Writing and Photos
This is not the thing. This is not the story of the thing. This is the story of the story of the thing. This is one whole year of new adventures large and small, written out and posted here. Now begins the pause in this particular path. For the rest of the year I'll be... Continue Reading →
Here, nearly a full year into this personal challenge project, it's become clear that there are stages I go through most weeks. 1. Decide on an activity I've never done before.
There have been plenty of challenges over the past year that have made me uncomfortable. That's largely the point. The nausea and nerves I get before stepping into the unknown come in varying degrees and qualities. Some are truly sickening because I know something important is about to be confronted. Some come with a smattering... Continue Reading →
After last week's torrent of anxiety which was conveniently followed up with a mini rollercoaster of hormones, I wasn't up for too much of a challenge this week. That meant heading south to Salem with one of my best friends to hit opening night of the Oregon State Fair. I'm not a fair person. Big... Continue Reading →
I've spent much of my life determined to stay away. By refusing to belong to anything, I felt safe from rejection. Over and over I either defined myself in opposition to some group or kicked myself out before someone else did. It wasn't the worst strategy, actually. I've never had a tribe, but I've always... Continue Reading →
I have written about my relationship to dance before (here) - from dancing to Martin Denny as a child to longing for the grace of dance in my body as a girl to settling in as an occasional observer of dance as an adult. Taking an actual dance class has been on my list of... Continue Reading →
Clay is good. So is cheap gold paint. So is a tarp spread over the coffee table and some Always Sunny in Philadelphia on in the background. So is the knowledge that the crafts the two of us will make are for children. They won't be discerning. They'll only care that, on one of the... Continue Reading →
"This is a humming, buzzing world; we live in the midst of the ceaseless murmur of lives, a world of strange things whispering the poems of old Buddhas." --Sallie Tisdale This week I craved quiet. Maybe it's the heat wave we've been in, the building up to it, the sweltering in it and then, hopefully,... Continue Reading →
I've committed to several different physical challenges over the years ostensibly for the sake of health, strength and not wanting to buy new pants. That said, I'm not sure how many of them would have happened without this blog. My first challenge to walk to Mt. Tabor every day might have become a walk every... Continue Reading →
I have tried to be a daily writer. I have tried to be a sporadic, do-it-when-I-feel-like-it writer. I have paid lots of money to study the art/craft of writing and I've given up writing altogether, vowing to never spend a dime or an hour on it again. Has any of this worked? What does working... Continue Reading →
If my last trip was about sky, space and love, then the trip I just finished was about water, light and love. This week I turned south instead of east and rolled through almost 800 miles to Ashland, OR and back, Sean and I working our way through a series of new adventures. First, there... Continue Reading →
Three nights and four days in the wide eastern stretches of Oregon is too big for one post. Because I've never been east of Bend, let alone 250 miles east and south of it. Because I've never spent that amount of uninterrupted time
I was in elementary school the last time I went to a parade, the tiniest July 4th event in Boulder City, Nevada where my grandmother lived. I think there were clowns and Shriners. I think it was July 4th. I think it was a parade.
Many years ago, Sean and I binge-watched Jeeves and Wooster, the British tv-show based on P.G. Wodehouse's stories about an aristocrat and his butler. It's charming. No more, no less. Ever since, we have referred to this kind of show as "extremely mild entertainment."
This particular story is the one about the girl who hates sports and hates to sweat, the one where gyms smell like humiliation and playing fields smell like dread. This is about the mediocre swimmer, the same one who gets out of breath...
Everywhere in this city. The suicide of a man I didn't know, but was loved by someone I love. The stabbing of three men, two of whom died, on public transport not far from my neighborhood.
The morning we drove to Seattle the sun was not only up and out but strong, warming the air in a way that seemed impossible just a week or two ago. As we approached the city, my friend and I both dropped our jaws at the sight
What a strange process: The light and shade of a cheekbone, a book spine, a shoelace taken in by the eye to spark the brain. One spark then another, like a game of telephone down to the wrist and index finger.
Outside the Oregon State Hospital is a small brick building filled with shelves of old copper canisters. They contain the cremains of the hospital patients who were never collected. Some have labels. Some have splashes of bright green patina. All once contained ashy bits of bone.
