David Soubly

In a recent blog, I ranted about what should have been a quick start to my day. How I’d begun my daily session with high hopes to create something meaningful. I’d been inspired, and I’d wanted to get my thoughts down as quickly as I could.

Instead, my laptop rebelled. After several false starts, reboots and corrective actions, some 35 minutes later I found myself sitting before a blank screen, my inspiration gone. So I wrote — complained, really — about this frustrating experience, titling...

Sometimes, late at night, I improvise music on the piano.

Most often, the best improvisation takes place late at night. Just as the best pure writing for me seems to take place first thing in the morning when, hair going every which way and clad in embarrassing stuff, I squint at the screen while letting my fingers just go. Putting down on the page those fragments, associations that may, at some point, body forth a coherent bit of writing.

But improvising. Ah. That’s the stuff of...

We’ve all been to the zoo. Some zoos do better than others at recreating natural habitats, so the animals they confine can enjoy the illusion of freedom.

Visiting one such zoo, I studied a female elephant in her enclosure. The elephant’s behavior puzzled me. She would step forward onto a horizontal log, and it looked like she was about to cross over it. Then her rear leg would lift and bend slightly. As if this slight movement had tugged a rope, she would stop, then step backward off the...