You are a video camera on a man’s shoulder. You spend most of your days in the equipment room at Channel Six News, but tonight you are hoisted shoulder-high before the stage at a local nightclub. It is February, 2003. You are capturing images, stills of color and shape at a rate of twenty-four frames per second. Almost fifteen hundred photographs per minute, creating a retrievable reality, as the air is still and goes in and out of lungs at that atom-thin edge between now and the future.
What you see now, unfeeling, is a hair-metal band that sold millions of records in the late 1980s. These are older men now; it is early 2003. You see beers and pale arms lifted straight up, and the people attached to those beers and pale arms are jumpy, excited, and happy.…
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Some say that it is possible to dry a spirit from the cold
if you bring it by a flame, urging here, with a warm mug
urging hold and stay awhile, but child, I don’t know.
When it comes to what it’s really like, we are left
bereft with feeble words, and there are limits, too,
when it comes; to what any one of these may hold,
what any constellation untold may know, at any time, no
matter how vast the reach of your intention, the spirit
in space grows cold until it coalesces restless among
others with enough mass and time to collapse into
matter hot enough to burn the birth of the last new
star, the one that looks like nothing now, and will…
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I became a party aide when I rented the tiny apartment in one corner of a palatial southern mansion, where local history buffs archived their records and held their meetings. I monitored the security system, took in the Historical Society’s mail and watered the outdoor potted plants. My living quarters were so small that I joked that I could clean the place by turning around once with a dust rag in each hand.
Shortly after I moved in, the administrator of the society decided to offer the house and its lovely gardens as a venue for weddings, teas, and other elegant affairs. A Historical Society member was paid a small honorarium to be present, helpful, and watchful at each event. I filled that role. I contributed my small fee back to the organization and relished having the run of the entire home and a unique vantage point for people watching.…
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The journey took more than four hours. Crammed to the gunnels with more than a hundred people, the old fishing boat was slow. As it fought the currents, the engine could do little more than growl. Any wave caused it to shudder, as if it were afraid of the water. Wedged between two men and a woman with a baby on her lap, I couldn’t move an inch. I grabbed hold of my amulet and closed my eyes. Some people had thrown up inside the boat; others had urinated and defecated wherever they could. If we hadn’t been up on deck, lashed by the wind, the smell would have become unbearable. But nobody said a word. Whether it was because we were dreaming of a new life in Europe, or because we were petrified of drowning, we were silent.…
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My mother washed the outside of the pomegranate before she opened it.
Time felt still in the mornings when I sat by her as an audience across the small, round kitchen table. I watched her meticulously pick each and every tiny red seed pod from the white flesh with her thin fingers. She took the pomegranates and mixed them in the Greek yoghurt I had watched her pull off the shelf at the supermarket the day before. As she scooped them out, one of them fell and bounced off my shoe, then landed on the floor. I brought my foot up to the chair and wiped the juice off, however it left behind a small red stain.
We sat and ate in silence. 15 minutes later, I had to leave for school.…
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“Shit!” I say. “Shit, shit, shit, shit!”
To be precise, mouse shit…five dark brown droppings, each the size and shape of a grain of rice. On our kitchen counter! I recognize it because of my previous experience with mice. “We have a fucking mouse!” I rant. “In our house! Could the timing be any worse?”
My husband backs out of the kitchen and flees to our bedroom. Our daughter is out with her friends, doing whatever New York City teenagers do on a cold weekend day.
It is January 2012 and I have just come home from my mom’s funeral. Nine months earlier, my seemingly healthy and fit 73-year-old mom fell and broke her collarbone while walking my sister Anne’s dog. When the break didn’t heal, she went in for a CAT scan.…
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Slowly
savoring each bite,
each page,
each chapter,
each paragraph.
Chew it thoughtfully,
carefully,
let the words sink,
deeply,
treasure them,
they are priceless,
and be grateful
for such contact
with another mind –
communion
with a kindred soul;
you are enriched
and continue on.
– Duane L. Herrmann…
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