What if this was bigger? What if I was bigger? And if not bigger, then gorgeous. Not lips, hips and hair gorgeous. But grand gorgeous. Splendid gorgeous.
I was going to attend four much-anticipated readings this week. I was going to dive in and bathe myself in language and the love of my community of writers, finally meeting some of the people I've only known on Facebook.
I love gardens, but I'm not a gardener and I don't want to become one. It's taken me the full 15+ years I've owned this house to get around to tending to the patch of weedy lawn
I was going to take a picture of the old-school yoga space tucked nearly anonymously into the corner of an ungentrified building on lower NE Broadway. But, apparently, gongs make me forget.
I'd never been to the Oregon State Capitol. In fact, I'd never done anything more than drive past Salem on my way somewhere else. For most of my life, civic duty meant voting in every election,
If you added up all the time I spent driving in SW Portland and it's neighboring suburbs over the last couple decades it wouldn't come close to all the time I spent out there this week.
I swear I'm not feigning indifference or forgetfulness when I say I don't remember when we got married. It was nice out so we biked down to the county office in the late afternoon to pick up our license.
I'm very lucky to have parents that were both willing and able to make art museums part of my education as a little kid. My first visits were probably to the Art Institute in Chicago
Sit in a well-lit room, eat homemade brownies and talk about death with strangers. This is the Death Cafe and how I spent my Sunday afternoon.
I grew up as neither a lover nor a fighter. I was a hider. I mostly wanted to be left alone and if not alone, then moving peacefully, peacefully, peacefully through the dynamics of friends and family.
For many months, Elaine and I talked about going on a little vacation. Other than overnight trips to the coast here and there over the last couple of decades,
On a morning when the air was barely warm enough to keep the rain as rain, I drove to an unassuming building on a busy commercial street near I-205.
My body remembers this kind of water: a steaming hot spring on a hill that brings a flush to my skin and surprises all my tiny hairs as soon as I slip into it.Â
In a matter of minutes, my body went from happy and healthy to curled and wretching on the bathroom floor.
We chose not to march with our feet this weekend, the twenty or so strong women and three thoughtful men. Instead we sat in a hotel conference room and listened
One of the first people I met in college was my beloved friend, Elaine. She arrived on campus as an animal rights activist. She was the first activist of any sort that I had met
We are having a very wintery winter here in Portland. As I write this, a sheet of ice covers everything while the wind rattles the frozen branches and the gas heat rattles the grates of my house.
Could it be that in the twenty plus years I've lived in Portland I've never driven through the gorge when there's been snow in the mountains and sun in the sky? It's possible.
Sometimes taking a deep breath and jumping in is the best way. The shock is part of the fun: the way the body grabs itself from the inside as the cold hits.
Funny how I've become a much bigger proponent of state's rights than I ever was before. Not that the country's bigger, broader and increasingly frightening problems don't need to be addressed
I can't remember ever having a well-defined role model, one of those people you look up to and write grade school essays about.
I was seven when Saturday Night Fever was released. Of course, at that age, I was a good decade away from being old enough to actually watch the movie
I watched this video by Ijeoma Oluo yesterday. And the above quote is the one that hit home. Comfort is such an easy choice
It seemed, at first, too small to matter and too small to write about. What new thing had I done this week besides make a few phone calls to the White House
Ever since I was little kid, I've struggled with feeling like I don't belong (that's me on the far right with the dumbfounded expression hiding behind her bangs).
I stand in the corner, squeezed in next to the recliner where the patient spends most of his days. I stare at the top of his purple fleece cap
It's so easy to pretend to take someone's advice, or even mean to take someone's advice and then fail completely on the follow through.
Hold space. Sure. I hold all I can. I'll hold it if you sidle up close, hip to hip, and whisper something true.
Making a reservation at Kah-Nee-Ta, a resort on the Warm Springs Reservation, might have been new, but it wasn't a challenge.
I've had a driver's license since I was 16, but I didn't own a car or really drive on a regular basis until I was 40.
I've been a practicing full-time massage therapist for 20 years. While my skills have improved vastly over the years,
Tracy Burkholder 