The Moment After Section :: Page 5

• BLOG— Fresh starts

  By Audrey HackettJanuary 19, 2016

  

  Are fresh starts really possible? Three weeks after the annual big one — the new door of Jan. 1 — the question seems urgent. This is the time of year when I teeter between hope and despair.

• BLOG— The radical reality of snow

  By Audrey HackettJanuary 12, 2016

  

  Snow is an artist of great attention. Overnight, it drew perfect circles on the rims of our empty flowerpots. It chalked a fat line across the pitchfork’s handle, and dusted every rusty tine.

• BLOG— Another year by

  By Audrey HackettJanuary 2, 2016

  

  Time, is that you knocking? At the door this time, Time, three sharp raps from the oldest knuckles in the world. Another year by, Time? Really? Why, I remember you at last year’s door.

• BLOG— New home blues

  By Audrey HackettDecember 8, 2015

  

  Life feels fragile when it’s bundled into boxes, especially when it’s bundled into boxes marked “FRAGILE,” a poignant convergence of packing parlance and metaphor.

• BLOG— Birding is easy!

  By Audrey HackettDecember 1, 2015

  

  For me, though, the heron was the total heart-throb, the show-stopper, the bird of birds. His rosy neck and blue-grey shoulders rippled like water; he was water flying over water, an awesome feat of paint and metaphysics.

• BLOG— Falling up

  By Audrey HackettNovember 24, 2015

  

  I love this painting by Georgia O’Keeffe, and last night — I saw it. Out in the world, I mean. Something better than it, even.

• BLOG— ‘Vivre la vie,’ despite all

  By Audrey HackettNovember 17, 2015

  

  The best response, which isn’t actually a response, is to live as wisely and deeply as you know how. Each of us has one life, and it’s ours to live. The French have a phrase for this, naturally. It’s “vivre la vie,” living life.

• BLOG— Starry, starry thoughts

  By Audrey HackettNovember 10, 2015

  

  What is it about space and death? Our human lives are so small, so brief. We’re mayflies born to live one day, or one second, or not even one, in cosmic time.

• BLOG— Vote! Vote! Vote!

  By Audrey HackettNovember 3, 2015

  

  The first time I headed to the polls, I was six. It was 1980, a watershed year in national politics, and my elementary school held a mock-contest among the three candidates.

• BLOG— Alive in Bechtlandia

  By Audrey HackettOctober 27, 2015

  

  Finally, hunched over in supplication, I practically clawed at the next Docker-clad salesperson I saw and got the beautiful specificity of “aisle nine.” At that moment, no words in the English language were more splendid. Aisle nine. Possibly the world’s shortest, most perfect poem.