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At home in Montgomery, Wanda’s azaleas are in full bloom, the whole front of the house covered in a profusion of lavender, pink, and fuchsia blossoms. Up here on Cape Cod, it is April and still there is frost on the windowpanes. Wanda’s daughter-in-law tries to fool everyone into believing it’s spring with the forsythia.
May 1990A Day In The Life At Paradise
This is how it began. We stood in the parking lot under the hot sun looking at one another. “It’s a job for a couple,” he said. “The advertisement said for a couple.” I shrugged and waited, not having anything else to do. He told me about the hours and the pay and asked me if I had ever worked a motel before. I told him no and by the end of the week I was the manager at Paradise. That is how it began.
May 1990The White Guitar
In fourth grade, after the bra-and-girdle notebook affair, we all fell in love with Julia Harris. By “we” I mean the foreign boys in Madame Bouvet’s class, and also Pascal Fourtané, the only French boy we foreigners hung out with.
May 1990A Cat Story
Andy was already twelve when I met him. He lived at our local dharma study group center, where we talked about impermanence, suffering, enlightenment, compassion, old age, death, the meaning of self, and in what sense the mind could be said to continue beyond death.
May 1990Tales Of Lord Shantih
“I can no more stop the wind than I can stop my unwanted thoughts,” he explained. “So I let them blow through me, and I carry on with my work.”
April 1990Gary Blake
I met Gary Blake at the meditation hall. It was a place of silence, but Gary Blake was not a silent man.
April 1990Mercedes
What Henry wants to be is an actor, but in the meantime he teaches a course called “Great Plagues.” What I want to do is play for the Lakers, engineering the break while Kareem signals for the lob.
April 1990Sunday
Then she is walking across the lawn toward you in her silky blue dress. An old woman now, but more handsome than ever with her pure white hair up in a bun, her smile, the little blue vein in her forehead.
March 1990My Eros Is Crucified
During a time of intolerance when even the children killed for righteousness and peace, Eros descended, wandering among his children of the flesh. They knew him not.
March 1990Change
Her speech softened and slowed. She learned to say “ain’t,” to let a handshake trail off. She learned to ask about family before business, to work up to her questions, not throw them in a body’s face.
March 1990
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