Author: Lia DeLand
Old Woman Hunting God
by Lia DeLand Old Woman is hunting God. She’s slow because her hip hurts and she’s blind in one eye, but she goes on searching, limping through the long days and cold nights, on and on. Sometimes there is a glimpse, a glimmer, but she wants More. She wants Light. She asks Owl how to…
A Skyful of Briddas
by Lia DeLand Because Paul Selig’s book I Am the Word (2010, Tarcher/Penguin) made such an impact on my life I wondered if it might be possible to write a “children’s” story based on the principles in the book… Special thanks to: Marlene Walker: writer, actress, artist, and editor extraordinaire; Candace Kerber: for your wonderful…
A Mangle of Monsters
This is an illustrated children’s book: Life is full of “monsters.” Anxiety is the most common mental health issue seen in children. Children cope with anxiety in various ways, e.g., by avoiding, getting sick, distracting with video games, having temper tantrums, or numbing out with food. This book shows children how to face their fears…
Cinderella Blues
run run run get out of here before it’s too late just get out leave run away oh shut up shut up you know I can’t please help get me out of here run away no I have to keep walking and smiling through the hall and down the stairs and into the courtyard and…
Sexy Cream Puffs
If I have to watch one more scene where actors who hardly know each other are humping and bumping and sweating and cooing and mooing and pretending to be excited and to want each other and love each other, I will throw up. Am I the only one? Does anyone else see how bizarre it…
To Someone Graduating from High School: The Only Way to be Happy
I hope that as you move forward you will have triumphs and successes, that you will explore the world, that you will learn and grow, that you will bust out of that confining, crushing straitjacket that you call your comfort zone. But more than anything else, I hope that you will be happy. You are…
Inferno: Descending Circles
We marry our unfinished business… She is a warm and intelligent middle-aged woman with a clear gaze and a quick smile. She’s also angry. She tells me that she was married for twenty years and had three grown children. Even though she and her husband have been divorced for ten years, she is still feeling…
Mist
There are fifty people sitting silently on poufy little pillows around the large hall. We are on a ten-day silent meditation retreat at Spirit Rock. Forty-five minutes of sitting meditation, forty-five minutes of walking meditation, all day long. Two sessions of qigong, morning and afternoon. Vegetarian meals, everything completely silent. We are surrounded by rolling…
The Wizard
I’m meditating… And Toto just pulled the curtain. I not only see the little man pulling the levers, I see that I AM the little man pulling the levers. And Toto. I’m Glinda the Good and the Wicked Witch of the West. I’m the munchkins and the winged monkeys and the Yellow Brick Road. I’m…
Kali
I dreamed of Kali. I know she has come to teach me something. Black skin all shiny with sweat, long black hair all tangled and snaky, nearly naked, a necklace of skulls, holding two long sharp knives, snarling, wild, joyful, blood all around. She terrifies me. She fascinates me. What is she teaching me? I…