I look up from my slightly chilly outdoors breakfast at Cup Café to see the proprietor Sam approaching from the opposite direction, that has to say, up the block from his front door. He tells me that a customer has left something behind. What he doesn’t tell me is how he knows where the customer is or might be. But that’s Sam. This neighborhood is his neck of the urban woods. And I am glad for it. I am also glad that he has wandered my way just as I was about to make my way down to the next Read more [...]

A blue line is moving across my computer screen. My computer is being updated. Splendid. I could do with some updating myself. Thing is, my computer needs substantially more than a newer version of its operating system. I’m not sure what that is, but the needs are so enormous and so insatiable that they cannot be met. OK, some technical details. At one point, bowing to necessity, I used a Windows PC. Voice recognition software, the sort of technology that is rendering this blog, required Windows Read more [...]

Yesterday I began writing my next book. Back in the literary saddle. No wonder I had been avoiding the start. Of course, I am writing about the past, specifically the years after my injury. I know there’s a story there. But as soon as I began putting myself in my body, in the time, a deep unease took over. Uneasy about what? Everything. Because in retrospect, something in me doesn’t quite know how I made it through those years. When the answer is that I did what everyone does, blinkered myself Read more [...]

The glass half empty/full paradigm is a worthy one. Waking each morning, I wonder if I can get out of bed. No, not that way. I mean do I have the neuromuscular wherewithal to get myself vertical, then take a few largely unaided steps to the wheelchair, pivot and sit down. Just that simple. Do I? And based on months of recent experience, which actually amount to years, the answer is absolutely yes. So what am I worried about? I guess that, simply put, I am afraid that it’s all going to go away. Read more [...]

First, let me make it clear. I have not been out of the house for three days. I live in a city. There are people, heaving and thriving humanity, vehicles in motion, concerts, exhibitions, exhibitionists. It’s all happening. It’s why I moved to San Francisco. It’s not why I am inside.  You know why I am inside if you are reading this today, January, 2022. I am inside because I don’t wish to become infected with the dreaded viral plague. Vis-à-vis, the Omygod variant of COVID-19. Read more [...]

It was a gray day. Clouds unabated. I had intended to go to Cup for my morning cappuccino. Instead, I picked up a few nonessentials at Canyon Market, collected a macchiato on the way out the door and headed back up the hill to home. Jane arrived, fresh from a walk with our dog Poppy, moments later. I sat outside gazing into my coffee, wondering at the meaning of it all and allowing the feeble morning sun to heat my back. Poppy wandered outside too exhausted, doubtless to sprawl somewhere on the Read more [...]