Archives

Category: Books and Writing
  • Ending Notes

    Ending Notes

    Am I obsessed with death? Perhaps. Any of my friends will tell you that I am deeply aware of the passage of time whether it’s mere moments or long ago futures. I am always thinking ahead and looking back. Planning and remembering. That’s who I am. I can’t help it. One of my goals this…

    Read the full post

  • Books I Should Finish

    Books I Should Finish

    I don’t mean finish reading. I mean finish writing. A couple days back, I was looking for a file that I am sure I started a couple months back. Was it on my computer? In the cloud? I poked around both spaces. First I discovered that I am really bad at filing my work. I…

    Read the full post

  • Death and memories

    Death and memories

    Taking time to remember a person is how I grieve. This may not be the most classic way to process grief, but it works well for me and is influenced strongly by two books: The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier. In this book, a plague has wiped out all but one woman…

    Read the full post

  • NaNoWriMo 2023

    NaNoWriMo 2023

    It seems like every few years, I sign up for NaNoWriMo. Write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days? Sure! I “won” in 2010 with my YA novel, 9 Point Plan, and failed in 2004 and 2018. So maybe 2023 will be a winner. UNLABELLED is a hero(ine)’s journey – a coming of age book…

    Read the full post

  • Ishida Tetsuo and the Bird-Tailed Chisel

    Ishida Tetsuo and the Bird-Tailed Chisel

    In the long-ago time when Edo was founded, there was a stone carver called Ishida Tetsuo. He came from a long line of quarrymen who lived on the Boso Peninsula, where stone was pulled from the mountains and turned into building blocks for the new capital city. He apprenticed with his father, who had left…

    Read the full post

  • Wonder 2022

    Wonder 2022

    It came to me this morning, and settled solidly as the correct word after I had tried on and discarded dozens of candidates. WONDER will guide me in 2022. I considered rise, set, learn, blossom, build, act. They are all good, but none quite felt like the right next step after 2021’s ‘observe.’ Observe was…

    Read the full post

  • Teaching Community Yoga, a book

    Teaching Community Yoga, a book

    I started teaching yoga when I moved out of Tokyo in 2015. At first, I held a weekly class at Satoyama Design Factory, and then a daily class at Monaka, and from the start of the pandemic, a daily morning class via Zoom. Today is Day 415 of the Zoom yoga class – I haven’t…

    Read the full post

  • Yoga Poetry

    Yoga Poetry

    Created by Toshiko, Mamiko, Naomi and me during a Friday morning session.

    Read the full post

  • Observe 2021

    Observe 2021

    Although I embarked on my theme word selection in November, when I was planning and teaching the first of three sessions of “One Little Word” for Drawing Meditations, it took me until today to finally decide that this year’s word is OBSERVE. It’s the word I started with, but on reflection in the workshops my…

    Read the full post

  • Eye on Intruders

    Eye on Intruders

    [This was written during a workshop on Memory, Identity and Magical Realism run by my talented sister, Jenny Hill, at ActsofJennius.com. I highly recommend exploring the offerings there. In this assignment we altered a photograph that had a specific memory associated, and then wrote about the altered version.] Eye On Intruders “Alert, Alert! Interlopers! Intruders!,”…

    Read the full post