à la carte spirit by ilona fried
Memory
When a Memory’s Absence Tells a Story
A former boyfriend, from decades and another continent ago, e-mailed me last week to mention that Barack Obama had visited Germany, where he now lives with his wife and two children. He wrote: “I told my family that, thanks to you, I heard the senior Bush’s speech in Budapest in 1989!” Really? I didn’t remember … Continue reading
Swimming to Celebrate
Yesterday at 7:16 a.m. I waded into the local reservoir with Boulder Aquatic Masters. It organizes private swims before the main beach opens: without motorboats and crowds, the area is relatively silent, the water calm. At that hour, the air is still cool. It’s a bit like being on a watery Camino de Santiago: instead … Continue reading
How Will You Liberate Yourself Today?
Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. – Viktor E. Frankl My father used to honor the second day of May as his second birthday. It was not an occasion for … Continue reading
I am a Bostonian
If one believes that birth city determines identity, then I am a Bostonian. The Boston Marathon seems to have always had a large local footprint. Even in suburbs far from the start or the finish line, runners and joggers were as common as spring crocuses. In the hilly Lexington neighborhood where I grew up decades … Continue reading
After a Death, an Ant Reminds Me to Choose Life
A writer I admired passed away on Saturday, March 2. I met Robyn Richey Piz in a class at Lighthouse Writers Workshop, and she invited me to join a writing salon. I knew her mainly through the story she chose to tell about living with a chronic medical condition. Her evocative and even ethereal prose … Continue reading
à la carte spirit by ilona fried 
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