I've always been drawn to solitude, felt a kind of luxurious relief in its self-generated pace and rhythms.

A lot of people, quite frankly, think intense attachments to animals are weird and suspect, the domain of people who can't quite handle attachments to humans.

Fall in love with a dog, and in many ways you enter a new orbit, a universe that features not just new colors but new rituals, new rules, a new way of experiencing attachment.

Consumerism thrives on emotional voids.

For years, I ate the same foods every day, in exactly the same manner, at exactly the same times.

All dogs can be guide dogs of a sort, leading us to places we didn't even know we needed or wanted to go.

What is this drive to be thinner, prettier, better dressed, other? Who exactly is this other and what does she look like beyond the jacket she's wearing or the food she's not eating? What might we be doing, thinking, feeling about if we didn't think about body image, ever?