In the past year, I’ve become fascinated with
large cats (tigers, lions, cheetahs, jaguars, panthers, leopards, lynxes, cougars, mountain lions, ocelots, etc). At first, it was just basic admiration, but the more I learn, the more I am drawn to their way of being. Their grace, their focus, their resilience, their flexibility, their adaptability. The gazelle changes direction and the cheetah follows; prey rarely hears the leopard’s silent stalk; tigers are unassumingly beautiful until they unleash their fluid fury and deliver destiny to their dinner. This all sounds violent and constitutes the precise reason that my mother always hated the Discovery Channel. But something about it–the contradiction between violence and grace, the perfect alignment between intention and expression in the moment of truth–intrigues me.

Photo credit: Suha Derbent: http://www.suhaderbent.com/
I’ve wasted...