confessions of a reformed tourist
Yesterday I had to block someone on Flickr. Flickr!
This random dude – who, apparently, first discovered my photo stream when he Googled “Rasta dumptruck” – was commenting on nearly every photo I posted. Which wouldn’t have bugged me if the comments had had any real content, but they were all something to the effect of [...]
I saw a random post the other day that tickled me. Something to the effect of,
“I’M SORRY BUT BLASPHEMY IS AN AUTOMATIC UNFOLLOW.”
Can you imagine the force of will it took for me not to comment on that? Can you? OK. Whatever you’re imagining, multiply that by 10.
And I just have not been able to [...]
Women Who Run With the Wolves (Clarissa Pinkola Estes) was published in 1992 and my mom got it right away, which means I was 15 when I first read it. Which explains a lot about me and my particular brand of weird. I’m won’t even attempt here to distill the book into something neat and [...]
I crossposted yesterday’s “on accents” to my Tumblr, and two of the responses (reblogs) I got were so interesting I can’t resist quoting them here.
The first to weigh in was adsinfinitum, who wrote:
Another point of interest for me is how people are so determined to assign you an accent. How they feel the need to [...]
Although I have no way of knowing for certain, in my heart I believe that bringing my grandmother to Grenada prolonged her life by a year or two.
For a long while we took her to the beach regularly. She’d sit at the edge of the ocean, rubbing the sand on her legs. My mom or [...]
So the other day it came to my attention that I was following someone on Twitter who enjoys jokes about stalking and beating and killing women. Now, if you’ve seen my tweets, you know I’m certainly guilty of joking about delicate subjects. Suffice it to say, I definitely would not want either of my grandmothers [...]
Momentum, lately, keeps dancing just beyond my reach.
I brush it with the very tips of my fingers, but then it senses my approach and spirals off into the darkness, out of reach, out of reach.
I plot and I scheme. How can I conquer it? How can I foil momentum’s plans to elude me?
Momentum’s plans. Ha. [...]
My name is Maria, and I’m proud to be an attention whore.
This is not a passive-aggressive post.
One could certainly interpret what I’m about to say as a thinly-veiled response to a particular person or incident. It’s not. It’s me trying to put into words a chain of thoughts that’s been rattling around in my head [...]
This fountain is in my aunt’s backyard in Indianapolis, Indiana. It’s a very serene place. My whimsy imagines that wood elves call it home.
When I was living in Grenada, my aunt’s house was a sort of home base. Even though I never officially lived there, I know precisely where the diet Coke aisle is in [...]
This story written for Bean and me as a gift from our friend coyotesqrl. He has a Twitter, a Tumblr and a more formal, serious blog. He’s also one of the other founding members of the round-robin writing project, Too Many Cooks. I find this story especially touching because although he has never met me [...]