–Illustration by James Dankert People have been wondering what happened to Uncle Jumbo. That is, of course, the million dollar question, and a question whose answer apparently lies somewhere far in the man’s distant past. All I can tell you is that something did indeed happen. There’s no doubt about that. And something always seems … Read more
This persistent image you mention, the masked man in the mirror that you have been routinely encountering in your dreams –I don’t mean to make light of your problems, but certainly you don’t need to pay me to explain something that is so painfully obvious that it is almost an insult to my profession. Please … Read more
A dog is walking on the rocks. If that dog weren’t there coming between me and the rocks I wouldn’t understand this world I wouldn’t. Fish are swimming in the water the water flows around the fish birds are flying in the air the air moves around them if there were no fish if there … Read more
I spent much of my early life looking for fables, and can remember the days when the spring woods would be full of them. If you climbed back up into the bluffs above the Bitterroot creek and nosed around under rocks and in the shady areas beneath the stands of big oaks, you’d find fables … Read more
Death had become bored with humans and their ridiculous rituals, their lip service to life and its preciousness. How could he take them seriously after all the centuries they’d been mucking up his once mostly orderly routine? Once upon a time he’d had a pretty cut-and-dried job description. It wasn’t pleasant work –it wasn’t meant … Read more
Every day, every day I hear enough to fill a year of nights with wondering. –Denise Levertov, from “Every Day” Bring me all your dreams, You dreamer, Bring me all your Heart melodies That I may wrap them In a blue cloud-cloth Away from the too-rough fingers Of the world. —Langston Hughes, “The Dream Keeper”
I know these things about my barber: He refers to his wife as “the battle-ax.” Or, alternately, as “the fucking battle-ax.” Though uncommonly foul-mouthed, even by my debased standards, his favored exclamation remains the sturdy and old-fashioned, “Oh, my stars!” The project of his old age is reading all thirteen volumes of the Lewis and … Read more
He wasn’t even sure anymore if he could jump, could get his fat ass off the ground. One more pathetic little milestone on his way down the drain. Still, he could always find consolations. There were people out there who couldn’t get out of bed, people for whom showering was an adventure worthy of Indiana … Read more
So this fucking midget walks into a bar with a chimpanzee on his shoulders, right? It’s cold as shit, and both the midget and the monkey are covered with snow and frost; the chimp, in fact, looks almost like it could be dead. There’s not another soul in the bar but the blind bartender and … Read more
It was hogwash, if you really want to know the long and short of it. Pure and utter hogwash. He knew damn well that he had better words than the words he’d been spitting at the world. He believed all sorts of decent things that, for some reason he couldn’t entirely understand, he wasn’t willing … Read more