Yo Ivanhoe

When he pulled his Impala up to the gates of the cemetery it was after midnight. The place was locked up tight, and snow and fog were blowing in off the lake. It was a huge cemetery right in the middle of the city, a beautiful place for what it was, large and well-kept and … Read more

“If you think you’re in command of a single thing in this world, little man, you are sadly mistaken, and badly mistaken as well. You are in command of nothing. Your brain is shot full of holes that reveal nothing but dark cataracts of ceaselessly roiling ignorance.” The Devil tossed his chin in the direction … Read more

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

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