Missing the slap and pound of waves at night. The hiss of the wind through the palm fronds. The morning bird song. And the call of the gecko hunting in the night.

One of my favorite quotations is “Chaos is the law of nature; order, the dream of man,” by Henry Adams. As much as we try to hold things together, chaos will come in to claim its territory. This American Dream is descending into chaos. Maybe it was destined to, a false promise made to appease,…

Imagining slipping into another place is deceptive. Visiting is the easy thing. Swaying palm trees, the roll and pound of the surf, the beckoning song of the birds. But after that you begin thinking. Work, traffic, bills. Too many tourists. Graffiti. “Tip your slaves.” “Welcome to plastic Maui.” Still more rainbows here than at home,…

We need patterns. They allow us to make sense of chaos. They allow us to create pathways. By recognizing patterns we find efficiency. But a pattern can become a prison. A pattern created around an injury becomes a limp or a frozen shoulder or tight neck. A pattern to find ease in living works for…

What if all these selfies the kids are taking simply means they are smiling more than our generation did?

Staring at the sea, more blues than I have words to name. Endless seas of blues. The endless unnameable always there if we look.

Boredom has been given a bad rap. No distractions. No screens. No madly planned days. If your kid tells you that they are bored then you are on the right track. But don’t be tempted to give them something to fill up that space. You could give them problems to solve, or a task to…

When is a writing project ever done? What I thought was completed months ago had been edited, polished, and submitted it off to agents. Since then, I changed the ending of the story, further cleaned up the text, and added in a number of new scenes. Now it feels complete. But if I look at…

Not a real medical condition. But one that arrives every time before I travel. What books should I bring? How many books? Am I bringing enough books?

Are we conditioned to be blind to the possibilities around us? Or is fearlessness the lie? Always easiest to back away from the precipice. But just because we fall does not mean that we cannot get back up. Fall seven, rise eight. What is known, the death, is the great unknown. Between here and there…