What does life become when the world no longer sees you? — It was like she was invisible. Seated on a stoop in an Italian piazza, the passing crowds ignored her completely. Perhaps some thought she was a street person down on her luck, but actually, she was part of my tour group. In the photo she’s making a silly face, having…

The things that keep me above water — I was in the cemetery once when I saw a woman crying. She was holding a bouquet of flowers and kneeling on the grass beside a gravestone. She caressed the side of the gravestone like you’d caress a loved one’s face. …

How to reinvent your dreams — Little boys often want to be like their fathers. Such was the case with my Dad. He longed for a military career like his father, Colonel John J. R. Weiss. Dad loved reading about history, especially the battles and wars that shaped our world.

Remnants of the past keep their spirit alive — When the mechanics said it would cost over 7K to fix my son’s truck, I thought of my father’s jade ring. I’m not proud of the moment. But then, it had been an expensive few months. We sold our big house and pool to move to a slightly smaller house…

Seasons are important because they are inevitable — Nick Cave was only 19 years old when his father died in a car crash. In an article for The New York Times Magazine, Cave said, “I was unconscious of the effect of grief entirely when my father died. I don’t think I had any understanding of what was going…

The case for simplicity in an age of excess — Every weekend you’ll find me and the kitten tucked away in my study. Our older cat used to join us, but he grew bored with my monastic habits and prefers chattering at bulbous quail pecking for seeds outside the family room window. …

How do you not waste your life? — Sometimes it takes a grave diagnosis, unexpected tragedy, or unfortunate turn of events to shake us out of our quotidian stupor. In the exquisitely sad film Living, actor Bill Nighy plays a joyless civil servant named Rodney Williams who works in the bureaucratic morass of the public works department. …

Eternity itself transcending time and space — It’s not often that a sense of magic and ethereal serenity blesses your existence, but when it does, time evaporates and you become the center of the universe. It happened to me years ago in Idaho, where I was invited to a week-long painting salon in early Spring with renowned…

But power without love darkens the soul — The apartments were in the low-income part of town. Open-air parking garages sat below the apartments, full of delapidated cars, boxes, cans, plastic bags, and debris. In one corner, an umber skid mark led to a discarded diaper, partially stuck to the cement wall. It was dark. My partner and…