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BONE CHINA
Mother loved her bone china.She went out of the way to insurethat her first husband bought a completeset for her, service for twelvenever mind she never had a tablethat could seat more than eightand then only then if you crowdedmismatched chairs together.She gave it to me after her secondmarriage finally dissolved, not onlybecause I was…
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GALLERY
I have visited countlessart galleries in this countryand a few in Europe as well and Ialways stop and stare at the masters’still life paintings, how the lightplays off a piece of fruit, howthe glazed porcelain on a ewerseems to make the reflected lightinvite you to dance with it.I wanted to sip tea from a china…
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PEKING
Chi-Chi was a cute pekein a very “runt of the litter”sort of way, cuddly buthardly the show dogher breeders had intended.I asked why she was calledChi-Chi and my father searchedand showed me her AKCpapers, with the full namethat would’ve made thoseof Spanish royaltypause to consider the brevityof their seemingly endless names.She was a simple joy,…
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MADE IN
You learn to shop carefully,always searching for wherean item is made, avoiding placesyou know are not socially responsible. The search is complicatedby the lack of nearby stores,by the ubiquity of Amazon,by the certainty that the productwon’t arrive for some time,and when you find oneyou like, you scroll downand see the magic buzzword“Imported” and you knowfrom…
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IF ONLY A BULL
In our family Murphy was a god, and his law was the eleventh commandment. I often wanted to ask at what moment my childhood ended. Had to be before my twelfth birthday, before the day on which I went from greeter at one of my father’s business parties in our oversized family room, to bartender,…
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BATTLESHIP
As a child I played Battleshipon a square grid, the ships markedby hand, one for each of the players,we were efficient by necessity. My sons played Battleship, thoughunder a different name in deferenceto my hatred of things martial,on an electrically wired board. My grandchildren haven’t yetdiscovered the game, now playedon their iPads and iPhones, but…
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SONGWRITER
Bob Dylan is, to the best of my knowledge,the only songwriter to successfully rhymeoutrageous and contagious, which doesn’texplain why I knew I could never bea successful songwriter in this life. The explanation is far simpler, it was whenLeonard Cohen served me tea and apricots,said he hated the river even living in Montrealand said I should…
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Joshu’s Oak 無門關 三十七
Look out of the windowthe garden is barrenof oaks, nor is thisa Temple in China. If you listen carefullya thousand branchesbend quietly in the wind,a simple wave washingoak leaves ontoexpectant soil. A reflection on case 37 of the Mumonkan (Gateless Gate)
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DIG IT
He started digging early in the morning,and hoped that by lunch, he’d be wellon his way there, though he wasn’t certainhow he’d get up out of the holewhen lunch rolled around, but needis a good instructor, so he was surehe could figure it out easily enough.It was slower going than he imagined,slower by several magnitudes.He…
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an old writer and his words 