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WHERE’S MY FREE GIFT?
They were old, or seemed soto a twenty-three-year-old bank managerwho spent time guiding them throughthe door, through the new account paperwork,through financial decisions theywere ill prepared to make, knowingthey were there not only becausemy branch office was close to home,but for the free gifts they would getfor opening a new account.They were old, or seemed…
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UNDER FOOT
Okay, let’s get some things straight once and for all. I don’t live in a shoe. It’s a work of modern architecture, a quite normal if unusual looking home,, and if you imagine it shoe-like, so be it. I’m not old, I’m 45, but with eight kids I am prematurely gray. It wasn’t broth I…
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AND TO YOU WE LEAVE . . .
Of course we did not heedthe warnings, what did they know,and anyway we were sure we had won. History is a poor teacher, thatmuch we have demonstrated againand yet again, lessons never learned. It is how we got here, how wehave no clear path to leave here,things assumed lying in ruin around us. We are…
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FACING
The face in the mirrorwas surprisingly older today,and I can’t imagine that Iwill ever look that old,at least not for quite some time. I wanted to ask him howhe had aged so badly, but knewthat it would be bad mannersto comment on his appearance,so I smiled and he in returm. I suppose one day I…
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LOOKING UP
I have discovereda small advantageof slowly losingmy sight. Each daythe imagein the mirroris less clear, wrinklesdisappearand I don’tlook quite as old as I knowthat I am, andyou’re lookingbetter as well.
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AFTERLIFE
In the farthest reachesof the afterlife, the old mengather each day, althoughday and night are meaninglessto them, just assignedfor purposes of the writer. The Buddha recites sutrashoping the others willbe in the moment with him,while Hillel smiles, standson one foot and dreamsof a lean pastrami on ryewith a slice of half sour. Christ muses on…
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STAGED
At the moment of your birthmy son, I grew suddenly older,mortality became a realitythat I could no longer avoid. You could not imagine this,and I doubt others could seebut I knew and the infinitecollapsed inside the event horizon. Your brother came later, butthat death was incremental,a single cut among thousands,a step on a path you…
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Nansen’s Reason Is Not the Way 無門關 三十四 
If you see the Buddhayou have certainly gone blind,if you hear his wordsyou demonstrate your deafness. Nansen will grow old,hearing and vision will fadeand he will sit and shoutin a sun warmed rain. A reflection on Case 34 of the Mumonkan (Gateless Gate) Koans
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PLAYLIST
I realize now justhow old I have gotten,no laughing any longer at the old men alwaystucking pills into a sorterneatly marked by day and time, for I now do my ownweekly, the number of pillsseeming to propogate by month. I suppose it is timeto begin working in earneston the playlist for my funeral. I’ll be…
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GOING HOME
They say you cannot go homeagain, although I have neverhad occasion to meet them. I’ve never been one to followthe dictates of them, unless theywere my parents or spouse, andin the case of my parents, oftennot even when they demanded it,so I went back to the homeof my childhood, a shockinglynew place as I remembered…
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an old writer and his words 