There are such beautiful stories tucked away in even the quietest, most settled lives. Maybe people today don’t have the kind of access to memory that folks seemed to have in previous generations. The whiz-bangery of this world crowds out the wonder, and makes it hard to have, or recognize, singular experiences for what they … Read more
He said: This is a disappearing act for the ages, with a little of that all-the-king’s-horses-and-all-the-king’s-men business thrown in for good measure –although I should say that it never struck me as particularly surprising that horses wouldn’t be much good at putting things back together, lacking as they do opposable thumbs, not to mention hands. … Read more
A night for Barber’s “Adagio for Strings,” for roast beef sandwiches with horseradish, for wrenching squalls, for geese sailing across the sky, for the tired old monkey business with the flag and the usual recrimination, for the bowed back and the metaphoric broken teeth. What do you take me for, a leader? I am only … Read more
–Image copyright Karel Cudlin What am I? What shall I do? What can I believe and hope for? Everything in philosophy can be reduced to this. –Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Aphorisms As long and as far as they can stare into their magic spyglasses they strive to glimpse ever deeper into the star clutter, those little … Read more
Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it. –Flannery O’Connor, Wise Blood ‘You must journey down another road,’ he answered, when he saw me lost in tears, ‘if ever you hope to leave … Read more
The summer is fading. The moon is easing down to sleep in the trees, even as the stars step back into the dark country of heaven. They look like a small cluster of island villages in the North Sea, seen from an airplane at night. A fox, interloper here in the middle of a city … Read more
I’ve had one too many fucking nickels pulled out of my ear, the younger of the two men said. He was sitting on the floor, wearing a hooded sweatshirt, pajama bottoms, and badly worn bedroom slippers. He had declined the offer of a seat on the sofa, choosing instead to slump down against the wall … Read more
The way you throw your head back and show your broken teeth to the stars. How you laugh laugh laugh, nodding, your eyes pinned back to your perfect ears. I love that. The places you take me and the way you allow yourself to be taken, wherever you might be, so suddenly by sleep– I … Read more
Early Berleson had long since grown accustomed to the static routine of his middle years. He would sleepwalk through the day at work, make his way home in a sort of empirical blackout, and then, eventually, the night would just fall out from under him and leave him floating in murky space, listening to the … Read more
Only once it happened, only the one time, that once upon a time, the only memory I have left that inspires anything for the man but disgust. And even so, it wasn’t love I was feeling that day, but a sort of plain pity and cruel fascination, but, Jesus, it was a great moment, almost … Read more