...and then...

One: Last year during my trip to Botswana, a local woman did a double take after hearing me speak. "Where are you from?" she asked. "US," I said. "Agh!" She perked with surprise. "You look like Botswana woman. You have Botswana fi-gaah." Two: Arriving in Botswana this year, the customs agent droned her questions: nature of visit, number of days, country of residence, country of birth. Hearing me say "USA" twice, I noticed that she hovered above a thought before deciding to speak it aloud. "You look African." I thanked her and asked what would distinguish an African woman from a black American woman. "Your fee-chaas," she said, using an index finger to make a circular motion around her face. I thanked her again, smiling. Three: Chatting with my hosts as we were leaving a cafe, I overheard two ladies comment as we passed their table about being surprised at my accent (funny. me. from Wisconsin. with a...

It's astonishing how regularly my life compass swings back to hover and twitch above the idea of Permission. (Clearly, with a capital P.) I mean, how many times must I relearn a sharp lesson, like how many shakes of red pepper is too many for the sauce or how this wannabe shortcut fails into a one way street or how the spindling seed of every liberating decision in the past 10 years has been to grant myself permission to be good and kind to myself? To honor my gifts. Pursue my dreams. Expect exceptional love. Splurge every now and again. Prune my inner circle of brush and thorns. Speak my truth, always. Be good and kind to me for no reason at all. I've had the "Permission" conversation with myself to release the internal tension all these things have produced. For more than a decade, for instance, writing anything that hadn't been commissioned or wasn't being shaped expressly for the stage felt selfish and indulgent with so many emails to check, laundry to ...

When you start referring to your new protagonist like a colleague you're hoping to connect with for lunch, this is how you know you’ve found your next story. That’s how I know, anyway. For months, I’d been sending lunch invitations to a character I’d met in a short story. He was a young boy then, and I wanted to know what his story might become. How did he recover? What was that thing churning in his chest? Would he be chasing life or evading death? I couldn’t know. From our brief exchange, the only thing I was certain of was that he was quiet, observant, and deeply affected by the scenario I’d written him into.  I was eager to finish his story, but he would not come. He wouldn't even give me his name! I thought, maybe, I needed to speak of him out loud in order to make him Pinocchio-real. I thought, maybe, I should start another story to coax him from my mind’s shadowed alcoves. I thought, maybe, he wanted me to sit patiently at my laptop and wait. Once, I ...

A mournful black sky stretches in dutiful silence Contracted for a millennium to canvas the night To drape an infinite stage To withstand the urgent infernos fastened to its darkness The stars hiss and crackle in their banter Impetuous in their spinning Precocious in their tumble and games of chase A mournful black sky stretches in dutiful silence The stars dance shamelessly, anyway

I'm reordering letters in my head, deciding the optimal combination for describing the sound below me. Thoomp. Thwump. Thmp. I'm in the tub: candles, lavender salt, merlot, ear buds, the whole nine. When the soundtrack plays itself out, I nestle deeper into the warmth, calm and, now, the quiet. Thrump. Almost immediately, I hear the sound of water dripping. Dripping steady and boldly where it shouldn't. Beneath me, beneath the tub, beneath the sub floor, I'm listening to the metered threat of a pipe leaking from my second floor bathroom onto the first floor ceiling. In breaking news fashion, my daughter comes upstairs to report that water is, in fact, leaking onto the floor outside her bedroom. "It's coming through that panel," she said sleepily. "Y'know, where they fixed the pipes before...?" "Yes, Baby," I said. "Thank you." Whhoum. Thomp. Ahmp. The heavy pulse of the water coursed my thoughts into ominou...

What could be more innocuous than a light bulb? Sure, its discovery careened the Industrial Revolution into hyper drive but, at the end of a modern day, it's just a light bulb. The heart of the porch light. The glow filling the lamp shade above my reading chair. A box to check off on my next trip to the store. The light bulb. Who would imagine there was a cartel in its history? Well, there is. In 1924, several of the world's leading manufacturers met in Geneva to hammer out a pact: they would produce inferior products. Specifically, each company agreed to engineer bulbs with shorter life spans. Prior to this convening, light bulbs burned for up to 2,500 hours. By 1930, bulbs around the world lasted for a mere 1,000 hours. The Phoebus cartel, as they named themselves, was comprised of seven companies hailing from six different countries (General Electric included). This tiny consortium authorized themselves to redesign the industry landscape with the express goal of increa...