You know the story of Ganesha and the moon — how Chandra laughed at him after his fall, and how Ganesha, in his hurt, cursed the moon to disappear and return, phase by phase, never again seen whole in a single glance. I've been thinking about that curse differently lately. Maybe it isn't a punishment. Maybe it's the truth of all of us: we are not meant to be seen whole all at once. We hide, we return, we hide again. Tonight, the new moon, is the hiding place. It's dark on purpose. Something...

I have always loved the way the word fifty looks written down. And I have been waiting since that SNL skit came out to do my full Sally O'Malley impersonation— high kick and all. Thanks to yoga, I am still flexible enough to pull it off. I've been practicing. Before the Threshold · The Kali Sadhana Before Lakshmi, there was Kali. I had been deep in Her Sadhana— raw, primal, uncompromising. I painted my room dark blue, the color of the void, the infinite. As a rock and roller at heart, Kali...

There is a road I drive often — Highway 49, winding through the Sierra Nevada foothills, gold and green depending on the season. I have had some of the most ordinary and extraordinary moments of my life on that road. It keeps giving me things to think about. About a year ago, I was driving the 49 in the middle of a storm. Rain sheeting down, visibility low — and there on the shoulder I saw a woman picking flowers. Who picks flowers on the highway in a rainstorm? I thought, genuinely alarmed....