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Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
And There Was Light
I felt indescribable relief and a happiness so great it almost made me laugh. Confidence and gratitude came as if a prayer had been answered. I found light and joy at the same moment, and I can say without hesitation that from that time on light and joy have never been separate in my experience. I have had them or lost them together.
February 1999The Cave
I’d discovered my hideout a few months before, when I chased a hare behind a mulberry bush at the foot of a large mound, about the size of a wheat pile at threshing time. Following the hare’s trail, I found a small hole in the rock, completely hidden from view by the bush.
February 1999A Day In The Life Of Ann
Ann is lying on her left side in the hospital bed in the living room. Joe has just gone to work. Before leaving, he helped me turn her and take off her impractical frilly nightgown. He wants her dressed normally, though she’s way beyond caring. Now I’m watching TV, waiting for the suppository I gave her to work.
February 1999I Don’t Have All Night
Yet even here, at one of the more innovative schools in the country, graduation was still . . . graduation. Even here, at the end of the most violent century in history, graduates were exhorted in the usual ways to step across the mass graves and the poisoned waters and the broken vows. Step lively, the speakers told them.
January 1999
Perpetual Motion
Every spring for ten years, Da told me he was dying. The pattern was always the same. For the next three months he’d plan and revise his funeral, then patiently await his demise on July 15, the anniversary of Mother’s death. Despite his determination, the worst illness he could muster was a tiny patch of skin cancer one year, which the doctor removed during an office visit.
January 1999
The Fox
It was hard to believe the fox was dead. It’s been frozen for a month and hasn’t decomposed at all. It seems a shame just to bury it. I want the pelt, but where can I find out how to skin it?
December 1998The Song Of Forgiveness
What I mean to say is: I want to forgive my ex-husband. I don’t want to die hating, or even resenting, him. We will never make love, never even kiss again. Never. So where is that song of forgiveness, reputed to be so sweet?
December 1998Who Owns The West?
Four Possible Answers
Wisdom reveals itself because wisdom lives, hidden, within the self, where only the lone reader, the lone listener, the self itself, can free it. With a series of stories, I hope to create an atmosphere: nothing more. If the question “Who owns the West?” gets answered in that atmosphere, you will have answered it for yourself.
December 1998Organicity
I was a daily drinker, a frequent opium user, and a bona fide cocaine addict. I was a devotee of Demerol and a dabbler in Darvocet. I was a Percodan-pursuing, Seconal-seeking, codeine-consuming, 100 percent, fully certifiable, equal-opportunity substance abuser.
November 1998The Distance
As I listen, a finch flies by outside the window, its gold breast in shiny contrast to the black and white of its wings. My son rarely talks about that trip to Peru three years ago, during which he was shot and his friend Patchen was killed.
November 1998
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