This is just a hobby.
Last month I went to an organic winery in Signagi, Republic of Georgia. It was a three hour trip from my base in at Tblissi, through a desert and a range of multi colored mountains, which stood out in unlikely brownish-purple and brownish-red hues against the sweltering summer sky. The wine maker’s dog, dusty but calm and affectionate, slept on top of my foot as the wine maker talked about his process, explaining that Georgian wines are fermented under the ground in earthen pots, without the use of yeast.
By Rose5 months ago in Wander
I’m sitting in a hairdresser’s chair, my arms poking out of the plastic sheath I’ve been given as protection from the bleach that coats my soon to be not-brown locks. My scalp is tingling and my nose is filled with the sour, astringent scent of chemicals. I have three choices of what to do while I wait:
By Rose2 years ago in Writers
Confession — I’ve been putting off writing this life update forever, mostly because I want to write it well. The more time passes, the more I have to say, and the harder it gets to weave everything into a cohesive narrative. I think the only way I’m going to get any words onto this page is to give up on the idea of making this piece excellent, and concentrate on making it just exist.
By Rose2 years ago in Wander
Long ago, there was a man named Ebenezer Scrooge. Scrooge was a very rich man, but he wasn’t a very good man. He loved money, but he hated everything else. He hated love. He hated happiness. He hated laughing. He hated dancing. He hated dogs, cats, rabbits, birds, pandas, and children.
By Rose3 years ago in Education
Recall your high school PE class. Does it bring up thoughts of hefting your body up onto high bleachers? Do you imagine a scuffed up wooden floor shimmering dustily beneath fluorescent lights? Do you recoil at the memory of the dull thud of a red inflatable danger-sphere coming into contact with your shoulder during dodgeball? Are your olfactory senses flooded with the odor of greasy, fumbling, over-ripe adolescence?
By Rose3 years ago in Longevity
Who can forget the month of December, 2019. It might’ve been cold, depending on where you lived. Snowy, or whatever. You might have been preparing to celebrate your holiday of choice, or else winding down in the wake of that holiday. The nightly news shows were filled with the first whispers of the oncoming covid-19 pandemic, but the cinemas were filled with magic! Finally, after many decades of success on the stage, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s most glorious musical had arrived to bless the big screen!
By Rose3 years ago in Geeks
It’s 4:30 AM on the last school day before the commencement of summer vacation. The street across from the Wuhan shipyard fills with old ladies pushing breakfast carts. A bowl of hot dry noodles costs three yuan. Other sellers offer up meat stuffed buns, duo pi, fried gluten dipped in honey, boiled tea eggs, sugared ears of corn, and roasted sweet potatoes.
By Rose4 years ago in Wander
It’s no secret that I’m a musical theatre fanatic. As a teenager, my dream was to be a theatre critic. This was thwarted by my terrible taste (notorious flops about vampires are, to excuse the pun, my life blood). Nonetheless, I have many opinions! You’ll find below some brief thoughts on every major theatre production I’ve been lucky enough to see live.
By Rose4 years ago in Geeks
On December 8th, 2020, I signed on to my first class with Gotham Writers Workshop. Fiction Writing I, taught by Benjamin Obler, met over Zoom for three hours every Monday night. As the ten week course progressed, I learned new ways to hone my description, dialogue, and plotting abilities. I also received feedback from the instructor and the other ten students in my class.
By Rose4 years ago in Education
Opinion, size, physical quality, shape, age, color, origin, material, type, purpose. I sit in a stuffy, small, dark, rectangular, new, white, British, wooden, bed, sleeping room.
By Rose4 years ago in Families
It’s April 2020, I’m stranded in small town Maine, and the evening news is nightmarish with images of freezer trucks brought into New York City to store the COVID bodies. A year ago at this time, I was working as a foreign teacher in Wuhan China, the apparent epicenter of all this.
By Rose4 years ago in Humans
Tolstoy’s legendary War and Peace is famous for its length. At 587,287 words, or over 1,200 pages, it’s an imposing brick of literature.
