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SELF?
There is one thing that none of the books on discovering who you are when you are adopted bother to tell you. If the did, it wouldn’t change anything, but it is a burden you assumed you’d easily bear that grows heavy with time. What they don’t warn you is that you will discover yourself,…
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GROVE
Living in a bamboo grove, she said, is very much like living in an old house. Look up at noon, into the canopy and imagine you see rays of light piercing the ill-thatched roof. Listen to the growing winds or autumn and hear the ghosts of the old house making their way up creaking stairs.…
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LIVES
I have lived many lives, too many to count, and I remember bits and pieces of each, but not necessarily to which life this bit or that bit should attach. It is why I run them together, view them as a singularity, easier to cope even when I know it is a nice delusion. I…
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AROUND
What they simply cannot understand is what his take as a vinyl disc is a moment in a life, a memory encased, over which a dancing stylus bleeds dreams and a history of time is written on the back of its sleeve. They cannot grasp that music doesn’t fit neatly in your pocket, that your…
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CHARLES
Bukowski, you old satyr when you croaked was there the great American novel locked away in your head. When you pickled yourself was it for fear that the words locked away inside would spew forth like your lunch so many nights as you verged on alcohol poisoning. When you read Burroughs could you picture the…
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ETUDE
Today was perfectly ordinary which is how I would have my days and how they so seldom agreed to be. I did pause and look at the Yamaha keyboard and remembered that when the Court of the Empress Theresa rejected Mozart, he attended the symphonies of Haydn as a form of consolation. That reminds me…
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REFLECTION
The thing with mirrors is that they always want to tell the truth where we what is lies, or at least a little fibs, some wrinkles smoothed, hair now a color the mirror is more than capable of reflecting, but mirrors don’t bend to our wishes, and when they do, at carnivals mostly, the result…
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NAM
He said, “I survived the war, was up to my armpits in water wading through the night through the rice plants that would never bear grain once we called in the orange. I walk through minefields, the noise a deafening silence since the only sound that mattered was the click that shouted death You think…
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FOR SPACIOUS SKIES
Two men, having reached an indeterminate age, sit on old chairs outside the small town grocery, it’s neon beer sign half, flickering, around the corner from the bank on main street. One, plaid shirt tucked in coveralls, one bib strap unbuckled, leans back, takes a turn on his long neck, his cane propped against his…
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LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER
My mother no longer speaks to me. It is not that she has been dead two years, that passage would hardly be an impediment for her. I would like to think she has nothing left to say, having said it all so many times in the past. Some say we will see each other again…