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RECALL
It is always odd watching older men gather to talk about their lives, about how much they no longer remember of last year and a decade ago, about the infinite details they do recall of their time spent in the army, air force, navy, the smell of slop on a shingle, the stain on the…
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ON THE MESA
At night, in these mountains you see a million stars, but all you hear is the silence. It bothers you, this silence and you strain to hear, what? There is no one here but you and your breath is swallowed by the night sky. Be still for the wind will rise, and these mountains and…
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FORGOTTEN PROCLAMATION
He was quite tall for then, even tall for now, and that hat must have added almost a foot, a mortician likely as not, if not a lawyer. He wrote eloquently, even if his voice was not quite of his stature, his words always had impact, digging in the gray and blue bled soil of…
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BELLY OF THE BEAST
From within the belly of the beast Sheol is a placid place, removed from the waves rattling the timbers, silent of the cries of the men berating their fate, uncertain as to the cause of their discomfort. Let Nineveh burn, lets its people scatter to the streets, let the King stare out at the destruction…
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BOTTOM LINE
They are dying but it really doesn’t matter since the bottom line doesn’t recognize their plight, and never mind that we paid for its invention, for that is the beauty of this age. God is no longer in charge of things, bought and sold, and now assigned to watching the corn grow in central Illinois,…
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SOUTH OR SO IT SEEMS
It was tacky then, it’s epitome and six decades and unknown views later it hasn’t changed at all. You don’t expect tackiness to accrete, yet like a black hole this is irrefutable evidence it has. To say it is garish to insult the term, since it is so much more, beyond anything the term can…
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TRIANGULATION
He says that foremost Mao Zedong was a poet, and knew that all poetry must at some level be political, must incite the reader to rebel against complacency. I say that Zhao Zhenkai wrote as Bei Dao as the ultimate act of rebellion, sacrificing his very identity. He says that I am anchored by the…
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MINE, NEVER MINE
I imagine to myself that this is my house abutting on my small portion of this street sitting on my small patch of land I pay the mortgage and the taxes, so I am entitled to rent this delusion just a bit longer, and it all works, until I stop and think But before I…
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NIL, ZERO, NADA, NYET
This morning absolutely nothing happened. The newswires were silent, or repeated old stories. The sports wires had nothing of note to say, save repeating yesterday’s scores. Even the gossip news was absent, as though a Saturday night passed without embarrassment. I did not mind the quiet, the almost silence, able to listen to the Mockingbird’s…
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IN THE BREACH
There is little you can do about it, less that you want to do, although they are not pleased with your decision. Remind them that they are the ones that left the decision to you, mostly in the hope you would do what they hoped, taking them off the hook, but they now realize they…
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an old writer and his words 