Merit Badge
The alarm clock rings, and I discover that releasing my weary body from the comfort of my pillow-top-memory-foam bed is plenty challenging. Add the indignity of a workday, and it’s turned into the sort of Thursday where both my head and my spirit hang a little low. Feeling bulky and running late, I decide to stop off for a paper cup of overpriced coffee, which feels like a happy little incentivizing present, like giving a kid candy for using the toilet. It’s a neighborhood joint with one of those cutesy names that plays off the concept of coffee. As though coffee were a concept instead...
Read MoreA Brief Consideration of Life
Based on the Decision-Making Processes of the Ancient Persians as Reported by Herodotus Herodotus, the historian, wrote that, “If an important decision is to be made, [the ancient Persians would] discuss the question when they are drunk, and … the next day and while sober.” [1] This has stuck in my mind ever since I read it, for this is how I’d like to live my life. I don’t mean making decisions like this, discussing – or even just thinking over – everything twice. Wise as the Persians may have been. I’d like to live my life twice, once sober and once...
Read MoreDriving Into Beverly Hills
I am driving in heavy traffic to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. It takes all my concentration to navigate the 405. This freeway is always clogged with crazy L.A. drivers. A lot of them think their destination is more important than anyone else’s. Talk about entitlement in action! My appointment is at 9:45 a.m., and it’s already 9:10 a.m. I feel like I’m in a capsule, creeping along a slow-moving conveyer belt. My mouth is so dry, I have to gulp down some water. I re-grip the steering wheel and notice that my palms are damp. My palms are never sweaty! I order myself to take a deep breath....
Read MoreI Wander Into a Memory
When I was little, I did not wander as a cloud. I floated on one. I have to admit, when the assignment was given to us to write about a poem, I did not think I would find one that would capture my interest or my memory. For days, my ears would burn the table of contents as my fingers struck down page numbers in a hopeless search to find something that I could connect with, for something that I could write about and have it be genuine. I was lost, and my hopes for finding a poem that would even hold my interest long enough to allow me to write about it seemed to impossible. I was a...
Read MoreMy Morning with a Tree
A day off from walking, I rise to greet the day and the palo brea tree in the front yard. Do you know this tree? Smooth green bark like a palo verde tree, but instead of needles there are soft little leaves, and when it blooms the yellow flowers run all along the branches. Lovely, and thorns aplenty. This tree is not yet the lawn-spanning shade canopy I envision it will become in its future, but it’s getting there. It has a big spirit, gently pressing its boundaries and expanding its comfort zone a little more each day. Eager and responsive, it grows a jumble of limbs going this way and...
Read More