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DEMENTIA
He can remember it as though it was just yesterday. Actually it was just yesterday, but for him that had little to do with memory. Bits of his childhood would come flooding back: the city, the cousins who took him in for the few dollars his mother could offer. But his grandsons are a vague…
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KIKE
Third grade, religious school kikes, us, then a backhand raised, drawn, quickly dropped, below a reddened face, sleeve pulled up 145233 in black between elbow and wrist and a tear, perched fearing to fall. Never again, and nothing more, later, same arm ruffling hair, smoke clinging to aging skin, no older when he walked in…
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FINALS
It was approaching the end of another too long semester and the sign-up sheet for office hours was getting fuller with names I didn’t recognize, or did and not in a way that would please the student. It was always like this, the two weeks after it was too late to do anything, when the…
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SCRIVEN
“You know,” she said with a smile, “that you are going straight to the infernal regions when this is over and done with, no doubt.” “I can’t imagine,” he replied, “that He who is all knowing and all powerful would ever let that happen to me.” “Be serious,” she added, “you know that the nether…
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WHERE WISDOM CANNOT REACH 正法眼蔵 語十七
The wealthy man has an ornate cup, the working man a very simple one. The poor farmer, nurturing the tea plants, has no cup and all, but for each of them the tea is the same. What is it that you taste? A reflection on Case 57 of the Shobogenzo (Dogen’s True Dhama Eye) For…
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CALLER
It’s Sunday, so I know, before long I will have the nagging thought that I should call my mother. I’ve had this thought for years, once acted upon it with regularity, listened patiently for her weekly list of things I needed to help her with, since I never visited to do the work with her…
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WAITING GAME
He had been there for days although he’d stopped counting since it didn’t ultimately matter. He would leave when the time was right although he had no idea how he would know when that moment arrived. Some things you do on faith he assumed, and this had to be one of those things. He wasn’t…
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PERSONIFICATION
The black cat walked by the patio again today. He won’t stop and engage no matter how hard I try to talk to him. Some cats are haughty and this one clearly isn’t deaf. Some say it is feral, but it’s too well groomed for that. More likely it has spent too much time with…
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KAFKA
June 13, 1896, Prague a warm day, old stone schul you stood before the minyon wearing the skullcap repeating ancient words that lay on paper, rehearsed sounding false on a tongue swollen in anxiety. Your tallit, white woven with blue threads hung at your knees fringe fingered, rolled and unrolled, twisted until touched to skin…
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SMART ONES
We marched for hours, going nowhere really, but nowhere was the point of the marching so we achieved the goal the Air Force set. We didn’t even think it odd that they made us shave our heads, so we’d all look like fools, there was a war on and we were in the military, so…
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an old writer and his words 