I’m cooking up chorizo on the stovetop. Chorizo from… Gilroy. I was hoping to see the name of some quaint (or at least quaint-sounding) Portuguese village on the label, but no, this chorizo is from our very own Gilroy, California, by way of Costco. The fact that it’s from the U.S. makes me trust it less, I’m afraid. I don’t trust many of the foodstuffs here, where shareholder satisfaction is more exalted than, God forbid, a person’s health or wellness.

That’s just a fact of life in this country.

But that’s not what this essay is about. This essay is…

Friday afternoon, I launched myself from my desk, driven by a restlessness in my body and an urgent command inside me to move. I’ve suffered from a painful, tight right shoulder for more than two months now. I can’t get the muscle between my shoulder and my neck — the trapezius, I believe — to let go for the life of me. It’s my body, rebelling, as my body always has, when I need to stop, look around, and assess. …

Ephemera. What a great word. What does it mean? Upon a brief search, I learn it’s from the Greek ephemeros, meaning “lasting only one day, short-lived.” I think of it as even shorter than one day. It’s all of those things that flit across one’s consciousness, or experience, or field of view. Those intangibles, those vague, abstruse, or subtle feelings that are so faint, so light, they are only the barest palimpsest of our experience. Something that, if you blink, you will miss, like the little morning bird that just flitted past my window. Like the breeze now pushing the…

There are songs that hurt. They hurt a lot.

And I’m not sure what it means that they do, or what I’m to do about it, if anything.

One of these songs, however, I have managed to re-filter through my adult self and come to love on my own terms. Now, it is one of my favorite songs. It no longer devastates me, though it always makes me wistful.

That song is Killing Me Softly, by Roberta Flack. I have the distinct memory of being a very young child in the loft of a snow cabin in the Lake Tahoe…

In his article today, Michael Burg, MD invited me to respond to the question, How do you cope with stress and anxiety? Good question. Not very well historically, I’m afraid.

Before we do a deep dive, however, let’s look at that word “cope.” To cope is to “deal effectively with something difficult.” Effectively, of course, is the operative word. Therefore, I won’t tell you about all of the counter-productive things I do when I am stressed or awash in anxiety, all the ways I succumb, the ways I let it drive me, the ways I flail and flounder. I may…

This is interesting. It reminds me of a literature teacher I had in college who said, "When you think you're done with your paragraph or essay, force yourself to write one more thing. That will often be the most dazzling or important or insightful sentence.

This is interesting. It reminds me of a literature teacher I had in college who said, "When you think you're done with your paragraph or essay, force yourself to write one more thing. That will often be the most dazzling or important or insightful sentence.

My friend S. sent me an invitation to Clubhouse a couple of weeks ago. I had never heard of this eleven-month old audio social network, but was game. By accepting the invitation, I was granted two invitations I could in turn forward to friends. I sent one to my son and one to my friend E., who’s usually ahead of me on these new-fangled tech platforms.

Her reply was, “Seriously? Isn’t it full of tech bros?” Later, she said, “I’m afraid of Clubhouse. It’s all the rage with the tech VCs and blockchain people.”

I’m not sure that’s still the…