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SUMMER, THEN
For three days I was a short order cook a change from my table duties when the regular guy decided that a night of drinking didn’t end when the bar closed and broke back in through the rotting back door that was always next on the list of things to be fixed. The owner, my…
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HANGING BY A THREAD
In Riga, my grandfather was a master tailor, the great and the rich would come to his shop some bringing bolts of fine cloth and others trusting him knowing that wools and silks were not beyond his reach. Even after they marked his home as that of the Jew, the Captain, who rode through the…
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TODAY, ALAS
Too much of what passes for literature in these days is really no more lasting than the evanescent pixels from which it is created. Books fade, pages crumble to dust but that requires the passage of time that our electronic world avoids or simply refuses to acknowledge, for history is something that lives in storage,…
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IMPRESSIONS
I have no reason to venture to Tahiti for Gaugin took me there years ago, and again on a visit to Chicago and one to New York, or was it Cleveland, it hardly matters, for I know that the Tahiti of my experience no longer exists, touristed to death, itself at constant risk of drowning.…
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The question of the day is would you rather be a turtle or a snail, not to be sung to any melody by Paul Simon. Think carefully, for one day the question will have real impact and you will get your answer with a permanence that merits the most careful consideration. Today may or may…
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MONOCHROME
It is an admittedly odd sign of my age that I recall clearly when bathrooms were tiled mostly in monochrome, black and white, and it was a mark of quality when each tile was hexagonal, a hive of ceramic cells, impenetrable. Now tiles are square or rectangular, come in a rainbow of colors, often intermixed…
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IN SEARCH
He’d been searching for ever, or so often seemed, for no-self, and he couldn’t fathom why it was so difficult to attain simple absence, nothing must be less than something, after all. He knew, like Sisyphus, he would continue to search until he succeeded, the gods of his soul decreed it and you don’t fuck…
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THE GREAT HERE AFTER
When it’s time, i suppose I’d like to go like my dog and cat, slipping away as they were gently stroked. It could be like that, there’s a chance but I can’t count on it, no one can. I never did try skydiving, too late, now and so a failed or fouled chute won’t be…
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DYING TO MEET YOU
The single greatest problem In writing about death Is that everybody does it, dies Sooner or later, so it’s hardly All that special unless, like Twain, it happens more than once. But perhaps multiple deaths are not All that uncommon, for Buddhists, Among whom I count myself It happens all the time, karma demands it.…
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PRAYER
We bow our heads and utter words not to the cicada speaking through a spring night or the beetle crawling slowly across the leaf searching for the edge. We bid the crow silent, the cat mewling his hunger, just to crawl under a porch awaiting morning, the child to sleep. The stream flows slowly by,…
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an old writer and his words 