A short story about a retired English teacher who lost her husband, family choices, a student who left the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, and how despite the ups and downs of relationships, love remains.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, David Jones, Simone Weil, and the practice of retreat. But not because the world has nothing to offer, but to learn how to get out of your own way.

The decline of customer service, the coarsening of society, Rainer Maria Rilke’s advice to let sadness go through you, and the belief that there is still grace in the world.

A meditation on modernity, the proliferation of technology, and the sense for some that time has passed them by.

A small woman in an airport pushing a wheelchair full of luggage. Memories of a disabled boy playing softball in grade school. The recognition that everyone is carrying something. The beauty of composed serenity.

A photo essay inspired by the streets of San Francisco, a meditation on the fleeting nature of time, thoughts on street photography and the art of noticing.

A photo essay about the unseen gardens each of us tend. The winters and summers we carry within us. The places where nothing grows, and the places where the soil is rich.

A photo essays about remembering, honoring, and forgiving. About the Presidio in San Francisco, memories, and continuing to love.

A woman and child, fleeing a life that no longer works, spend the night in a casino cafe. They find kindness and hope there.

A street photography essay about people alone, Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams, and a return to ourselves.

A short essay about fear, and the things that hold us back from leaping into the abyss, and into a life of motion and growth.

Beautiful places and restful vacations and meeting celebrity idols may excite us, but the people who know us completely and love us anyway are who sustain us.

Sanctuaries are where we escape the burns and bitter cold of life’s turbulent weather. And the best sanctuaries, beyond our family, are friends.

A besuited accordionist in Italy, a vestige of something refined and elegant, captured in my rangefinder camera. And with the image, the notion that this once mattered.

How do we endure and hold our ground in the waning days of our lives? A Christmas Eve phone call from an old friend in assisted living, and a statue in the storm, guide this essay home.

What’s the point of laboring over words or waiting for the right painting light when the world seems satisfied with faster, artificial substitutions? This essay answers that question.

A copywriter and aspiring novelist gets lost on his way home from a writing conference and meets a mysterious man and his owl, Penelope. And thus begins a night he will never forget.

A visit to Arcadian Books and Art Prints in New Orleans, to commune with books old and new, like orphans waiting to be adopted.

A street photography essay capturing a professional bull rider, holiday revelers, and the notion that eyes become lanterns leading us through the darkness toward whatever light remains in this world.

Remembering a police shooting, a mentally ill man, and lamenting tragedies in this broken world.