After Lenny fired he lowered the rifle and stood on the ridge looking down at the scene unfolding below. He didn’t feel a thing except maybe surprise. In only one shot he’d hit a target over 150 feet away. Pretty damn good, he thought. Pretty damn good. He’d make sure his brother pointed out that […]
Sleep and then awake, fumbling for the light, reaching over the bedside feeling for a Chekhov, a Carver, or where is that Koestler anyway? Finally I grasp the Chekhov. His words are a spade in the dim light, turning over the thawing earth, cutting the worms, replenishing the soil for a new seed and then […]
Ants are crawling on the ceiling again. The ceiling is invisible. Sometimes the ants fall down into my mug of wine…
Why do anything? Is it the pain? Does the struggle to breathe in those first few newborn seconds set the tone for the rest of our lives? I think so. Pain, either felt or avoided, is what moves us along toward our ultimate end. Once I was on a bad bus and composed this line: […]
I don’t exactly understand why it is that I like waiting rooms. Maybe it’s because we’re not expected to do very much in waiting rooms. Or it might have something to do with a story I once heard…
THE MARRIED COUPLE came into my office upset. He was about fifty years old and looked like somebody had switched his head with a skeleton’s skull. She was pretty and younger, but her eyes were two black tunnels drilled into the side of a German mountain. There was probably no way out of the darkness […]
As usual I am confused. Is public weeping good or bad? Even if being empathetic leads to depression, is that still okay? Is there anything known as “healthy anxiety”? If you become immobile on the sidewalk due to unexpected gravity, the kind that glazes your eyeballs with clear honey, are you still obligated to answer […]
