Brad Zellar I had this period in my early thirties when I would have what I guess for lack of a better word I’d have to call visions. I once saw a woman –a stout, elderly woman in a disturbingly translucent gown– levitating in the lovely chapel of a huge hospital in the Midwest. This chapel was … Read more
Sixteen hits, thirteen runs, three home runs, a grand slam, a nice recovery by Brad Radke, and a swell 2006 debut for Francisco Liriano. Very encouraging, I’d say. But this is what I really want to know: Rogers Centre? What the hell kind of name for a baseball park is that? Seriously, that is just … Read more
I guess this is really it, huh? My God, it doesn’t seem possible. One of my problems with baseball of late is that everything that could conceivably be said about the game in its past and present incarnations has already been said. I feel like I’ve said plenty myself, and the older I get the … Read more
Out there in the country where I grew up there was once a pond that was said to be full of wonders. People always referred to the pond as “brackish.” I don’t have a dictionary at hand –I am a refugee now, and am reclining in the backseat of my car at a fogbound rest … Read more
I remember a darkness, real, yet stirred with a thousand fireflies, perhaps my earliest recollected encounter with true wonder. The mosquito trucks crawled through at dusk and left behind a moving cloud embroidered with the bright fragments of skreeing children. Even then two people armed with nothing but sticks could have a good time, could … Read more
I wonder where you were going in such a hurry when I passed you walking on the opposite side of the street yesterday? You always did have that purposeful look about you. Even as a little girl you seemed like you were in a hurry to get somewhere. I knew how important it was for … Read more
So ain’t we all inanimate, George? –Jim Thompson, Pop. 1280 ‘Je’ est un autre. (‘I’ is someone else.) –Arthur Rimbaud You might, you’re perhaps fond of saying, occasionally like something concrete from me, something in the way of true disclosure, painful confession, political opinion, or merely, now and again, a bit of honest biographical kibble. … Read more
The most that anyone of us can seem to do is to fashion something –an object, or ourselves– and drop it into the confusion, make an offering of it, so to speak, to the life force. –Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death It may be that when we no longer know what to do we … Read more
He had this hackneyed phrase in his head –“adrift in a sea of confusion”– that he couldn’t seem to get rid of. Was this really the best he could do in describing how he felt? Yes, at least for the time being, he was forced to admit that it was. He wouldn’t be able to … Read more
Painting the word “Fuck” in fluorescent pink letters on the shell of a huge turtle would, I’m certain you’d agree, constitute a desecration. Such an act would be an affront to any definition of the sacred you could offer, and would thus be a grievous sin. Releasing in a muddy creek a turtle that had … Read more