I love graveyards. I try to visit them whenever I am traveling in a new city. Often they are more beautiful than the city parks and they are always, without fail, worth the price of admission (free). In Durham, I sometimes run through the historic antebellum Maplewood Cemetery, set on a grassy knoll on the…

In this there is no measuring with time, a year doesn’t matter, and ten years are nothing. Being an artist means: not numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn’t force its sap, and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterward summer may not come. It does come. But…

[Spoiler alert: the following has nothing to do with a dog. My daughter won't read it if it involves a dog. She claims that in every book and movie that has a dog character in it, the dog always dies in the end - particularly in Stephen King novels. For her sake and ours, this…

I run for many reasons but mostly I run to find myself. I run to meet myself somewhere down the road. Every day I go out empty and unmotivated with the slimmest of hopes that something new will happen. Like with yoga and the practice of breathing into spaces of the mind/body and letting the…

On the phone the other day my sister Kath asked me if I had made any friends in Zug. I laughed. Aside from some work people and our relocation consultant next door, and the building's janitor, who is Czech - no, not really. It's a slow process. It's not that people aren't extremely friendly, they…

On our trip to Italy we took the train through Provence and spent a night in Nice, France. The countryside in this region is everything you would imagine at this time of year - endless fertile hills painted with Spring's green growth. Looking out the train window it resembles a neat patchwork quilt of color.…

This week we are in Italy. Mac has some work to do in the small town of Frosinone, and on the way we spent two nights in Rome just for the heck of it. I love Rome. I don't think of myself as a big city gal, but since the first time we visited many…

Being in a foreign city, surrounded by non-English speakers (I know, don't lecture me), a large chunk of my day is spent alone. This is fine, even preferable most of the time. Especially since I'm a bit of a loner and a stubborn introvert. But this week I've stalled a little - attempting to churn…

The farmland here is literally breaking open with Spring. The earth's crust resembles brownies from the oven - the top is chocolatey-cracked and dry, but moist with deep, dark richness beneath. So different from the red clay tobacco fields back home. These fields are amazingly fertile and robust furrows, patiently waiting for seed. Today I…

This past week I've had a few brown days -- not the blues-- not too terribly sad, but brown. A friend once met an ex -boyfriend of mine and later when I asked for her impression of him, she described him as "brown" -- meaning his aura was brown. I knew exactly what she meant.…

Sunday was cold and wet, with languid flakes of icy snow/slush coming down. Mac left the apartment around 9 am to bike around the lake and I procrastinated, checking e-mail, doing dishes, etc. Finally got my butt out the door and slogged a 6 mile run, and when I got back a little before noon,…

We are staying in an apartment building smack dab in the middle of the nerve center of Zug. I could throw a ball from the 4th floor terrace and hit the train station. You can hear the trains come and go, but it's a fast whooshing sound, not too terrible. I love to stand at the…

Naturally, travel is all about identity - what we call ourselves - our "tag". We carry our labels around to define ourselves in strange lands. They are shorthand tickets for understanding us. In the U.S. we are generally labeled based on work, how we make an income. This is problematic for me. I don't have…

Off piste: backcountry skiing on un-groomed and unmarked slopes or pistes, including unmonitored and often out-of-bounds areas.  Lewis's week here with us went by so fast. Mac was in Rome the first several days, so it was just the two of us, finding our way in these early days in a new country. One morning…

"A journey is like marriage.  The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it."   John Steinbeck So, let's get this out of the way, from the start. I have Bipolar 2. So I am high maintenance. And not in that makeup, hair, appearance way. More in that "highly sensitive" way, that…