There's No Reason to Get Romantic (AMERICAN DRAGONS, HarperCollins)
My grandmother crossed the mountains, my mother the ocean—I want to know where my journey is. If I leave behind climbing the Golden Gate Bridge at night and camping on the beach and weekly trips to Berkeley to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show, where will I go? But then why should I go, why is it that my mother and grandmother are always wanting me to be something I am not? I stand by the door for a few more minutes, watching my grandmother slowly, gently count her beads of bone, and wonder if it’s really possible that I’m related by blood to this tiny woman murmuring in a language I do not know.
Gypsy Cante (New World Writing)
Nestled in her silk scarves, my mother always kept a bar of Myrurgia’s Maja soap, wrapped in the distinctive red-and-black paper with a flamenco dancer on the label. Because my father—an American my mother met in medical school—had been stationed at the Rota naval base, near Cadiz and the Strait of Gibraltar, I was born in Spain and we stayed there for two years…
Writing and The Tibetan Book of the Dead (AGNI Blog)
I think a lot about death and faith and the creative process. This started some years back when I began writing a novel related to the Tibetan Buddhist belief in bardos, between-states when everyday life is suspended…