On this full moon in Leo, in the year 2026, on Sunday, February 1, in Skokie, Illinois, I return to my own website with intention to tend to this writing garden here as much as I am anywhere else. There's been so much debate and conversation around who owns our words depending on where we put them, and I've decided that while I try out these other platforms, I also want to let some of my ramblings and fragments land here, as I'm full of things to say and the courage to say them at this juncture, and want to honor this surge of encouragement!
I'm calling these fragments "transit slips," to indicate the transitory nature of these writings and how they're emerging on the page. I read all morning and take notes. I let what I read lead me through the corridors of my mind and imagination. I gather up the notes and shape them into transmissions that feel like poetry with a narrative promise. I don't imagine anyone will find me here unless I point you in this direction and for now, that feels fine. Whoever may finds these words is a friend to me and these attempts at connection. Here's my first transmission in the series; I'll try to write one a day in February.
Why do the dying sometimes fear thieves among them? My mother believed I stole her gold bracelets at the nursing home in Sarasota. The police tracked me down to investigate. I had to prove I was her daughter who had taken the gold bracelets for safekeeping.
The problem was that I’d come all the way from Zanzibar and realized only once I was back on American soil that I lacked any form of current identification—a fugitive of sorts, escaping one life for another. My driver’s license had expired, my passport had expired; I was a daughter without documentation, accused of theft. Eventually, my name was cleared, but perhaps only due to the doubt others cast on the stories of the dying. I still have a Florida number from this time, from when I was trying to dial up a trusted identity to meet the demands of the moment.
Eight years later, I was the daughter who lived with her father as he was dying and helped him die. This was a more cosmic assignment between a lapsed poet and a lifetime jazz pianist, an alliance quite friendly to the philosophical porch musings that accompany such circumstances. That whole summer, we riffed as I tended to my toes with imperfect pedicures, my father sitting in the sunlight with crystalline questions about divine purpose and the inevitability of what unfolded—his unfolding. Like a true improvisational artist, his exit was gentle yet dramatic, like the final note he always struck at the end of each song.
This reminds me of a question I ask myself often: how did I end up staying so long at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Delhi in my early thirties? Well, I was drawn to mysticism and the wistful adventure of the spiritual sort. I also thought this money-saving move would give my sister and me more freedom to dash around the old city in search of silver, temples, and chai.
We ended up twice in the labyrinth of the wedding market. Unlucky in love, we purchased stacks of elaborate green envelopes with arched doorways for flaps. And then, of course, we paid for tickets to enter the pigeon hospital, where Jain devotees dedicated their days to healing sick birds. I took photos of magnificent yellow marigolds in heaps out front, but these images were lost to time.
At night, when we returned to our room in the ashram, it was so cold we climbed inside our sleeping bags and slept in layers of all we’d packed, including our pink wool socks. A portrait of “The Mother” hung above our heads, next to a list of her commandments, among them being “No gossip.” It was too cold not to gossip, and so we kept ourselves warm with one story after another about other people’s flaws until we’d started a fire in our minds.
Ask me anything about failure, folded notes, ancient alphabets, elder care, diplomacy, and porch pedicures. Ask me anything about writing when it doesn’t matter anymore, returning to live in your childhood home, taking sandwich orders from an angry dying person; clarifying one’s henna design desires to a disgruntled artist on her ninth client of the afternoon; apologizing for one’s inadvertent colonial tendencies while traveling—for example, asking for ice. I attempted to tread lightly, but I know I left muddy footprints wherever I once walked. Ask me anything about traveling without an itinerary or enough money for a return flight home. Ask me about coming home.
I'm calling these fragments "transit slips," to indicate the transitory nature of these writings and how they're emerging on the page. I read all morning and take notes. I let what I read lead me through the corridors of my mind and imagination. I gather up the notes and shape them into transmissions that feel like poetry with a narrative promise. I don't imagine anyone will find me here unless I point you in this direction and for now, that feels fine. Whoever may finds these words is a friend to me and these attempts at connection. Here's my first transmission in the series; I'll try to write one a day in February.
Why do the dying sometimes fear thieves among them? My mother believed I stole her gold bracelets at the nursing home in Sarasota. The police tracked me down to investigate. I had to prove I was her daughter who had taken the gold bracelets for safekeeping.
The problem was that I’d come all the way from Zanzibar and realized only once I was back on American soil that I lacked any form of current identification—a fugitive of sorts, escaping one life for another. My driver’s license had expired, my passport had expired; I was a daughter without documentation, accused of theft. Eventually, my name was cleared, but perhaps only due to the doubt others cast on the stories of the dying. I still have a Florida number from this time, from when I was trying to dial up a trusted identity to meet the demands of the moment.
Eight years later, I was the daughter who lived with her father as he was dying and helped him die. This was a more cosmic assignment between a lapsed poet and a lifetime jazz pianist, an alliance quite friendly to the philosophical porch musings that accompany such circumstances. That whole summer, we riffed as I tended to my toes with imperfect pedicures, my father sitting in the sunlight with crystalline questions about divine purpose and the inevitability of what unfolded—his unfolding. Like a true improvisational artist, his exit was gentle yet dramatic, like the final note he always struck at the end of each song.
This reminds me of a question I ask myself often: how did I end up staying so long at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Delhi in my early thirties? Well, I was drawn to mysticism and the wistful adventure of the spiritual sort. I also thought this money-saving move would give my sister and me more freedom to dash around the old city in search of silver, temples, and chai.
We ended up twice in the labyrinth of the wedding market. Unlucky in love, we purchased stacks of elaborate green envelopes with arched doorways for flaps. And then, of course, we paid for tickets to enter the pigeon hospital, where Jain devotees dedicated their days to healing sick birds. I took photos of magnificent yellow marigolds in heaps out front, but these images were lost to time.
At night, when we returned to our room in the ashram, it was so cold we climbed inside our sleeping bags and slept in layers of all we’d packed, including our pink wool socks. A portrait of “The Mother” hung above our heads, next to a list of her commandments, among them being “No gossip.” It was too cold not to gossip, and so we kept ourselves warm with one story after another about other people’s flaws until we’d started a fire in our minds.
Ask me anything about failure, folded notes, ancient alphabets, elder care, diplomacy, and porch pedicures. Ask me anything about writing when it doesn’t matter anymore, returning to live in your childhood home, taking sandwich orders from an angry dying person; clarifying one’s henna design desires to a disgruntled artist on her ninth client of the afternoon; apologizing for one’s inadvertent colonial tendencies while traveling—for example, asking for ice. I attempted to tread lightly, but I know I left muddy footprints wherever I once walked. Ask me anything about traveling without an itinerary or enough money for a return flight home. Ask me about coming home.
