What The Universe Remembers

An Interview With Rupert Sheldrake

My theory is concerned with self-organizing natural systems and the cause of form. The cause of all these forms, I believe, is organizing fields, form-shaping fields, which I call morphic fields, from the Greek word for form. I’m saying that the forms of societies, ideas, crystals, and molecules all depend on the way previous ones have been organized. There’s a kind of built-in memory in the morphic fields of each thing.

Crip Zen

I’ve never met you, but from having read your crisp condemnation of me, I know you well. You are one of the legions who tell us what we should feel, instead of listening to what we do feel. We have met you thousands of times before, and you drive us up the wall.

On The Bus

He brushes the pastry crumbs off his shirt, speeds up as we approach a blind curve, and passes the car in front of us. He jokes about the frightened gringo behind him whose knuckles are whiter than his face.

The Room Where Sex Began

Bobby and I were tired. His family was visiting for a week, and we’d been up late every night since they arrived. I realize now Bobby’s parents hated him. I don’t know why.

This Summer

My husband has told me that this summer he will retire. Right now he is in the library holding X-rays up to the light and dictating. I do not know how his secretary understands the things he mumbles.

Progress

The first time we had Joe over, one spring evening some years ago, he lay on his gurney with his face positioned toward us.

Sister Of Kane

Allie stepped onto the slanted porch, and the wind swept into her shirt. The chill broke her out in goose bumps, but it felt better than the heat inside the frame house. Kane sat on the steps at her feet.

The Night Crawlers

Something that seems made of earth itself, but alive like us / — but can’t be, wouldn’t be / thought of in the same sentence, purely a wriggling verb / not subject, dangling modifier / to what is left unsaid.