There’s the big “B” Bardo — the gap between dying in this life and being reincarnated in the next life, according to Tibetan Buddhist text Bardo Tödöl. Then there is…
Sometimes it feels as though my days are made up of running errands. Dashing from one place to another on foot slows the process, which means I get less accomplished…
Standing on a threshold, I fight the temptation to go back. Back to where it’s comfortable. Back to familiarity. But the reality is this: there is no going back. Because…
If I were to summarize 2019 for myself, it would be “the year of sitting in the in between,” or the interstice. Mystics and contemplatives refer to it as “liminal…
Thirty years ago, when I first landed here, I felt a deep sense of recognition. It was where my parents came from, and their parents, and their parents, and so…
I took one of those personality tests, the kind that promises to provide a “freakishly accurate description of who you are and why you do things the way you do.”…
Another family-run business in the San Francisco Bay Area is closing. This time it’s a 39-year-old bakery with locations throughout the Bay Area. Aside from the usual narrative about the…
Out our window I see them — exhausted and disoriented tourists, their rolling luggage clack-clack-clacking on the stone calçadas. They stop at the corner, staring at their phone, then glancing…
One year ago, on July 12*, I tearfully hugged friends good-bye and boarded a United Airlines flight to Lisbon. Memories of my mom weighed heavily on me as I walked…