Under the Banyan Tree

When I craft a story, I often labor over the beginning only to change it completely, revert to the original idea, then labor over it some more before removing a few words, scrapping a few things, and determining it's good enough for now. Because I can always create another beginning when the time feels right. Or maybe I'll keep that one. Or make additional changes later. Or not. The idea of creating a beginning, this sometimes complicated and tedious process, is something I've been thinking about lately. I find beginnings almost confounding, certainly noteworthy, and even cosmically mysterious. All of the stories we tell have a beginning chosen by the storyteller -- that's how stories work -- but I'm not certain even the protagonist of her own story knows exactly where the tale begins or if defined beginnings even exist. So here's my story. . . The last few weeks have felt like a summer hailstorm in the Bahamas, filled with a sense of 'how is this poss...

I'd like to credit Mark Zuckerberg for creating all the evil in the world, but I can't. Despite philanthropy that may be as disingenuous as his awkward smile (sorry, Z -- you're an easy target), he can't be blamed for everything that's wrong with western society. Because, truly, while lollygagging (or lurking) on social media swallows too much of our time, before Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or Snapchat, we had mind-numbing reality television, and before that, Pacman and Donkey Kong with our best friends at Straw Hat Pizza. Or was that just me? Anyway, the art of wasting time has antecedents in the 20th century and, I'm sure, the 19th and 18th, etc. The admonition to live in the moment has become so ubiquitous that it seems trite, even cliché. And yet it's not. We all know not to take a moment of our lives for granted, but we don't always realize or recognize how best to live those moments, how to appreciate each one, how to crea...