Tag Archive writing

ByGD

Bend in the Road

Crooked Road Gemma tattooI named this blog Crooked Road after a line from one of my favorite movies, Joe vs. the Volcano.

It’s been a long time coming here to meet you – a long time, on a crooked road.

The line is delivered while floating on a steamer trunk in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It’s hardly what most people would call a destination. It’s almost the perfect opposite of having ‘arrived.’ Joe and Patricia are floating on that trunk after having been ejected from a sinking volcano – as unexpected a turn of events as one could probably imagine. The scenario certainly qualifies as a sharp bend in a crooked road. The scene is a wonderful illustration of the philosophy that life is a journey we can’t quite plan. As long as it continues, each step of the way is as much a destination as any other.

All this is a convoluted and referential way to announce that against all logic, I have quit my day job. Read More

ByGD

What I Felt

Nils_Frahm_-_Felt album coverI was listening to Nils Frahm’s album Felt while washing dishes when I was overcome by the most powerful sadness.

It was a good day. The whole family was together, shopping for ski season and checking out books from the library; I picked up Outside magazine’s special life-hacking issue “127 Strategies for Living Bravely.” We ate prawns, seasonal vegetables, and locally made pasta with our favorite cheap red wine, Protocolo.

But Nils Frahm always sends my thoughts down a rabbit hole, and the music was so achingly beautiful it set me to yearning, once again, that I too could make something exquisite to add to the collection of extraordinary things that brighten this world. Frahm conjured all my dreams of a life of art and ideas; images of traveling the world, not just to see what I could see, but with something precious to share as I discovered each wondrous new place. I had to fight not to be a clichéd housewife crying over the dinner dishes.

Then I remembered the phone conversation with my mom earlier in the day. Read More