May

10

2025

WHAT MAKES ME CRY

I often cry when I watch parades, particularly when I watch marching bands. How does such a diverse group of individuals come together to play music while marching down the street, often clad in identical, uncomfortable uniforms? It is a feat of coordination, memory, and consistent rhythm. They are committed to the whole. Their individual contributions are crucial. They share the moment with each other so flawlessly that we become part of it too.

This experience reminds me of home, which is filled with countless items: photos, furniture, old letters, books, tables, and chairs—everything that transforms a house into someone's home. When one of these elements is removed, it fails to capture the essence of that home on its own. It becomes isolated, diminishing in significance. Just like a marching band, a home is built from many components that must coexist to evoke powerful emotions and a recognition of a singular identity. 

Occasionally, I come across displays in stores of large collections. Recently I saw one featuring an array of beautiful ceramic bowls in various colors. I found myself wanting to take the entire collection, as a single bowl felt lost and empty without the others.

We had 25 minutes to pack our home and evacuate. A wildfire seemed to appear out of nowhere. Flames were moving fast from the canyon close by. We could see the glow of the fire and even watch embers dancing in the air. In the chaos, I hurriedly grabbed hard drives and photo albums, but eventually found myself standing frozen in the middle of my home, overwhelmed and unable to make decisions. Everything seemed equally valuable, integral to the life we had built together. I simply couldn’t envision my life in fragments; I question whether it’s even possible.

So, I carelessly tossed dirty laundry in with my clean clothes to fill the suitcase, neglecting beloved clothing, cherished books, and artwork adorning the walls. I packed what felt necessary in that frantic moment: notebooks for teaching and current classes, forgetting the notebooks filled with inspiration—those from my college days studying dance with Betty Walberg, and choreography notes and ideas collected over the past 30 years that still resonate deeply.

Now, we are grappling with the ramifications of starting anew—collecting, creating, and marching in the parade of a life that has suddenly transformed. As I look around the house we plan to call home for the next few years, it feels more like an Airbnb than a place of belonging. Excitement coexists with regret and mourning. I am left waiting and hoping for that familiar feeling I get when I watch a parade. Will it return the second time around?

May 21, 2025

PING PONG BALLS

On one of the first nights after the fire, I thought about the giant bag of ping pong balls left in the closet. A kid who came to one of Nuala’s birthday parties, played a little too hard and fast in the backyard and lost most of our balls. He felt bad and ordered a bag of at least 100 of them. When they arrived we had already gotten rid of the ping pong table. So, I stored them in the closet. Did they melt when the fire hit or did they pop as the air was sucked out of them. 

These balls meant nothing to me but they appear in my mind and they reappear when I find myself remembering things we lost in the fire. I have a very clear image of small white balls in a plastic bag on the top shelf of our hall closet. A bag I no longer needed, and I see them almost every day. Perfect white round shapes, that reminded me of the eccentric items we all store somewhere.

Some people listen when we retell the story of leaving our home with just a car full of belongings, others seem to be listening but turn the conversation toward them. Sharing stories they think are the same as losing almost everything you own. It’s not the same. It’s not even the same between those of us who have all experienced this. 

I want to walk by the framed photo of my mother as a toddler sitting next to her twin sister. The picture where she looks most like my daughter. I want to be reminded of my sister’s engagement party on a hot day in a park which ended in a water fight. Paul captured her at a moment of exhaustion, looking at the camera, her shirt and hair dripping. The one painting from Gene that we hung in Nuala’s room even though it was too big and took up the entire wall. I loved it. And how odd that so many visitors never even noticed it. Mike’s painting I bought for Paul. A man standing on the corner of a sidewalk with his hands raised as if he was in the middle of performing one of my dance phrases. 

I want to know what happens when a refrigerator burns, a bed, my shoes, all the VHS tapes stored in a closet. The drawer in the bathroom full of hair ties and strands of hair. All the towels I folded over and over again. The full length mirror in our bedroom and Paul’s hats. What did it look like when the flames took over the photographs spread along the dresser - Nuala at the beach. The giant framed photo of a man in China picking up take out food. His face looks right at Paul’s camera, he leans to one side and his bike leans agains the building. A bike that looks as if it barely stays in tact with wire and rope. No longer will my friend, April, ask me how I sleep in a room with a man like that looking at me. 

People tell me their stories thinking they know. How could anyone know until it happens. 

