WRITING

Prose Sample

I can only glimpse the Dragon through the trees and roofs of neighbors across the street on a daily basis. I seek her in my weekend hikes, where I strive to reach her downy neck, scaled with bristlecone pines. On lucky days, I can immerse myself in her for days at a time, breathing deeper and slower as the altitude rises with her shadowy, calming presence. I sleep best when she is visible, right through windows larger than me, at a home that is not mine. Antlered visitors whisper greetings as I reach a fuller understanding of what it means to move mountains within you.

Prose Sample

Years ago, I saw a scientific program on PBS where they did MRI scans of musicians versus non-musicians. The test was simple. When each finger of the hand was lightly touched, which neurons fired up in the brain? The recorded activity in the musician’s brains when each finger was lightly touched was astounding. I learned the power of my hands early on, first on the piano at age 6, then when I began to play the oboe at 14. Each finger has a vital job, a meaningful existence, the power to create appealing, angry, questionable, and unusual sounds. When I began to make reeds for playing the oboe, as all professionals do, I was unsteady with the very sharp whittling knife. I learned to keep band-aids on my reed desk in case of a disaster. The learning curve was steep, as with all art forms requiring patience. The reeds were unforgiving for about 10 years. Many decades later, I rely on my hands to splinter tubes of cane, to gouge out the pieces one by one, to shape them with single edged razor blades, before the true art begins. I am right handed, but my left hand does not exist lazily in my lap. It holds the spool of string as I tie knots. It aids my right hand in sharpening the knife. It steadies the reed in its fledgling state as the knife coaxes the wood into a paper-thin musical life, to vibrate fully when called upon. A process that once led me to drink heavily now beckons me into a zen-like meditation.