On TikTok witchcraft, chaos magic, seals and symbols, Hebrew letters, and mystical prayers.

My sister and I started a small business, selling vintage items. It's helping us after being laid off and facing the death of our parents.

On staying connected when so much around us feels like it’s falling apart.

On learning to pray in sign language, the animal hum within, and telling stories in sound.

I LEARNED TO PRAY in American Sign Language. Hear, O, Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One. To cup a hand near the ear. To make the shape of an O. To wave my pinky finger near the top of my...

A DAY WITHOUT POWER: If you’ve lived even a few hours without electricity, you know that it doesn’t take long for the dystopian doom to dominate, for the agitation and rage to seep in to spoil...

“Did I mock the dreamer in my mother and then insult her for having no dreams?” ​— Deborah Levy,  The Cost of Living

THE AWARD GOES TO me for eating a roasted sweet potato with cottage cheese for breakfast! Such a practical meal, so healthy, so tasty, so real. I’ve already told you my current feelings on...

On brief encounters and the the obsessions they spark.

AWAITING FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS from God is a decent approach, but not if you must subsist on apples alone in the meantime. We find these psychological evaluations of ourselves before our minds fully...

On celebrating birthdays, memories that migrate, and timeless advice.

MY FLING WITH MORINGA began with a man named Mustapha, who planted hundreds of these trees on his farm and waxed poetic about their healing powers as a superfood that grew abundantly—and quite...

ASK ME ABOUT letting go–going through your dead mother’s epic antique and vintage collection is a crash course in decision-making that forces you to slice through the illusion of sentimentality....

TRAVELING BACK in time to pick myself up from Zanzibar is not the kind of writing I wanted to do for the rest of my life. But when I count the years I lived there and the hours and days since,...

INSIDE THE ANTIQUE SHOP, a robed man with a round belly sneezed.  “Al-hamdulillah!” I said, looking up from a dusty shelf of brass coffee pots.   “Are you Muslim?” he asked.  “No,” I...

A WALK IN THE WOODS always makes me think of Sinead O’Connor, how she got lost while riding a borrowed bike through suburban forest paths and finally found her way out to make a call from a payphone a...

HEARING PAUL SIMON sing, “hello, darkness, my old friend…” the other night at Ravinia was pure soul medicine, a jolt of nostalgia, ribbons of memory wafted in the atmosphere as he sang. I lay...

On stepping off the horizontal timeline of clocks and calendars and into the "intuition of the instant."

SUN SINGED my skin for a story once while chasing octopus hunters in Zanzibar. They used to hunt them too early, before the octopus had time to reproduce, so the hunters agreed to close the seas for.....

GROCERY LISTS are acts of love. On the fridge, my daddy’s lists still hang from magnet clips in his signature ink, black with red underlines. The red marks the details that mattered most: he wants...

SHE SLEEPS FLAT on her back with the sound of a man’s voice leading her through a meditation. It’s a low, deep drone that lets her fall asleep before she ever reaches the Akashic records. Hey, I...

MAKE A LIST when you’re lost and it’ll guide you back to the point of things, to steer yourself in a direction meant to delight you. When I walk our dog, I often ask him, “Which way, which...

WRAPPED IN A FLAG of red, white and blue, I sat on the floor of the little den, going through my mom’s closet after she died. We were sorting through all her sewing stuff and fabrics, in a moment...

A DREADED MESSAGE arrived this morning in my inbox—a message about a handmade terracotta jug that broke in transit from Skokie to Madison. How sad! How tragic. I'd wrapped it so carefully, first in...

A knock at the door, a miniature gold address book, a rest stop on the road.

JUNE IS THE LONGEST month. Inside these days are celebrations and revelations, book launches and staunch speeches and birthday parties and Father’s Day brunches, and pizza on the front porch with...

MY MOTHER RETURNED from the dead in a dream the other night. She appeared at the door and told me she needed a place to sleep and asked to come inside. I told her we thought she had died. I panicked.....

I HAVE NO CHILDREN, which leaves me time on a Sunday morning to contemplate how the day might unfold on my own terms, which feels like a victory and a blessing. I’m glad no one asks me anymore...

THIS MORNING, I have no memories and no thoughts taking my attention, but if I start to mention one, I’ll realize that’s not entirely true. The basement sink is still full of water and it may...

ENTERING THE TEMPLE was decided on a whim while driving down Sheridan Road with my boyfriend yesterday. The two of us like to drive around the suburbs up north, winding our way down the leafy roads...

When you're gone but you never left and you'll leave again before you return.

REALITY TV SHOWS aren’t real but I didn’t learn this until I appeared in one when I was living in Zanzibar. Let me explain. This was back when I was dating Ali, a local man who liked to call...

OUR LADY OF EXPECTATION—patron saint of storms—stares at me from the wall near my desk. I have a postcard image of her wearing a hot pink spray-painted cloak, a golden crown of glory. We’ve...

ASTROLOGICAL STORMS defined this most recent “auspicious” transit for me—not necessarily the cosmic invitation for ease and grace that all the astrologers promised. They say the conjunction...

Join me for Slow Savor, a four-part generative writing series I'm leading online this summer June-September 2026.

A BOAT RIDE to Pemba nearly threw me overboard. The sea rose high and furious, and all of us passengers were tossed around like dolls with loose limbs and empty grins. I crouched down, rested my head....

THE SELF IS A SPELL cast daily upon waking. The self as a series of tasks strung together to make a necklace of memories, referenced later for the bending and the taking. A therapist once told me...

DARE I SAY I’ve been to Paris, when I was only nineteen and broke and couldn’t afford a single meal at an actual restaurant? I took a bus there with Marla, an American friend who was living in...

TO RECALL AN EXPERIENCE is to alter it. The observer effect, in quantum physics. An unobserved experience exists in every possible state at once. An observed experience collapses out of its wave and.....

SAINT MARJANE! I am deeply saddened by the death of one of my favorite writers and creative thinkers, Marjane Satrapi. The Iranian writer and filmmaker had a huge influence on my writing life. I had.....

GOD MADE THE WORLD from nothing but the nothingness shines through, according to Paul Valéry via the professor in Transcription , by Ben Lerner, whose latest book boggles the brain. The way time...

MY METALLIC BRAIN makes it hard to remember anything. I wake up sometimes feeling like a cold wind is blowing through my head. I sense a dull ache in my teeth, too, which keeps me vigilant to pain as....

On working with metaphors, talking to ourselves, and ever-expanding consciousness.

On working with metaphors, talking to ourselves, and ever-expanding consciousness.

A BLUE MOON IN SAGITTARIUS—I accept this exceptional celestial invitation to release and reset—the astrologers say this could be just the right moment to practice radical honesty and it’s all...

TALKING TO MYSELF is a habit I picked up when I was little. I did it both ways—as a direct address—a parental voice-- you can do this, Amanda , kind of voice—but also in third person, as if...

Slow Savor is a four-part generative writing series that takes place online June-September 2026.