Maps
An overwhelmed train traveler, an Interrail passenger using a Third Reich map, a map aficionado
Capturing The Moment
It may not matter anymore where any of us have actually been. We can now visit our national parks by videocassette, in which, as one company offering such tapes promises, “the remarkable sights and sounds are preserved for you.”
My New Neighbors
A new couple has moved into the apartment next door to mine in this ancient Victorian. They are using the same bed as the previous couple, Nicole and Peter, whose dramatic lovemaking I would hear quite clearly as their headboard pounded my living-room wall.
Dale
Dale and I sit in opposite corners of the nearly empty McDonald’s where I come to grade freshman English themes — he by the front window and I in the back near the restrooms. Twenty years ago we worked together, but now Dale is homeless, and I pretend not to know him.
The Predator’s Garden
Until I started a garden, I never considered deer predators simply because I did not consider plants prey. As a transplanted city dweller, I imagined that sighting a deer from my living-room window was the blessing of a rural lifestyle.
A Map From My House To Your House
You have probably never used a map like this before. Read it carefully, and know where you are starting from.
Fathering The Night
Carrying the baby horizontally across my chest like a football usually calms him, and often puts him to sleep. But not tonight. He’s still crying, cycling through his whole repertoire: the screechy fear cry; the lower, throaty demand cry; the pitiable gasping interspersed with slobbery whimpers.
The Window Seat
The man was coming down the aisle, swaying to and fro and knocking passengers with his simple bag as though he were on a subway rounding a curve.
Sleepwalking To My Sister
No one knows exactly when my sister disappeared. When I think of her now, a funnel, dark and deep, opens before me, echoing back her name: Victoria.
Dance Lessons
My parents were dancers. Though practical and predictable in all else, they let their passions surface in the rumba, the tango, the dances that conjured up exotic places and smoldering emotions.
