Author Archives: janishaag

As I computer’d inside, the sneaky eclipse oranged the porcelainrising moon outside. From my Earthly vantage, imagining I had time, I finished what held me for the moment, sneakered my feet, thenambled down a city sidewalk to see what I … Continue reading →

So much of my life has come to this: sharing with others the power of writing to help heal the most difficult things thrown at us. Deaths of loved ones. Illness and pain. Loss of every kind. Grief of every … Continue reading →

I am no stranger to water. (Thanks, Mom, for those early swimming lessons when I was 3.) It is, in many ways, my preferred element. In water I am graceful, far from the klutzy thing I am on land. As … Continue reading →

We are so country out here in the wilds of Haena on the north shore of Kauai, where kabillion dollar homes on the beach nestle near more modest local houses, where all manner of wildlife and domesticated animals live on … Continue reading →

How you know that you’re definitely a “senior”: When they give you a lifetime pass that says so. Dick bought me a National Parks and Federal Recreation Lands Senior Pass (known between us as the Old Farts Park Pass), as … Continue reading →

It’s not every day you get to meet an AED sister, but today Dick Schmidt met Briana Martinez in Lihue, Kauai—both of them revived by AEDs after cardiac arrests in 2019. Briana was a 39-year-old special education teacher on Kauai … Continue reading →

This is the story I’ve been avoiding writing about my best friend, who died last August after 12 years of coping with metastasized colon cancer. It’s something I’d love to talk to her about—especially today, which would have been her … Continue reading →

for the people of Ukraine How often do we forget—watching the nightly sky show,clouds purpling, the last ofthe day’s energetic yellowand orange rimming the horizon—that the sun will return again? We find ourselves sinking, too,anticipating the coming dark.Perhaps the angry … Continue reading →

Four great warriors kept me company on my walk,all poets—they’d have to be poets, wouldn’t they?— but they were so quiet I thought, ah… walkingmeditation then, which hinted that Thay must be one of them, he who just finished hismost … Continue reading →

That dayyou melted,the collapseof a self,your remainsburned downto a heapof humanityon an airportfloor. Gone. I witnessedyour death andtransfigurationat the literalhands ofstrangerswho workedto pour yourmelted self—one that hadtaken flight—back intoanother form. You arosethat day,blue eyesblinking,ragged andbloody,lifted ontoa gurney byso many sets … Continue reading →