off his back in some bar’s backroom.
January 1, 2024
One weekend on Chinese New Year, we gathered in Trafalgar Square for the performance of the lion dance. Amid the throngs of people, we cheered and clapped for the dancers. We swayed to the traditional music.
December 31, 2023
I breathe and release the “now” for the true moment.
The snow swirls rapidly around me
whispering poems until I am lost in a personal snow storm.
December 30, 2023
What if I accept that I am, as you say, too much? Too much of stomach and too much of sag…