Six months into an interminable lockdown, I find myself missing the long dead. The throughline feels like a logical one – it’s a pandemic. Of course I’m thinking about death. Death and the post office. That took me slightly by surprise, even in a year where nothing has been what I’d imagined. I didn’t think…
Last week, my kitchen sink collapsed. It fell from the bolts that held it, as though in protest, as though it, too, had had enough of the endless dishes and cooking. I managed to catch the edge of it, sharp even through my yellow latex gloves, and held it up with my fingers and…
I’ve been staring at my computer a lot. If I do manage to type something, I will usually delete or loathe it by the day’s end. Writer’s block doesn’t really cover what I’m feeling, because it’s not really a block. A block implies something complete and impenetrable, and this isn’t. Someone recently said that writer’s…
I woke up this morning, our sixth week of sheltering-in-place, or maybe our seventh (I’ve lost count) and the days have started to run together in a way they never have before. I thought time only worked like that in memory. When I think of the summer after high school or Christmas breaks when I…
Social isolation has sort of felt like a break-up – a sensation that, after nearly 20 years with my husband, returns to me like a hazy, rotten memory. “Oh, this,” I think, as I pull myself out of bed, forgetting what day it is, and mash an OREO into my maw. “I remember this. It…
My city feels strangely still right now. I normally hear the sounds from the elementary school nearby, or people walking their dogs, the swish of cars driving by on the street. But it’s oddly quiet at the moment, the only sound the squawking from a few irritable crows whose life mission is to make sure…
Harvey Weinstein was found guilty today on some (but not all) of the charges brought against him by the state of New York. And I find this unbelievable, not because I believed in his innocence in any measure, but because I believe in the ability – as old as history and time itself – of…
People are always surprised when I tell them Rand and I don’t really celebrate Valentine’s Day. I mean, we used to. But dear lord, it was always so, so much, and it always felt a little weird and uncomfortable and forced, even if it lead to some of my favorite photos, ever: …
Every now and then I get a well-meaning email or Facebook message from a reader. I’ve noticed, they will write, and I can practically feel the gentle trepidation as they do so, that you seem to have fallen off the planet and are living the life of a hermit. And not even a *good* hermit? Like, you…
Tales of Food, Feminism, and Fury
by Geraldine DeRuiter
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