Wooden Woman here. Hello again, yes, it's been a while. Sometimes one has to take time to live before there is anything to say.  So there was last weekend--Wooden Woman and her beloved went downtown because there was a happening. A spectacle of three on three basketball. World's largest they say. Masses of sweaty humanity milling the entire ... read more

Wooden Woman takes in a long breath. This is where she takes off her shoes. Between the toes of Engineers boots and hers it’s dusty. Long hairs have migrated under the shoe tree and merged with grey-coated carpet. Wooden Woman remembers house dust is mostly skin, cells shed like snow. Within seven years every cell is ... read more

A story for you.  Wooden Woman will tell it. Was she three? Certainly no more than four years old,  the gangly little Kenyan girl balanced a baby on her back,  the younger leaned in tight. Dusty legs and faces,  each had an empty blue water bottle in hand.  They negotiated the dry and rutted ... read more

Move your mouth as if to voice a long A. Imagine  A  outline. One in 500 sees a color as they do this, an image projected almost outside the body. Not limited to letters and numbers, Rimsky-Korsakov saw the key of C  as white; Scriabin, heard it red. It’s called Synesthesia. Feel sound. Hear color. Taste ... read more

In grad school a writing professor asked each person  in Wooden Woman’s class why they wanted to write.  Turns out, this was a quiz, and included a write and wrong answer. The write answer: I enjoy playing with words. The wrong answer: I want to say something  (i.e. communicate). Wooden Woman said ... read more

Russell screamed a lot for a four year old.  Five older brothers and sisters,  Russell found high-pitched and extended screaming  the best and most effective repellant to their control. When Wooden Woman’s Dog was Cute Puppy,  Cute Puppy would not go on a walk. Walks were a drag.  Literally.  Sitting down ... read more

Why is ice slippery? Nope, it’s not steely pressure of blade or boot melting a little film of water to glide on. Or the frictional screech of brakes instantly warming black ice beneath your smoking tires. Most Kenyans that Wooden Woman knows have never seen snow or even sloshed an ice cube across ... read more

Two Infinities: 1. Everything outside her… 2. Everything inside her… Wooden Woman finds herself exactly in the middle of everything. Consider the weather. From a stirring of air lifting a hair  to supernovas, a hundred million times brighter than the sun, exuding brilliant showers of radiation, Wooden Woman, even ... read more

Wooden Woman wonders about dust. Mountains crumble into rocks; water tears rock into gravel; gravel’s washed and worn down to dirt; dirt’s pulverized to powdery dust, fine enough to be flour.   The ground. Aptly named. Detritus of stars… …shavings of sweaters and skin. Everything is dust. Life depends on ... read more

Wooden Woman remembers finding out about hollow bones. You know, hollow bones—one reason bird flight is possible.  Such a clever and intricate adjustment for weight.  AH HAH! and OF COURSE!   If you love the color green choose the lime colored budgie. Gold wire cage. Food. Sand. You’ve read up on care of birds, of ... read more

Wooden Woman’s father had His Chair. Wooden Woman has My Chair. Big enough to scrunch her whole self into a corner, feet curled under her. She leaves room for My Dog. My Dog is gone now—a story for another time. Suffice it to say chairs and dogs are conducive to both reading and thinking. Today Wooden Woman crawls into My Chair and ... read more

Wooden Woman pours a cup of boiling water and slips out the front door into ten-below-zero winter. She nods to those watching from the window, steadies the contents as she pulls her arm back, and without warning flings the water in a violent arc overhead. Instantaneous cloud making. Quite miraculous.  Nothing at all drops to the ground. It ... read more