As every writer knows, home the key to our personal mythology. The name Rosebud emblazoned on a sled—a rich man’s vivid memory of childhood. Gatsby’s mansion in West Egg, a symbol of his endless striving for acceptance. Mrs. Dalloway’s musings on her soulless marriage, as she sets the table for
By Farwa Ali Graceful, veined hands turn the seashell over in reverent contemplation. A few moments later, artist Ann Arnold tosses the seashell back into the waves lapping against the sand at San Francisco’s Baker Beach. In the documentary, Wrestling The Angel – An Artist’s Passage, this shell accompanies Arnold through a
By Frank Calderale Time is a riddle that runs beneath the surface of our lives. We watch our infants grow into toddlers, pass through the long, blissful stretch of childhood, sun-drenched and happy, then endure the endless dramas and quandaries of adolescence. Our offspring are the center of our lives,
By L. John Harris Left: The Girl in Red, positioned where I found her at 35 Rue Guénégaud, Paris. Right: Photoshopped on a pile of discards as she was when I discovered her. From the moment I spied her leaning against a pile of junk on a Paris sidewalk, she
By Valerie Andrews More details Colored engraving after Modern Woman: Young Women Plucking the Fruits of Knowledge or Science (1893) by Mary Cassatt (1844-1926). Mural for the Woman’s Building at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, Illinois Dear Reader, This issue is about the healing power of home—how we learn
Music has saved my life. Not just listening, but the act of playing, the intimacy of running fingers over polished keys. Whatever concerns I bring to the piano vanish as I lose myself in stormy contrasts of a Beethoven sonata, the exuberance of a Chopin mazurka, the lighthearted skipping of a Bach bourrée. For me, the piano has been many things–a solace in time of loss, a playground for improvisation, a prelude to a state of grace.
As a boy, I would lie awake at night clutching a transistor radio in my hand, futzing with the metal clip antenna, wiggling my earphones so I could catch the thrill of the games played by our local baseball football, basketball, and hockey teams. On the wings of those voices from WJR in Detroit I flew, and as I heard those games unfold, my love for my hometown grew. In the simple act of rooting for my team, I was participating in a tradition that stretches all the way back to ancient Greece.
On a cold winter day many years ago, I stood looking out the back window of a historic house on a Connecticut village green that I had fallen in love with and wanted to own because of its enormous front windows and pleasing arrangement of rooms. All I could see from the window was a snowy yard stretching beyond an old carriage barn and out of sight—an empty expanse of shining snow sloping slightly to the west
“How can I take care of such a big backyard?” I worriedly asked the realtor.
I come from a country that doesn’t exist anymore. When my family and my native Yugoslavia were broken into pieces by a brutal civil war, I was exiled from my soul. This is the story of my healing, and how I learned that home is nowhere and everywhere because we carry it in our wild hearts.