Brad Zellar People pay for what they do, and still more, for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it simply: by the lives they lead. —James Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name These angels do not look like angels. They look like old people, stooped and weary, clothed in the rags they have … Read more
We are contemptuous of transient well-being, as if there were any other kind. Routinely discounting the preponderance of evidence is not the behavior of reasonable people, nor is devaluing present experience because it may be overtaken by something worse…. Powerless people can hardly demand coherency of themselves, since they must always react to forces they … Read more
Hardening your heart is difficult, stressful, and taxing work. You’ve never been much good at it. You’re getting better, though, as you learn to accept how necessary this work is to your survival in a world where the heart is mostly useless anymore beyond its function as pump and plumbing. The heart, you recognize, has … Read more
Your ideals are invisible clouds So try not to suffocate the poor, the peasants, with your sympathies. They know that you’re staring at them. —Jim Harrison, from “Easter Morning” Dance on, you pigs, what concern is it of mine? —Franz Kafka, Diaries, 1914 Could any of this possibly be true, these things you tell us? … Read more
ick Oehlenschlager’s office is crowded with so much unusual visual stimuli that it’s often hard for a visitor to follow the man’s enthusiastic torrent of conversation. There is a dead grouse splayed on its back on a newspaper atop a desk. There are tottering stacks of mounted plant specimens, various skeletons, and shelves jammed with … Read more
The King was widely regarded as a complete fucking jackass, a man who traded his Kingdom and his wondrous gifts for a chain of muffler shops. The Queen left him immediately, and was followed in short order by his retinue (for he had, in fact, once had a retinue). A few desperate and greasy palace … Read more
I don’t recall if the local giant ever actually claimed to have special powers. It did, however, seem to me that he conducted himself as if he had sprung from the pages of mythology. What I’m trying to say, I guess, is that this didn’t appear to be just another ordinary, run-of-the-mill giant. For one … Read more
SWF, young enough, not yet old, weird, fine-enough looking (and that’s not just therapy talking), absolutely no interest in or patience with mingling, machinery, or the usual fanciness. Likes nasty weather, flying and creeping and vulnerable things, C-SPAN when people are just sitting around sipping from glasses of water or clearing their throats, Jeff What’s-His-Name, … Read more
The forest. The sea. The garden. The grindstone. The long and winding road. The moon. The stars. Sunrise. Sunset. Ecstasy. Exhaustion. The heart as metaphor. The heart as living, beating thing. Myths. Reality. Then. Now. Here. There. Beyond either here or there. ‘This pining meat.’ This ticking clock. The second hand. The hours. The days. … Read more
When Buddy Clister came up the hill that afternoon he wasn’t his usual shrill, braying self. This was a guy who’d once had a fistfight with Eddie Guster’s mother, and Mrs. Guster had kicked Buddy’s ass and bloodied his nose. You’d think that would be a pretty tough thing for an aspiring two-bit punk to … Read more