Soapbox
A stratigraphic life, the anarchy of #now
I collect rocks. Size is irrelevant. I love medium-sized metamorphics as much as barely-there agates and volcanic bombs. Collection criterion is three-fold: an ability to represent provenance geologically, strength (as in an absence of friability; they can’t crumble in my pocket or backpack), and distinctive looks (a little crystal pop, a ruggedly weathered surface, a…
A Play within a Play within a Play (plus vomit)
Earlier this past year, we went to a local production of Venus in Fur at the Portland Center Stage. It’s a play about a playwright struggling to adapt the classic novella, Venus in Furs (by Sacher-Masoch). The literary work is famous for exploring some dark themes, including sadomasochism, and the play — a kind of…
Volcanoes got me writing
And coal, too. That combined with an existential moment in a swimming pool, but most of all it was because of love. I started out my professional life as a geologist, and that’s where I unexpectedly cut my writing teeth. Turned out I was good at translating scientific jargon into common language. I wrote about…
Left behind: On death and estate sales
I realized this weekend that we are all going to die. Not immediately, at least in most cases, but certainly at some point in the not-too-distant future, unless science makes some giant leaps in the next few decades or the singularity happens faster than predicted, we are going to die. It’s not exactly an earth-shaking…
Queasy rider: voyage of the damned
Or, how I met the vomit whisperer Kathleen and I just got back from a vacation in Kauai. We shouldn’t have gone. We’re very close to re-releasing an “author’s cut” of The Cowboy and the Vampire: A Very Unusual Romance, with a slick new cover, and a second edition of The Cowboy and the Vampire:…