Until I wrote At the Narrow Waist of the World I did not understand the still-raw wound that I carried. I began the book by serendipity, with a scene I’d held in my memory full of texture and detail. I saw myself at the age of 5 or 6 carrying a white tray with hinged sides, hot milk in a Noritake cup, taking dinner to Mami who was very troubled at the time and was in bed.
Read moreCorona Diary: "the prettiest world"
My old tree with octopus arms.
In the quiet of the morning a squirrel’s tail is swaying from behind a still woody bush in my neighbor’s yard. No sounds almost. Birdsong is muted by the glass of my window. Across the driveway the old cherry tree reaches up for sunlight. Its thick, curving branches look like monster octopus arms. The cherry may be as old as this house, a hundred years?
Read moreTeresa and Orlando - Two Latino Musicians Tackle Covid
Teresa walked in smiling, warm and ebullient, her curly hair, loose and wild. At the far end of the living room Orlando stood watching and fetching things for their dog Nina. He sported an Elvis Presley pompadour, black, black, black. I liked them instantly.
Read moreCorona Diary - Face to Face
Newly vaccinated (all but the children) we visited our son and his beautiful family three hours north of us. It’d been a long year since we’d stayed overnight at their house; five months since we met masked and distanced at a midpoint town in Connecticut on a blustery day in the fall.
Read morePostcard from Paris - Covid19 and a slight detour in Brittany
Here’s a “Postcard from Paris,” a new mini adventure on my blog.
Sara Somers is an American in Paris—looking out her window into the city she now calls home. You could say I’m a Panameña en Nueva York. We each bring an outsider’s perspective, and we both love having our feet in different worlds.
Sara recently shared my Aqueduct story about vaccines in New York. Below is a glimpse into what is happening around Covid19 in France. Here are notes from Sara’s blog, Out My Window:
Read moreCorona Diary: Where do we go from here?
Photo by Ben Neale
]I’m beginning to feel that we’re half past something, feeling bursts of hope a full year after the Covid19 pandemic began in the US that hit us so terribly in New York. I am also worrying that some of the interiority that we’ve gained may be lost as we begin to quicken our steps in anticipation of living as we used to.
Read moreCorona Diary: Aqueduct - Betting on Life
We pass tiny statues of jockeys. Inside are rows of booths for betting and strings of seats facing the track on the other side of giant windows. The “Big A,” a year-round racetrack, is holding live racing without fans—but there are no horses in sight.
Read moreCorona Diary: Alivio (ah-lee-byoh)
A peaceable transfer of power - “normalcy” in democratic societies
I was speaking with my Cuban poet friend this morning early/his late in Vietnam where he teaches English literature in high school. A beautiful human and a privilege to know, JC was describing how he felt after watching some moments of the American presidential inauguration on Vietnamese TV. “ Sentí un cierto alivio.”
Read moreCorona Diary - You said a vaccine...?
Photo by Hakan Nural
Thank you for calling the covid-19 vaccination hotline we are sorry, due to high call volumes we are temporarily unavailable to take care of your call answers to many of your questions can be found on our
Read moreCorona Diary - "The Salon on Pondfield"
photo by Vitória Kubliaki
Here’s a small gift from me to you. I wrote this poem in June when I went for my first haircut (on Pondfield Road) after almost absolute quarantine during Covid’s bitter flare up in New York. We are still living in fearful times. I hope the poem makes you smile.
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