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Utopia

Communal living, free love, a chicken coop

Making Up

A hand-embroidered silk Chinese robe, a pouting clown picture, a run through the woods

The Enemy

I haven’t lived well because I didn’t know until recently who the enemy was. I thought the enemy was outside, somewhere far removed from me — the communists, the Serbs, the Muslims. I didn’t know that the true enemy was much closer at hand.

Sunbeams

There is only one big thing — desire. And before it, when it is big, all is little.

Willa Cather

Fire-Walking

Wayne had proposed marriage, and she had told him she wasn’t sure she wanted to be married right now. Actually, all she wanted was a long, hot shower. She wondered how this man could ever have made her think her heart had opened as never before. It was becoming something of an ordeal just to be polite.

What We Came For

They had to wait a long time for the harvest to begin. Gerard talked to Kate of nothing else for weeks. He imagined the two of them working their way across Canada, then down the West Coast of the U.S., picking fruit and living like gypsies.

August 1996

Oh perfect word, shaped to meaning like a body without an ounce of fat: supple, strong, walking through the centuries like a god.

At Home In L.A.

The first time I met my future in-laws, I was standing next to the bed that their son and I had been sharing for some months. The apartment was small, the bed very large. While the four of us made a stab at pleasantries, our eyes darted furtively to pillows and sheets.

Manners

Licking your plate, listening to screams echoing up the stairwell, entertaining yourself​

Judgment Day At Saint Ann’s