June 10, 2025

June 21, 2025

PATIENCE

Things Shouldn’t Be So Hard by Kay Ryan

A life should leave
deep tracks:
ruts where she
went out and back
to get the mail
or move the hose
around the yard;
where she used to
stand before the sink,
a worn-out place;
beneath her hand
the china knobs
rubbed down to
white pastilles;
the switch she
used to feel for
in the dark
almost erased.
Her things should
keep her marks.
The passage
of a life should show;
it should abrade.
And when life stops,
a certain space—
however small —
should be left scarred
by the grand and
damaging parade.
Things shouldn’t
be so hard.

How is it so effortless for people to navigate the world oblivious to how difficult it is for others? They don’t see that your mother has just passed away, that you are battling a terminal illness, or that everything you possessed has been destroyed. At times, you feel the urge to stand on a hill and shout, “Do you know what just happened to me? Do you realize how hard this is?” But you restrain yourself, knowing that everyone would rush up that hill to share their own burdens. The overwhelming cacophony of all that suffering would be too much to bear.

Still, I wish we all had more imagination and curiosity to understand how others cope. The echoes of such events never truly fade; we are marked, scarred, and forever changed. I often find myself wishing I could simply move on, that this new life I’m leading could erase the memories of the past. Sometimes it does, but I cannot deny how my experiences have shaped me. My home, my belongings, and the everyday habits I developed in the place I lived longer than anywhere else have all contributed to my sense of self in ways that only loss can illuminate.

I miss seeing the titles of the books on my shelf, even those I hadn’t revisited in years. They were reminders of how to think, how different characters and authors engaged with the world. I cherished all of Iris Murdoch’s novels because my mother once worked in a bookstore and was able to send me each one until I had the complete collection. She even sent me Edward Tufte’s books—not because I asked for them, but because I mentioned him in a conversation, and she recognized the titles when she saw them in the store. I remember my numerous art books on artists like Joan Mitchell, one of my all-time favorites, as well as Hilma af Klint, Douglas Dubois, Yvonne Rainer, Marlene Dumas, Jennifer Packer, and poetry collections by Atsuro Riley and Kay Ryan. I had all of A.S. Byatt’s novels. Being reminded of these artists every day was a gift I took for granted; it enriched my life not just through physical things, but by inspiring me to think more deeply, question, create, and imagine.

This grief process seems to resist simple understanding. I don’t expect others to comprehend my struggles while I am still grappling with confusion myself. Therefore, I extend patience and compassion to those who cannot see how challenging this continues to be. I am skilled at compartmentalizing, managing my responsibilities, and maintaining control. Maybe now is the time to ease off on that instinct and allow a little more patience and compassion for myself.

July 14, 2025

WHEN WILL I EVER REALLY SLEEP AGAIN?

I woke up at 3:30 AM, thinking about the photographs of my younger self that I will never see again. A dog barked in the distance, too close to ignore. I felt a sense of sadness knowing that I may not be remembered like someone famous, which is ridiculous and embarrassing to think is important. There’s no evidence that I was once a young person or an artist.

I remembered the emails K and I exchanged, printed out and saved. My notebooks filled with handwritten notes. The photos from our first trip to Europe—the Polaroids I took every day and awkwardly taped into notebooks with captions that didn’t add much—are all gone now. Some memories remain in my mind, but they feel heavier as time passes.

I had written a letter for P and N to open only if I died unexpectedly. That’s lost too, likely too dramatic for its own good.

I put earplugs in my ears, feeling hot then cold. My hip hurt, and I couldn’t decide which side to sleep on. I wished I could sleep on my back, but snoring and leg aches kept me awake. I set the alarm for 6 AM, realizing it was only 3:45. I could easily oversleep before class at 9.

There’s so little of my past that a historian might find. But why does that matter? Is it just a fantasy of mine?

August 4, 2025

PHOTO RECOLLECTION

I came back from New York with a small stack of photos my sister Lizzie gave me. Many were ones I used to have, and it felt good to see them again, to hold them. I also brought home an old leather pouch, so worn it left behind a trail of orange-yellow dust on everything it touched. Inside were letters, and funeral receipts from the 1920s and 30s—never more than $250 total. That included the casket, embalming, chairs for the wake, and the burial.

