Browse Sections

The Great Bewilderment

Reading “Captin JJC The Feirce”

Wars where feirce at hand. In crimenal v.s. soldier a young boy that hade a dream lived in these pereyod. hes dream that filed his heart is to work with a famous crimenal. He could do well and impress the bandit. The Bandits name was captin JJC the fieirce. The young boy was an orfen. he hade a plan.

Six Lost Books

A writer is in a perpetual struggle with emptiness. He or she awakens each day to the Blank Page and somehow finds words to fill it. But the next day the page returns, just as blank as before. Even a finished book carries traces of emptiness, behind the words and in the corners of the pages. Normally this emptiness is white, but I am confronted with the rarer black variety.

The Hawk

Recently a man took up residence on my town’s football field, sleeping in a small tent in the northwestern corner, near the copse of cedars. He had been a terrific football player some years ago for our high school, and then had played in college, and then a couple of years in the nether reaches of the professional ranks, where a man might get paid a hundred bucks a game plus bonuses for touchdowns and sacks.

A Brother’s Keeper

My sister Asia loved to kick my ass. The violence began when she was ten and I was eight, after our mother started dating Freddy, a tall, bulky, dark-skinned man who chewed his tongue between sentences and had a booming laugh that sounded like it could topple buildings and crush small boys.

Saving Danny James

Danny James was a short, wiry, good-natured convict with a handlebar mustache and a marine haircut. At forty-six he started losing weight and having trouble with his coordination. After a plague of tests, the doctor told him that he had Lou Gehrig’s disease and that it was terminal. He had six months to live.

The Nature Trail Closest To My House

The nature trail closest to my house doesn’t take me to any overlooks or waterfalls. The scenery is a few flat acres of meadow grass, a shallow pond, maples, and oaks. On a map the trail would form a blocky figure 8, like the digital number on a gas pump, but there are no maps of this park, and the only visitors live within a couple of miles.

What She Bought

I learned that what drives the shopper is the dream that if she finally makes the exact-right purchase, she will be happy. This is not unlike the drug addict’s search for a drug or combination of drugs that will finally make her feel the way she wants to feel. The worst thing that can happen to an addict is to have a lot of money, which Joan does. Then the choices are unlimited, and the party goes on far too long.

Everything’s Going To Be OK

I’m sitting with my old friends Ron, David, and Neil at one of the tables along the back wall of what was once my favorite bar. We’ve been pals since we were in high school, the surviving members of a close-knit group. It’s always good to get together with these guys, but it’s impossible to do so without thinking about the friends who are no longer with us.

The Burden Of Bearing Fruit

Everyone who came over said of the cherry, “Great tree,” especially in July, when its fruit started to ripen. The squirrels and the birds took the lion’s share, mocking me by dropping half-eaten cherries on the patio and the lawn. I ate only the ones I could reach simply by pulling down a branch and plucking. I’d had Rainier cherries from the store, but these fruits were a surprise: the flesh so sweet and yet so complex; the firm skin giving way to the textured meat beneath; almost like a golden plum, but small and round and mine.

Going Under

At the age of five I was a sickly kid, with monthly throat infections that spread to my eardrums, making my ears hurt as if some angry god were throwing darts at them. My parents brought me to specialists, who recommended a tonsillectomy. It was the prevailing wisdom in the 1950s.