Once I rode my bike from Vancouver to Los Angeles. The first leg of the trip smelled cold, wet and salty. Like fish and chips. Like morning fog. The same way northern Spain smells and sometimes New York City. The next leg of the trip smelled like dry sun. Brown burnt grass. Mexican food. Deserts. […]
Author: anne
I ride words and I write bikes. I mean...
A quarantine compromise
There are four of us in our apartment. When the pandemic hit, one of us went to live with his girlfriend. That left three. One, a hypochondriac (and I mean that in the best way possible). Two, a public health professionial. And three, a classic American turd (that’s me). One and two were pretty into […]
Stories from before times: Dinty Moore’s
There is a 15-stool bar in the small town of Nebraska City called Dinty Moore’s. From my studio window I could almost see the sign that hung on a post over the door. Dinty Moore’s has quite a history: officially it has been in operation since 1906 but it’s very possible the place has been […]
Past life
I miss my old life. I miss my friends. I miss the regulars at Sunday night yoga–how we would all help the teacher close down the studio after the last class and linger chatting at the door. I miss my writing class in the LES studio apartment with a drafty window. I miss the bike […]
The bike hug (for reference)
I thought I wrote a post about this a long long time ago, but actually I did not. The bike hug: a very slow bike crash that results in something more like a hug than an injury. Example: One day, in a far away land a long time ago. (Crown Heights! Last year!) I was […]
How’s grad school going? I already hate it
Grad school: Can you please send us a transcript from the public South American university where you studied abroad in 2009? Me: lol. No.
Paradoxical thoughts
Today a kid riding his BMX bike on the sidewalk almost ran into me. I froze, deer-in-headlights and waited–hoped–for him to look up and see me (which he did). But in that brief moment I had a flash of a thought: please don’t look up. Please run me over.* I want this to be over. […]
Experiments in social distancing (quarantine day: unknown)
A few days a week I run to the top of the tallest hill by my house. (Oh have I mentioned?–I’m a runner now.) The road that goes up the hill is quiet. There are few houses and no shops. A long long time ago glaciers inched across New York State slowly pushing rocks aside […]
A rant (that might not be about what you expect)
I have thought about going back to school many times. Many. Times. I have considered: a nursing degree, a masters in education, a tesol certificate, a master of arts, and a masters of fine arts (which I did actually apply for once but only to schools that did not require the GRE and I did […]
Telling a story: day 22
“All of [the transformative movements from the past] understood that the process of shifting cultural values–though somewhat ephemeral and difficult to quantify–was central to their work. And so they dreamed in public, showed humanity a better version of itself, modeled different values in their own behavior, and in the process liberated the political imagination and […]
Anne Foster 