I posted this Sunday night on Instagram. This combination of a line from one of my favorite books and a photo I took while driving home one evening perfectly captured a realization I had that day. I am Daisy Buchanan. Most people who read "The Great Gatsby" develop a strong distaste for the main female character. She's vapid. She stays with a man who abuses her. She cheats on her husband. She neglects her daughter. She plays the men in her life against each other. She kills a woman. She lets the love of her life take the fall. The movie versions of the book turn her into a ditz. I once held these negative views about this fictional woman. They have evolved over time as the path of my life has taken me far from the one I initially envisioned for myself. I started to empathize with her and see her humanity, and most recently I saw her as a woman trapped by the expectations of everyone else. It doesn't change the morality of her actions, but it does make her more r...

A few months ago, I asked a friend which three famous people from history he would like to meet--you know, in the event that we discover black holes really are portals for time travel. One of the people he mentioned was the South American poet, Pablo Neruda , because he wanted to ask him how he was able to say "te amo" so easily. The conversation that ensued about the ease of which those words roll off our tongues has been stuck in my head ever since. Like anyone else who has walked through the path of divorce, mine has been a path of self-exploration. I've spent a lot of time in the last year and a half exploring my thoughts and feelings on love and marriage. This path has challenged much of what I used to believe and, at the same, brought me new insights into the exhilaration, comfort, and perils of two people trying to forge a piece of their lives together. What I've discovered is that the words "te amo" tend to roll of my tongue fairly easily, but not al...

The Nature of Love. They were the truest words I ever spoke. I love you, now and for always not because we are one ...together, but because you're you and I am me. This was our moment. It was beautiful. It is beautiful. It will always be. (c) 2010 Waking Up * Lo siento. No entiendo. Las estrellas estan en el cielo, pero quiero ocultar mi cara de ellos . Las olas bailan en el mar, pero quiero correr antes ellos cogerme. Todo acerca de mi es vida. pero siento un poco de muerte. (c) 2010 *Here's the translation... I'm sorry. I don't understand. The stars are in the sky, but I want to hide my face from them. The waves dance in the sea, but I want to run before they catch me. All around me is life, but I feel a little death.

And the voice you need to hear is the true and the trusted kind With a soft, familiar rhythm in these swirling, unsure times When the waves are lapping in and you're not sure you can swim Well here's the lifeline ("This is Love"/Mary Chapin Carpenter) Several months ago I started putting together my life story in the form of a scrapbook. Tonight, I pulled it out again and took a lovely stroll through my memory. I reached for the last set of pictures to go in the book and stopped at the very last one--my high school graduation. The event was a little different for me. Basically, I withdrew myself from high school after the first semester of my junior year of high school. Between my mother's deteriorating mental health and my desperate attempts to hold together the family I had left, I could find no significance to sitting in American Government discussing upcoming football games. High school life seemed so self-absorbed ...