Best Of: Personal Essays

“Got to pay your dues if you wanna play the blues, and you know it don’t come easy.” – George Harrison “Meanwhile, back on my suicide farm, I’m reading about Snooki’s book deal.” – Suzy Soro, Comedian This dispatch comes to you from a Starbucks parking lot, where I’m sitting in a very used car [...]

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Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don’t know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings. – Anais Nin When you open yourself fully to someone else, when you let another person [...]

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A Starry Starry Night

by Jane Devin on 03/12/2009

It’s a room with clean white walls, hardwood floors, and a blue rug. There’s a big window at the rear of the room, open to the breeze, and white curtains that lightly billow. In the middle, there’s an old mahogany desk with lots of drawers, and a comfortable chair — sometimes blue, sometimes brown. I [...]

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The Zucchini Stimulus

by Jane Devin on 02/19/2009

I was a 16 year-old wanna-be love child in a lace shirt, faded jeans, and moccasin boots. Bill was a real 30-something hippie, who had camped out at Woodstock and demonstrated at Berkeley. He drove an old Volkswagon Bug the color of chewed-up Wrigley’s gum, and was fond of quoting both Carlos Castaneda and Ayn [...]

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Love Should Be Like The 4th of July

by Jane Devin on 02/14/2009

It’s not the rampant commercialism of a weird holiday with its roots in pagan rituals and Catholicism, or the glittery sap of Hallmark cards, or even the waxy chocolate candies in heart-shaped boxes that makes me dislike Valentine’s Day.  It’s not because mid-February is like December-minor for single people, or because I feel sorry for [...]

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Waving, Not Drowning

by Jane Devin on 02/06/2009

In the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo mountains, we abandoned Eloise’s Suburban and walked the wet, rutted road that led to her house. It was lightly raining, and there was an orange tint to the sky that made even the sagebrush look beautiful. There was a rainbow forming to the North, and a pair [...]

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