Anna Blake It’s the job of a hero to stand a strong wind, invincible against a dark sky, giving us pause to reflect on the sum of our inadequacies and hopes too precious to name. Could I be that strong, that resilient, with decades behind me and a dwindling future? She holds her ground, with steady eyes … Read more
Repeat after me: I’m only human. I’ll try to do better.
Editing the editing, and then when you’re done, edit some more.
The danger inside us.
How a horse greets us is his honest expression.
I was fifty-nine years old and someone had scribbled “Why should I care?” in thick red ink on my hard-fought 300-page manuscript. Not just once but every few pages. Wait, it gets better. I sold a saddle to pay for this! It started on Christmas Eve, my second least-favorite day of the year. I packed up … Read more
Interior travel
A holistic, interactive approach.
First, I watched Brentina’s retirement ceremony. Then Secretariat’s last race and Valegro’s final Olympia freestyle. Who doesn’t need to watch Aldrich’s one-tempi victory lap one more time? This part is embarrassing. I searched for a ridiculously sappy scene from that old movie, The Electric Horseman, where Redford sets the stallion free. It’s a kind of retirement, too, … Read more
It’s a moment of exquisite anxiety. The kind of anxiety that’s prickly and blunt at the same time, and you can’t see around it. One word at a time, it’s been an act of faith that you’ve come this far. You retreat, change a word here, and alter some punctuation there. You’ve lost count of … Read more