The letters were hard to decipher. Everyone seemed to be named Margaret, Daniel, or Michael. Eventually, I realized they told the story of my grandfather going to live with his mother’s sister after his parents died. There were also details about debts and late rent payments. Her name was Mary Spalding—a name no one in the family recognized. Not my 89-year-old aunt or her 79-year-old cousin. From what I could piece together, she took my grandfather in and raised him. And then, somehow, she was forgotten.

I pinned some of the photos to my new bulletin board. Then I got irritated—almost angry—that I don’t have photos like that anymore. Not the kind you tack up. I have albums, sure, but they stay closed. The loose envelopes of photos I used to keep are gone. The ones with pinholes in the corners, some with rust marks from old thumbtacks. Others had a thin layer of grease from years on the fridge. Curled at the edges.

There’s one of Nuala holding a teddy bear—a Polaroid. She looks like she’s from another time entirely. Her face is serious, almost scared, sorrowful. I always felt better knowing that the little girl in that photo had that bear to cling to.

I used to hate that the photos on the fridge were greasy, that some had food stains. Now I miss them. There was a blurry shot of David sitting in our kitchen in San Francisco. I loved that photo, even though I knew he wished he were back in New York, not in my kitchen.

There’s one of Wesley, our white Siamese cat who never meowed—until Bob, the black cat we also lived with, died. After that, he never stopped. Someone took a picture of Wesley perched on my back while I was on all fours in the living room. I’m in a white sweatshirt and jeans. He looks majestic, like royalty on a throne. I’m the servant, the steed. We left him with a friend when we moved to Los Angeles. She took good care of him.

Photos. They are so mysterious. And so misleading.

August 19, 2025

FLEA MARKET FIND

I’ve been planning my courses for the Fall semester, including a Documentary Storytelling class I only get to teach every other year. One of the assignments explores how objects can hold hidden histories and private narratives. While reviewing the assignment, I came across photos of a wooden set square I bought at a London flea market years ago.

The stall owner—a wiry, elfin man with a constant grin and knee pads strapped over his pants, as if always ready to scavenge—attached a story to every object he sold. The set square’s tale was written on a piece of white cardboard and tied to it. I spent nearly two hours at his tiny, cramped stall, reading his notes about record album sleeves (not covers, just sleeves), rusted metal containers from the Thames, and other odd scraps that looked more like trash than treasure. But his stories transformed them—filled with history, fragments of his childhood, digressions both obscure and funny.

His writing was never consistent—different pens, shifting colors, words traced and retraced. I still wonder if he was embedding some kind of puzzle or secret message in those choices.

Finding these photos made me both happy and sad—sad because the original objects and writings are gone, lost to fire, but happy because I had forgotten I’d captured them at all. Objects can be funnels into the past. This set square carries the layered history of the tool itself, the man who found and wrote about it, me who stumbled upon it and carried it home, and now my students, who will encounter it as part of an assignment about the many ways stories live inside things.

Objects are never just things.

September 7, 2025

ADMISSION

I never know when or how to tell people that my house burned down. Often, I’m in the middle of a conversation, and it feels like I have to mention it—or else I’m lying. Or perhaps it’s not lying exactly, but leaving out an essential layer beneath the story, the anecdote, or the explanation I’m offering.

As soon as the words leave my mouth, I catch their expressions, and all I want is to take them back. Instead, I fumble, trying awkwardly to soothe their inability to respond, muttering something like, “It’s life,” while my body is frantically wanting to spill everything.

Sometimes, the person I’ve just told moves closer, curious for details—wanting to know what it felt like. In those rare moments, I have their full attention, and I tell them. Some even want more, almost as if they are placing themselves in my shoes.

But most of the time, it doesn’t come up. My responsibilities, classes, and commitments overshadow the event and the lingering trauma. I get no breaks—or maybe I simply don’t allow myself to ask for them.

September 15, 2025

A CHANCE ENCOUNTER WITH A MARIACHI BAND

He introduced us as “casualties” of the fire. The word struck me as strange — I’ve always associated it with war, with loss of life, not with us standing there alive. At the same time, it seemed fitting. He had just met me and needed a quick way to explain to his co-worker what had happened. Long ago, the word once meant accident, mishap, or chance event — even chance encounter — before it became tied so heavily to war. In that sense, we are casualties. The fire was a random, accidental event. Not fate, not the universe sending a message or issuing a test. Just a chance occurrence that changed so much — and, oddly, not all that much.

