THEY’RE GOING TO MAKE IT lost and found in Mexico Vanessa suggested. I accepted. Even though I knew better. Or should have. A Resort & Spa in Cabo San Lucas where lightly larded men pace azure pools waving cocktails, whooping S-class Maybach! Royal Troon! Sanctuary Machu Picchu! where gleaming unguinous women pace parallel paths waving […]
They’re Going to Make It lost and found in Mexico Vanessa suggested. I accepted. Even though I knew better. Or should have. A Resort & Spa in Cabo San Lucas where lightly larded men pace azure pools waving cocktails, whooping S-class Maybach! Royal Troon! Sanctuary Machu Picchu! where gleaming unguinous women pace parallel paths waving […]
The Old Woman Tries to Make Herself Useful The old joke about Tommy was she was a social scientist without the social. Now she’s gone feral. She watches herself with detached interest, as though she were a subject in one of the studies she used to quantify. In her mind, she is simply an extreme […]
In movies, there’s the iconic shot of a lone person wading into a vast glittering ocean, a resolute body consigning itself to the sea. But on that sunny evening at Chesterman beach, my brother Geoff wasn’t seeking death. He was snatching life. As I watched his skeletal, beaded body creep back out, my throat constricted. […]
ARACHNORAMA If you wish to live and thrive, Let a spider run alive. LET’S BE FRIENDS There’s more to a spider than the number of legs. We would like you humans to know us. We would like to share what we know about you humans. Knowledge leads to understanding; understanding leads to respect. It’s time. […]
SNOWBALL A Christmas Story. In the north end of the parking lot, men in parkas and fat pants cluster around a black Yukon, joking, gesticulating, chumming to sub-woofers. The pulsing SUV sparks red, green and blue, and stories float and knock, though no one’s listening. Loose shadows, long limbs, everything moving—Honest John’s lets them be. […]
MUSIC LESSONS after he’s gone “She knows by now that grief is mostly endurance, understanding over and over that the person you loved is not coming back.” The News From Spain: Seven Variations on a Love Story, by Joan Wickersham ~ I wanted music. I used to play guitar, but I didn’t want guitar. I […]
83 PROBLEMS, A-Z I am not—I think I am not—afraid of dying. ~William Maxwell, Nearing 90 . . . Missing cat, panic, braindead, fruitflies, envy. Problems. As a psychotherapist, I worked for years to help people solve their problems. Then I learned that, according to Buddha, we all have 83 problems. Everyone: Bill Gates, Oprah […]
I’d just started sun salutations when I spotted it under the wax myrtle. A slumped rubbery thing, flat tire. Except it was three slumped rubbery things painted like a giraffe, all stacked up, glistening—a giant snake is what it was. Ever stuck a fork in the toaster? I kicked over my tea and bolted up […]
WHERE LUCY WENT Pinckney Wildlife Refuge. The thick dark enveloped Lucy as though welcoming her home, and her mind quieted. Without light, she could smell: pluff mud’s salty sparks, shell road’s chalky cornstarch. At Ibis Pond: grassy tang, earthy algae, something ammoniac; fresh water’s clean scent, and, barely discernible beneath piney loblollies and eggy […]