I have always been too sensitive, a weeper from a long line of weepers. I am the hurting kind. I keep searching for proof. -Ada Limon   I ask the woman with the ocean blue t-shirt, toothy smile and clipboard what cause she is advocating for. She tells me water and explains how the cleanliness of the tap water here varies by neighborhood. And tax base. She says people in the south of the city are getting sick. And dying. And I start drying. And so does she. She asks what my na

Everything you can think of is true. Tom Waits   I turn the corner toward Cowles Point, which is really more like a curve than a point, still I stick to my side, the right side, trained by the lanes in Tel Aviv. I shut out the world with my Rachmaninoff in my ears when two cyclists come around the bend, spread themselves wide, across both sides, nearly collide. With me, but before I can even react they blow past and I’m back to my Rachmaninoff. When a lady who has a purple t-

I am holding two jars of tahini, trying to decide. Why one has a green lid and one a red, and I’m trying to decipher the labels in Hebrew that look the exact same when I see to my left a woman I know from dance and she smiles and I smile and I see she’s explaining in English and then in Hebrew to her toddler son that he can’t sleep on the apples that lie in a pile on a very low shelf.  I ask if she can help me with my tahini debacle and before we know it we are telling our st

I am driving home from the store. East on Mission Gorge. It’s spring and the air is dry and my throat is dry. And I am so something bigger than anger I start to cry. From the pretense of it all, the big-toothed smiling cashier in her green apron asking her obligatory hi how are you and all I could offer was a half-baked Mona Lisa non-scowl. How could she know how are you is a dangerous questions today because I just might answer the truth, but what is the truth, the whole tru

I drove all the way to Kearny Mesa to scrub away my skin. To this place I’d been once. Years before with my mom for Mother’s Day. That reminded me the banya on the north side of the Fontanka I went to in Leningrad. In minus-thirty winter weather when my California skin wanted to unfreeze, feel warm. Or at least, alive. And after paying twenty kopecks for two hours of scrubbing with chunky grey salt and being beaten with birch branches, all while wearing a little felt cap so a

He says he is going on a meditation retreat, southern France, by way of Barcelona, the only flight he could get out. Why France, I ask, he doesn’t know just knows he wants to meditate, the young man who could be my son. I ask him if he’s heard of Thich Nhat Hahn and he says no, chuckles, says he’s new to this meditation-thing and asks who he is and I tell him about his village in France and his anti-war protests and his attempts to bring people together. To find peace. And he

It’s the Eucalyptus that gets me, grounds me. Takes me down into the dustiness of this lake. Two minutes from my high school, ten from home. Where we rented row boats and sunbathed covered in olive oil. Before we knew how stupid we were, and doused our hair with lemon juice, hoping for highlights on dark brown hair. Where I skipped rocks with my dad. Had picnics with the cousins, where the ducks sing a familiar symphony. Today, a sort of lullaby. And I cry, wipe tears on clot

We are all here. In one room, erev Pesach. I don’t miss the irony, leaving Egypt. Literally, fleeing Egypt with a plane ticket that says, mrmrs for my name and I wonder if anyone has a ticket with a name. But I am too afraid to ask and push the fear away like I’ve pushed away the need to pee for already half a day. Too afraid to lose a place in the dozen or more lines I’ve waited in today. Thirsty because the last liquid I drank was before my 4am departure in the car. We are

I collapse into her arms, my mama who birthed me and though I tower over her and have babies of my own, I feel a sort reentry to the womb. And I cry tears I have been holding in, afraid the sound of myself would deafen me to the sirens that save me. And two hours later in what is her night and maybe my tomorrow but day three of my journey I don’t remember what day it is, we are sitting at the kitchen table where she would feed little me oatmeal with brown sugar and butter but

That's the third cup of coffee I’ve had to dump,  I say to my neighbor with the grey wool beret coming back from the shelter time number who remembers, and it’s only a little after seven and he says he doesn’t make coffee at home, he goes to the café around the corner, the one with books and good sandwiches, next to the pizza place and I say I can’t wait for a café, I need coffee first thing, after maybe three hours of sleep if I’m lucky. He nods and we drag our somnambulisti

