I’m close to launching my new novel. It’s still a type of historical fiction, but this time I’m not going back 400 years—I’m slipping back 40,000 years!
Posts & Stories
Incrementalism
Like writing a novel. Or shoveling and raking twelve tons of gravel to create a new parking place.
Here’s my story…
Bobbing
Decades after my nine months of floating in mother’s amniotic fluid I still stay connected with water every chance I get. In addition to regular swimming I love to bob. What’s bobbing, you ask? For me, it’s a way to clear my mind and experience the exquisite benefits of water meditation.
Here’s how I do it and how you can, too, if you want to try…
The Sun & the Solstice
I like to sit on my front stoop (means “small porch,” originally from the Dutch stoep) and watch the sun arc its way through the seasons. Above is a morning view I captured the day before yesterday. Our recent snow had melted but you can see some frost on the grass.
Because my house faces east—we built it that way; it’s a feng shui thing—I get to contemplate the movement of the sun as it appears over the trees one notch to my right (north to south) each day, working its way to the Winter Solstice, which happens to be today. After December 21, the whole process reverses until the Summer Solstice is reached in June, and the whole cycle repeats. It’s my personal light show.
Water Magic
I learned to swim when I was six or seven. In Miami Beach.
Our family was on summer vacation at one of those big beachside hotels. The ones with the vast pools and cocktail bars. Not that I knew what a cocktail was. But the pool was awesome. For a small tot, it was a lake—giant and blue with funny drawings of fish on the bottom.
One day I was playing on the steps in the shallow end, and my Dad comes over and says: “It’s time you learned how to swim.”
36 years ago today…
Here’s what happened…