The View from a Drawbridge

Tag: experience

  • A Unique Point of View

    I met a delightful young lady the other day who sees the world quite differently than most of us do. All the letters and numbers she sees have colors. Even more fascinating: for her, letters have personalities. She doesn’t like to put certain letters side by side because “they don’t get along.” But she has…

  • Frozen Moss and Other New Experiences

    I recently spent a silly amount of time walking around on the frozen moss in my front yard. It makes the kind of satisfying crunch sound that you usually only get from really high-end granola. You can feel it radiating up through the soles of your shoes. And the light sparkles off it like diamonds.…

  • Outgrowing

    As a child, one of the hardest things for me was the experience of outgrowing things that I loved. Favorite sweaters. Child-sized furniture. Extremely sugary foods. Certain rides at the state fair. The kid’s menu at Howard Johnson’s. No one likes change. And if I loved something, I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t love it…

  • Complacency

    When someone gets hurt on a drawbridge and it’s determined that it’s the bridgetender’s fault, you’d think it would be a newbie who was at the controls. But no. It’s almost always an operator who has been on the job for many years. If anything, someone new to the job tends to be hypervigilant. When…

  • Shame, in Retrospect

    I know a few people who are embarrassed about the way they lived in the past. Conservatives who once were hippies (Personally, I don’t see the shame in being a hippy, but to each his own), peace activists who served in times of war, survivors of multiple marriages, former cult members who have since come…

  • I Am Not Who I Was Yesterday

    It’s been an eventful week. I won’t bore you with the details. Suffice it to say that it has served to remind me that we are all the sum total of our unique life experiences. That being the case, since we experience life every single day, that means that we are each slightly different than…

  • Filling in the Blanks

    I’ve been thinking a lot about how often I color my world with details that are not based on fact. It’s like my head is filled up with bee pollen, and if you aren’t already thickly coated with the stuff, I’ll be happy to sprinkle some all over you. Nature abhors a vacuum, and so…

  • The Book in You

    I find humans to be fascinating creatures. No two are completely alike, even if they’re identical twins. Each one is shaped by different life experience. Every single one dresses differently, looks unique, reacts to things in his or her own special way. To paraphrase Forrest Gump, people are like boxes of chocolate. You never know…

  • “Friends Make the Best Lovers.”

    A friend of mine, in her late 70’s, said that to me the other day. My first inward reaction was shock. I mean… she’s old. She shouldn’t be thinking like that! But the older I get, the more I realize what a crazy notion that is. Why do we think that age turns one into…

  • The Fine Art of Begging

    Recently I racked up $9,000.00 in debt by moving 3100 miles across country to start my life over after a series of setbacks that, frankly, are becoming too boring to even discuss. Everybody has problems, right? But a friend suggested I do a crowdfunding campaign through the Indiegogo website to help me get my head…