I still work at the same job. I live not far from where my old home once stood. I shop at the same stores, or their near-identical franchises. I still feel the same small irritations when the heat wave drags on, or when someone leaves their car parked in front of my house for days. When we run out of milk for coffee. My clothes have been replaced, and I even own a stapler and scotch tape again.

A woman at work once said, “This is going to be something you’ll be processing for the rest of your life.” I hadn’t expected that from her, and the weight of her words stayed with me. She said it with a kind of knowing — experience, maybe — that I’ll never fully understand. It’s strange how someone you aren’t especially close to can suddenly put everything in perspective.

Our new house has no front yard. At night the streetlight pours straight into our bedroom. Only a stucco wall separates us from the road, and I often feel exposed. Except for one morning — a Sunday at 7 a.m. — when a live mariachi band appeared across the street, serenading our neighbor for her birthday. They played for an hour and they were really good. We stayed in bed and just listened wondering how we would tell this story.

October 4, 2025

NOT WHAT IT FELT LIKE, BUT WHERE

She told us she was eighty-two. She looked younger than me. I noticed the cross on her necklace as she spoke about the spirit. She was clergy. When she turned seventy-five, she said, she had looked in the mirror and wondered where all the time had gone. Maybe that was when she decided to speak to people the way she did with us—certain that there is a God, that we each have gifts, and that our task is to recognize them. She was kind, and she was grateful for what we brought into the space.

But does the same “gift” mean the same thing in another culture, another time, another place? What does it mean when your photographs or paintings are valued and understood in one era but not in another? I don’t think of it as a gift inside us. I think of it as a kind of attention—a recognition, an awareness of how our work resonates. Where does that resonance lead us? What does it ask us to question or to see differently? Could that kind of attention itself be called an inherent gift? I’m not sure.

When I teach, I hope to help students strengthen their attention. Maybe I just assume that attention lives in all of us and can be nurtured. I think it needs stretching—a kind of yoga for perception. Or maybe attention wakes up when we’re confronted by difficulty. Sometimes it shuts down instead. But for me, it feels like a shift in the lens.

The aperture opens wide, and the view becomes overwhelming. Yet I am in control of the depth of field. I choose when to bring everything into focus—or only a single part.

And then there are the books. I keep thinking about them, lined up in what used to be my living room. I still remember the spines, the authors’ names, even the books I never read. They remind me of other lives, other perspectives, other voices. I still remember reading that line in The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell: “I lost my virginity in Syria.” Not what it felt like—but where. Syria.

November 2, 2025

A GIFT FROM ROMAN

I have a new book — Turner’s last sketchbook. One of more than 300 he made. It’s small, filled with watercolor sketches: simple washes of muted color, often just a hint of a horizon. If you didn’t know they were his—or even if you did—you might find them unremarkable. Yet they are astonishingly beautiful.

You look at them knowing they were made at the end of a lifetime spent painting, observing, and noticing what most of us overlook. A pale gray stroke near the top of a page and a darker gray shape below it—perhaps a ship, or a figure, or fog swallowing the sea.

The sketches hold a mystery and a quiet familiarity that only come from an artist who has spent a lifetime translating the world. They carry the confidence of a single gesture, or perhaps something even rarer—a willingness to make a mark and see where it leads.

Turner died at seventy-six. These were his final sketches. Someone might look at them and say, “Anyone could do that.” But I disagree. An artist near the end of life paints with a memory-filled hand. A few strokes of color that suggest sea and storm are enough. The life lived, the years of looking, the imagination—all collaborate in those gestures. There is no need for completion; the marks themselves contain the story, the experience, the memory.

When C and I were in Paris, we stumbled upon the Picasso Museum. Inside, one room was lined with his final drawings—quick, squiggly portraits that could be mistaken for a child’s doodles. But I found them deeply moving. They carried urgency, as if he were racing to capture everything before time ran out. Beneath the spontaneity was the weight of a lifetime of seeing. The simplicity drew me in; each line asked me to finish the thought, to write the rest of the story.

I think of our old home, now gone. Did I live there long enough to carry its history within me? Did those years—raising our daughter, teaching, making and losing friends, saying goodbye to parents, and finally losing the house itself—become part of who I am? Will I one day make a mark on paper, and will that single gesture somehow hold all of it—the house, the light, the lives that passed through?

• Thank you Roman for understanding how important it is to get books back in my life.