I happened to catch a glimpse of Luka strolling down the hall on his way to lunch and his teacher, Mrs. Burton, with her intrepid watchfulness, several paces behind. Luka had been lucky enough to have another veteran teacher, Mrs. Garrett, last year for Kindergarten. That room had his teacher’s hand painted trees and sky and clouds on all the walls and window shades. And I was another lucky one, meeting them all last year when I was artist in residence at their school.

Luka is one of those children I won’t forget. I would tell you what he looks like if I knew, but that’s not what stays with me. Maybe a miniature rock star best describes him and his thatch of rebel hair. More to the point, with Luka you find yourself in the rare presence of a thinker. “Now, that’s an interesting story,” he might say, as though he were 90 and had quite the collection to stack it up against. His questions and observations had a familiar ring to them and I thought I recognized that as the sound of someone well listened to.

This theory was fortified one day in the library as he returned some books and produced a small notebook and pen he said were from his dad, likely one of his prime listeners. “I like to put my ideas here,” Luka confided. And I never asked to look inside for I, too, am an artist. I respect the sanctity of ideas.

So when I saw that Ms. Burton...

I’m reading Steve Jobs on my Kindle which reminds me of Europe with you and packing light and repacking light from hostel to hostel. The compactness of it all. This morning I showered as your Israeli soap grew paper thin in my hand. I knew this day would come when the scent of the promised land would slip through my fingers into eternity.

Only now do I begin to translate the grace of Europe into my own stubbornly American tongue. We are a literal folk with practical gadgets that make our lives easier to waste on them. Here I speak of smart phones and smarter computers and the numbing time it takes to clear out inboxes and superfluously stored megabytes. Next time I go to far away places, I’ll tell my people here I won’t be in touch for a few weeks, won’t be squandering the exotic continent I’m traveling to. Instant communication is a mixed baggage.

I walked into a vintage shop with Spencer and Joe in Toronto this weekend where Bob Dylan spoke-sang over the vintage speakers (not) as though no time had elapsed. In his time we didn’t have Steve Jobs and kindles and apples and orange ya gonna ask me if I regret those eruptions of genius? My brain is decidedly poor at processing all these processors. She enjoys...

When I was raising kids, the lovelies, I had very little time to write songs, play guitar, send little postcards and play out. But I did both, kids and art, because of my inner drive. I’ll never know whether my children or I or both would be better off now had I never followed that drive. These compulsions don’t ask our approval and I, for one, seldom question their motives. But I’m doing it now.

Why, subconscious self, do you want to perform Bob Dylan songs? What do you plan to accomplish? What will satisfy you? When will you fold up shop?

Answer. You, dear writer, are an intellectual. I am a romantic. You seek facts, and assurances. I just want to make love. You count the beans while I am hanging out the billowed sheets of our sacred tryst on a stone capped hillock swept by the wind.

Underestimate me at your peril. Live in your tedious world if you will, but leave me out of it for I no more need your tireless second guessing than a hound needs a leash. I go to the wild unlikely because I have one thing everyone wants and only some find.

Freedom. From penny pinchers and dime storers, text messengers and mall reverers, head rovers and left overs. You, my perpetual judge and questioner, have no real jurisdiction over me. I muse, you refuse, and still I dream of musing.

Some would say...

‘In recent memory the round table had seated such royalty as Bob Dylan, Bob Neuwirth, Nico, Tim Buckley, Janis Joplin, Viva, and the Velvet underground.'
-- Patti Smith, Just Kids

His subjects rise en masse, wave wildly, dance and cheer as he steps onto the raised platform. His voice is punctuated by thunderous applause; feet pound the metal bleachers in rumbling salute to the master of word and sound. Four gray-coat minions accompany his majesty with gleaming axes and clanging cymbals. The peons on the ground who dare shoot pictures of their lord are sternly warned by muscled guards who sweep the crowd with furrowed brows.

Ten bucks a pop for the foaming brew of the realm is extracted from giddy peasants who’ve paid dearly to stream through the gates, to glimpse the benevolent one, to bear him witness. He is a tireless ruler, criss crossing the land on fleets of diesel stallions to give the people fond and earnest hope they will pass on to children and children’s children.

This is not the has-no-clothes nobility of folktale legend. Our poet monarch is resplendent in fertile wings; each word spilled through electric air undergirds the faithful in...

We’d booked ourselves into a cheap hotel after a lavish country club wedding reception. Our newish Honda stood out in a lot full of dented cars, rusted vans, worn trucks and trailers. From a crowded parking space near the inn’s rear door, we skittered inside, avoiding the gaze of two young guys in a parked car as we clasped our possessions to our bosoms. Three doors down the unwashed hallway stood our smoke-free, well-kept room for the night, and we were grateful.

Dancing and wine and decibels set for the young can fray the nerves of the most stalwart elders, which I’ve become unbeknownst to my eternal child. My rest was fitful, raked by random voices, sputtering mufflers and hyperbolic TV audio.

A dawn walk took us behind the strip of cordoned-off restaurant shells and abandoned stores along crumbling sidewalks, unmowed grass, dilapidated trucks and small houses individually built before the tract housing boom, or maybe in spite of it. The neighborhood said there was no time or money or inclination to paint or repair or weed anything. The birds sang, the flowers bloomed, the people rested as we walked back to indulge in bagels and muffins included in the price of a room.

There was no point pretending the lobby’s restroom was clean enough to use. Without pause I backed out, intending to visit the one in our room before breakfast. But just...