Losing someone you care about messes with time. You see that you may not—most certainly don't—have the time you thought had. In other ways, time opens up. Doors closed for decades swing wide. You live simultaneously in the past, present, and future. My brother left a box with my name on it. He left one … Continue reading Shark Teeth
In the interest of not leaving anyone hanging, of achieving closure, of writing the end, I want to report that we scattered my brother's ashes. We have laid him to rest. Back in February I got up the courage to ask Jim about his final wishes. This was after we knew there were multiple lesions … Continue reading Salmon River, Mt. Hood, Oregon
I haven't written a post since January. In thinking about this return, my first post since my brother's death, I thought: it can't be too sad. I don't want to scare anyone. I haven't been scary before. I've written about reading, mostly. Reading isn't scary! I don't want anyone's heart breaking, for god's sake. In … Continue reading All Hallows Eve
Books read in the past year: Hound of the Baskervilles; The Lower Quarter; News of the World; The Widow Nash; Anything Is Possible; The Hundred Year House; Wonder; Tale for the Time Being; The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley; Blame, Hillbilly Elegy; One Man's Dark; Commonwealth; The Past; Everyone Was There; The Loss of All … Continue reading Religious Reading
Reading isn’t private; it's done in public all the time. Yet without actually asking, you wouldn’t be able to tell what kind of reading life a person cultivates, if any at all. Other things you can't tell about people you know: if they carry grudges. You don't know how many or how far back they … Continue reading Secrets and Forgery
clarity: n. 1. the quality of being easy to see or hear; sharpness of image or sound. 2. the quality of of coherence and intelligibility For seven weeks now, we've been socked in by smoke from wildfires. The eerie, orange-white light is surreal, intensifying my sense that modern life has become a science fiction novel. … Continue reading Clarity
You ever had one of those years, the sort that turns everything upside down? Mornings you can't really lay in bed, even on a Sunday, because your mind is going to find its way down the drain-of-no-return, and soon you'll be thinking about all your carefully laid plans, the trips you meant to take, where … Continue reading Things That Make Sense
As I've said I like to follow a "pulp" novel, usually a thriller, with a literary one. This spring I drifted from The Hound of the Baskervilles, to Thomas Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd. A jolt, to say the least. Where Doyle is spare and quick, Hardy is thick and slow. Hardy takes his … Continue reading More on the moors and other matters
My grandmother believed that all children like to be scared, at least a little. In Sunday school, elementary school, even as a babysitter, she taught kids her favorite rhyme: Here’s a candle to light you to bed here’s a chopper to chop off your head! Not all parents endorsed her ideas about kids and fear, … Continue reading The Great Grimpen Mire
A snapshot of July, 1979, at our house in southern Illinois: Dad, at work. My little brother, I don’t know. My twin sister, I don’t know. My mother, possibly in the basement sewing, in the kitchen doing dishes, or out front in her flower garden with the dog. In short, I don’t know. Me: barefoot, … Continue reading Hammock