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Whose Home is This?

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I make judgements about people based on what their home looks like. If it's too messy and cluttered, it makes me uncomfortable. If it's too austere, it makes me nervous. If there are no books, I don't know if I can trust you. I like a lived-in space, just the right level of tidy-but-not-fussy, frequently used items within reach, evidence of human life - unique, vibrant, idiosyncratic human life. Recently, Jenn and I went to dinner at the home of some new friends. It was just after dusk, and as Jenn drove, I looked for houses with wide well-lit windows, seeking a passing glimpse into the secret worlds of other families. I love seeing random things, just for a second - an abstract painting, cluttered bookshelves, giant television sets, a lone figure stirring something on the stove, a shadow in a doorway  - and imagining the people who there, who included these things in their home because for one reason or another they belong there. Our friends' home was not visible from ...
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Writing I Admire

I thought for a long time about which piece of writing to select. Typically, for me, my favorite kinds of nonfiction are the pieces in which the writer lays bare their thinking on the page and I can trace the connections they're making and delight in temporarily inhabiting the thinking of someone I admire. I leafed through essay collections by Elisa Gabbert, David Foster Wallace, Jia Tolentino, Italo Calvino, James Baldwin, Grace Paley, and then I remembered that nearly always the writing I share with my students are the pieces I love. The essays that don't let go of me, and in which I find something new each time. This is a short essay that I've taught for many years. The last paragraph makes me cry, or nearly cry, every time, and the images and metaphors and juxtapositions leading up to that last paragraph are stunning in their clarity and precision. But the thing I love the most about this essay, Joyas Voladoras , by Brian Doyle , is the empathy that hums beneath the sur...
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There's clutter and then there's clutter

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  I set up this blog yesterday, but then couldn't find the time to post anything. I know I'm a week behind, but below is my revision experiment ala Zinsser.  I went looking through the folders on my computer to find something I thought might work for this, and stumbled on this story from 2015. It's unfinished, but might have promise. We'll see. I chose it because I don't remember writing it at all. Most of my older work I at least have an idea of what I was going for, or why I stopped working on it, but this little untitled gem -- nothin'. 
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