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IN A ROOM OF HORSE MANURE
My sister only wanted a horse an my parents thought they could solve that dilemma with a pony at her fifth birthday party where she would get all the extra rides, her friends and playmates be damned. Like most great parental plans, this one was doomed to failure, and failure marched front and center as…
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INSIDIOUS
They come when you least expect them appear seemingly out of nowhere at first so small they go unnoticed but never unheard, for what they lack in size, they make up for in volume. The get beneath your skin, take root, steal into your heart, and find themselves in the brain’s synapses. Before long they…
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EXPECTATIONS
Nothing unexpected happened today. That, in itself, was entirely unexpected. On this and certain other days, you have to expect the unexpected. When that doesn’t happen you are left to ponder why what was logically expected went so unexpectedly wrong. Nothing unexpected should happen tomorrow. At least anything unexpected happening would be a truly unexpected…
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PHYSICS
She is seven, going on some much larger number. She believes in the tooth fairy. She believes in the scientific method. She believes in vegetarianism and ecology. She believes in helping her parents and was doing so when she found her baby teeth in a small bag in their dresser. She no longer believes in…
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A PERFECT MOMENT
A week ago there was a moment that perfectly summed up life, at least as seen by a three-year-old. Three-year-olds know far more than they are given credit for knowing, far more, they are certain, than their parents, and just enough to make their grandparents laugh at the most inopportune moments. It was lunchtime, always…
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I WISH I MAY, I WISH I MIGHT
Tonight, if the sky remains mostly cloudless I will go out into the yard and select a star. The selection is easy, dragging it into the garage unseen is a far more difficult task. It will have to be a rather small star, a neutron would do but with my bad back the weight might…
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MARKED
The oddest thing about being Buddhist is what I once was, and not just in a prior life. Born, it turns out, and adopted into a secular Jewish family, I must still be Jewish even if I might have lapsed back to secularity, they say, because my Jewishness is a mark, Cain-like it seems, though…
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SPACED OUT
I laughed at my parents when they talked about a typewriter as something of a marvel when they were so commonplace. Of course as a boy, half the fun of helping my father at work was knowing the mimeo ink would stain my fingers purple for a week and even borax would only render them…
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ADOPTING A HISTORY
She likes to tell him that he came from a small village in Lithuania. He prefers to remind her that he was born in the District of Columbia which has never been mistaken for a small village in Lithuania, although he knows he could find several who speak Lithuanian there. And, he points out to…
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QUANTUM
Quantum gravitation, I strongly suggest, is something on which you cannot really count. I know all things are supposed to be relative but as an only and adopted child I have none, for me relativity is something special and generally the lack weighs heavily.
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an old writer and his words 