art by fantasim You never realize just how much stuff you’ve invited into your life until you have to pack it all up and haul it somewhere. Today I’m packing up life in cardboard boxes. Time to move. I marvel at the ways passion and devotion can equal accumulation: books, records, ticket stubs, playbills, love letters, photographs, receipts for purchases both large and small. I’ve spent ten years in this house and the remnants of proof call for assessment. I scrutinize each object, asking, “How does this serve me? Should I leave it behind? How about that? Shall I take […]

I. presents not a single one under the tree nothing shopped for, trussed up, unwrapped. it is a lean christmas, and as the days go by we think, “soon. perhaps soon.” but the days go by and the bank account has other needs mom flies into town from Austin and we decorate the tree snip pine boughs from the spruce in our yard and fill the house with the scent of solstice and the easy silly laughter that comes only from years spent together under a common roof. on christmas eve we drive up Taos Mountain to the authentic bavarian […]