July 22 I'm on a lunch break eating an open-faced sandwich–chicken salad, radishes, focaccia gone twice through the toaster. The grass I’m sitting on has, today, become the audience for a children's puppet show–The Magical Forest. To my left is a pile of fabrics and string, coiled on the top of the park slope. The deck, below (where I used to peer over into the creek as a child, where the toddler I first nannied bit through skin when I told him he couldn't go in) is the sta

July 20 A baby lizard, so small I can't imagine the organs, dashes from the street through my sandaled feet. I'm standing at our gate, about to roll the recycling bins back in. But I am startled now, at how giant I am. At how my feet could end a life just beginning, just like that. I remember a Mrs. Dalloway quote, something about how miraculous it is that we survive even one day. The stone path the cans must travel is full of California poppies now, their thin green arms hol

July 19 That three sips of coffee after 2 p.m. kept my body awake past midnight, the sliver of a moon out my window enough of a reason to sit up, get up, and listen to the nocturnal mammals of summer. That my dog and the foxes got so close last night, barked and growled—but still, a conversation. And that, on my lunch break I pass two panting, leash-stuck huskies in the sun and say, “Poor babies—who do you belong to?” And how right then, materializing from the shadow of a c