It’s 7:02 am and my husband asks if I want tea, our usual time but what is usual these days, I say and ask if we can have tea this afternoon, I want to leave early, give myself time, because you never know and he nods, always supportive, and just as I slip on my boots because the weather looks like rain— sirens. Of course, what did I think, good I’m dressed, I think, still enough time to make it, I think and make my way across the street, but something today feels off. More o

My friend in America texts me, how are you today, and and I laugh to myself. Today. Too big a time. I reflect on a response, sitting on a bench in the sun. Nearly thirty minutes before class. But you never know these days. How long anything will take. Cooking a meal. Or walking to dance—the one thing I do in the day. I’m listening to banjo. Which   feels out of place. Which is exactly what I seek and I think about my friend’s question. And just then I hear a siren and turn of

it’s the little things that pull, that punch, leave a black hole, cold questions with no answers, today on the way, empty playgrounds sidewalks previously spilling over with puppies and parents with strollers and scooter zooming too fast, not today, not for many days, and this morning or was it night running to the shelter, looking for the lady with the dog staying at her boyfriend’s apartment because his shelter is better, absent, and I worry the worst—did the dog die? or di

Sitting in the sun   I said I’ll sit in the sun to the lady, she said ok, the lady who takes our names before dance, it’s the small things like a moment of sun and a few hours of sleep, we have to seize and she says she agrees and smiles and I lean against the cream-colored stucco, slide my back down, tilt my head to the sun, momentarily free from clouds, perfectly positioned to shine on me, at this moment everything is ok, whatever ok means, I have lost any sense of strong a

She says her name is Ayelet, the woman in the shop selling the pink scarf, all silky and flowy. The color of happy smiley baby cheeks and morning summer skies. And hope. I enter the   shop on my way home. My first time in a week,  beyond a radius of seven-and-a-half minutes, the time it would take me to run to the miklat. But today I risked it all to dance, walked the forty-five minutes to my favorite neighborhood and down my favorite street with blue and pink doors and purpl

He brings a bag of lemons, the neighbor from next door most times, in a plastic bag with a smile, offers the grapefruit-size lemons to everyone sitting on these chairs, a hodge podge collection of patio chairs, tiny wooden ones from a child’s playroom, with stickers and jewels, pink and red, canvas camping chairs, barstools, always enough, even if there aren’t enough, like last night when the neighbors hosted a Shabbat dinner and their guests came down with glasses of wine an

This has been a hard couple of days for many of us. When I struggle, reach peak-disregulation, I write. And writing isn't always pretty. I don't always write what I would love to read. Or see. I can't always write a bouquet of roses, because in that moment of disregulation I am anything but a bouquet of roses. So, my little hope is that these not so pretty words, though true, might speak to your heart. If not, disregard. I'm all for self-care--honoring and prioritizing your n

Lot   Where a man’s wound is, that is where his genius will be. -Robert Bly   I’m telling my mom about an art exhibition I went to last week. About Lot’s wife and the war and looking back. And she asks if she ever told me her story about Lot’s wife. And I say no and she chuckles and says that she doesn’t know how or when but somehow she got it in her little girl head that Lot’s wife was none other than Lady Liberty, that Bronze Statue in New York, the symbol of America, a gif

She talks about a thread and it’s a teaching I’ve heard before but today. Today it enters my lungs. My fascia. I see the sea to my right, clear sight after days of Sahara dust, by which I mean decades of dust of the mind. Find the thread from the hip to the knee, she says and she’s talking body and I’m thinking life. I’m thinking of this exact moment—8:51am. Monday, February 16, 2026. The day I turn 56, the thread all the threads that have brought me to this moment. Which is

When, between two books, the quieting sky appears, or merely a patch of earth at evening—rejoice… Ranier Maria Rilke     I’m trying to trace it                                 back. There must be a defining event—an event horizon! That moment when it all went awry— balagan. But try as I might with a mind notyetawake there is nothing I can find, no epiphany, awakening, no destination no combination words           make                   it                      worse. I’m with