I missed the film Chocolat when it ran the theaters in 2000, so just recently first saw it on video at home. I was enchanted, as the film intends me to be. To my mind, it’s a story about incarnational joy—and the transformative power of the generous dispersal of the luscious in our lives. For…

In a photograph from her recent wedding, my friend Tara stands on one side of the empty dance floor. On the other, Bryan, her groom, leans forward in his chair. Tara is about to reach out her hand in a gesture of invitation. No doubt about it—he’s ready to respond. Their gazes are locked in…

The wisteria was succulent and blue last spring when I met an older colleague, a woman I am prone to revere, for lunch at Dupont Circle’s Iron Gate Inn. Iron Gate is a restaurant I had passed and peered into, wondering what it would be like to eat a meal under its trellis of climbing…

Tempting as it is, I mostly resist the urge to sacralize my preferences and hallow my velleities. So while I’ve heard that looking “deep” into Dark Side of the Moon will reveal a kind of religious experience stated in an inverse way, I can only reply: “But looking at it in another, more realistic way,…

Writers try not to repeat themselves, except when they mean to. Poetic forms such as the pantoum and villanelle use deliberate repetition to powerful effect. Sometimes, however, unintended repetitions emerge in the course of a story, essay or series, revealing unsuspected themes or buried urgencies. In that way, writing becomes discovery, like an archaeologist digging…

Writers try not to repeat themselves, except when they mean to. Poetic forms such as the pantoum and villanelle use deliberate repetition to powerful effect. Sometimes, however, unintended repetitions emerge in the course of a story, essay or series, revealing unsuspected themes or buried urgencies. In that way, writing becomes discovery, like an archaeologist digging…

When a man asks a question about something important, he is doing something important. Let the man ask the question. Help him, if possible, to answer it. Whatever you do, don’t parry, obfuscate, or otherwise stifle the question. I make these observations in light of Levi Asher’s comments on the blog, Literary Kicks (which, incidentally,…

Last week, on what felt like the last day of summer, I walked into my soon-to-be-demolished backyard. It’s a beautiful place, and the realization of its imminent demise provoked an unexpected surge of emotion. My wife Anne and I pay very low rent on a wonderful 1920s house in Shoreline, Washington, and every morning we…

My husband Ben just started his third year of medical school: running the gauntlet of twenty-six-hour shifts, cranky surgeons, and “pimping” on the rounds—the crude term for masochistic bedside Q&A sessions. Meanwhile, back at home, the brutal schedule has required yet another consideration of how we share domestic duties. I wasn’t alive when Peggy Lee…

It’s a horrible thing to be stranded within your native tongue when no one around you shares it. The mind rages at its helplessness. In such situations, rhetorical matters are irrelevant: the niceties of tropes and figures, the arrangement of thoughts, the cadence of delivery—all useless. We can even feel as though we move among…