So turns out, the Neanderthals didn’t die out naturally. Nope. Sapiens happened. I recently read a fascinating book by a French archaeologist Ludovic Slimak, based on his 30+ years of studying Neanderthal remains and sites in the field. Apparently, geneticists recently discovered that some of our DNA is actually Neanderthal, leading to the speculation that […]
There’s a beautiful tradition about the Goddess Brighid (Celtic Minerva) that I try to observe as often as I can. On the night before Imbolc, which is generally observed on February 1 so the night of January 31, she walks the land, spreading her blessing over the fields and through the homes, touching all the
Everywhere I look blank pages The world becomes invisible with it’s coating of brilliant gleaming . . . Nothingness . . . It’s been over a week since I have seen, really seen, brown or gray or tired green and the cold is a constant ache you’d think we’d be used to by now But
I’ve had occasion lately to write things based on parameters that weren’t my own. A short story and a song, both with specific purposes that were not part of what I ordinarily think of as my central emotional … thing. Stuff. Doo-dad. Mojo. Whatever. I didn’t write from some emotional or intellectual realization or epiphany,
A rooster crows somewhere in Mesa in the tangle of Phoenix This anomaly wakes me up makes me chuckle Mesa seems to be mostly gray-haired Iowans sick of the cold who come here to Never Be Cold Again But it’s November and I miss the cold and I miss our modest-sized bed where we brush
The Refrigerator Wife trope has haunted us for centuries. There are plenty of fairy tales where a woman has to die in order for something to happen, and so many books from the 18th and 19th centuries where a woman is just starting to have some agency over her life and has to either commit suicide or die of the consumption (it’s always the fucking consumption, innit?) because we can’t have women making their own decisions about their lives.
You’re getting weak, Old Sun. Not so long ago your slightest touch would set my skin aflame But now … You’re getting weak, Old Sun. And Winter, he’s coming for you, and I don’t know if you have the stones to see him off anymore. I think maybe you threw your weight around a little
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking – again – about how science and materiality have utterly trumped mystery. Well, it’s a sore spot and no mistake. I’ve been reading a book by David Abram called Becoming Animal, and he devoted quite a bit of ink to this idea as well. (I’m hugely enjoying Abram’s
Desperate times call for … a mother who can invent. We’ve been in a drought for a while, and it’s getting pretty … grim. Seemed the only way we could get any rain at all when there was any in the area was for me to go outside and hurl insults up at the sky,
I live in a world that grooves, gyrates, syncopates, and funks to the rhythm in my bones. A couple decades ago, during a time of ridiculous stress, I developed a heart arrhythmia that gave me a spot of bother. The heart specialist showed me the EKG readout, pointing out that one of my ventricles was
