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    The Dog-Eared Page

    The Disposable Rocket

    The number of men who do lasting damage to their young bodies is striking; war and car accidents aside, secondary-school sports, with the approval of parents and the encouragement of brutish coaches, take a fearful toll of skulls and knees.

    By John UpdikeSeptember 2015
    The Dog-Eared Page

    Bullet In The Brain

    After striking the cranium the bullet was moving at 900 feet per second, a pathetically sluggish, glacial pace compared to the synaptic lightning that flashed around it. Once in the brain, that is, the bullet came under the mediation of brain time, which gave Anders plenty of leisure to contemplate the scene that, in a phrase he would have abhorred, “passed before his eyes.”

    By Tobias WolffAugust 2015
    Bullet In The Brain
    The Dog-Eared Page

    Houses Of The Spirit

    When I asked my six-year-old son, Dev, why he wanted to go to church for the first time that Sunday morning, he gave perhaps the only answer that could have nudged me into folding my newspaper and moving toward some faith I’d never bothered with before. He wanted to go, he said, “to see if God’s there.”

    By Mary KarrJuly 2015
    The Dog-Eared Page

    Castles And Banquets

    When sent to the “box,” I would try to smuggle in a fragment of pencil lead, usually by hiding it in my cheek. Then I could spend my time drawing castles — on scraps of newspaper or directly on the floor and walls.

    By Vladimir BukovskyJune 2015
    Castles And Banquets
    The Dog-Eared Page

    Lost In Thought

    Most people spend their entire life imprisoned within the confines of their own thoughts. They never go beyond a narrow, mind-made, personalized sense of self that is conditioned by the past.

    By Eckhart TolleMay 2015
    The Dog-Eared Page

    Shakespeare’s Sister

    excerpted from
    A Room Of One’s Own

    Now my belief is that this poet who never wrote a word and was buried at the crossroads still lives. She lives in you and in me, and in many other women who are not here tonight, for they are washing up the dishes and putting the children to bed. But she lives; for great poets do not die; they are continuing presences; they need only the opportunity to walk among us in the flesh. This opportunity, as I think, it is now coming within your power to give her.

    By Virginia WoolfApril 2015
    The Dog-Eared Page

    excerpted from
    Endless Love

    Everything is in its place. The past rests, breathing faintly in the darkness. It no longer holds me as it used to; now I must reach back to touch it.

    By Scott SpencerMarch 2015
    The Dog-Eared Page

    excerpted from
    Letter From Birmingham Jail

    Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

    By Martin Luther King Jr.February 2015
    The Dog-Eared Page

    The Naked Child

    At every moment, behind the most efficient-seeming adult exterior, the whole world of the person’s childhood is being carefully held like a glass of water bulging above the brim.

    By Ted HughesJanuary 2015
    The Naked Child
    The Dog-Eared Page

    With Care

    The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not-knowing, not-curing, not-healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness — that is the friend who cares.

    By Henri J.M. NouwenDecember 2014

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