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Ninth Inning

Cosmic Airdrome (revisited)

One way to know something is true is that you cannot back off from knowing it. You cannot go slumming in ignorance. You cannot pretend not to know what you have experienced. It is a sin to doubt it.

Jerking Off In Central America

For those of you who have never had a panic attack, the words may have no special emotional tug. For those of you who have had one, they will bring forth memories of a mind frozen in exquisite agitation, the whole room, the whole world enmeshed in a horror movie that refuses to go away.

At Home In The World

An Interview With Peter Matthiessen

There seemed no way that animal wasn’t going to charge. I stood there for a moment, terrified, my temples burning. But then, inexplicably, I calmed right down. I had a feeling of complete peace with that animal, and I knew she wasn’t going to charge or hurt me in any way. I was treed by a rhino once, so I knew how very different this encounter was.

Stories Of Lives Lived And Now Ending

At the heart of it, all we can really offer each other is our full attention. When people are dying, their tolerance for bullshit is minimal. They will quickly sniff out insincerity.

My Journal Of The Plague Years

I saw Bobby the day before he died. Propped up beneath a plastic oxygen tent, he begged for a cigarette. I went across the street to a newspaper stand and bought him a pack, even though I don’t smoke and don’t think anyone should. Closing the door to his room, I turned off the oxygen and lit one for him.

Waiting For Emma

In fact, we’ve always been positive about having another child. We both imagine a daughter: Emma, a real fireball, definite in her opinions and politically precocious. I can even see the birth announcement. It says, “Announcing . . .” in bold type on the cover, then opens up to a color xerox of Eugène Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People — that painting of a woman who’s marching over the barricades, one breast bared, with a fearless young kid waving his pistols and a dying old man looking up at her in wonder. I know that sounds odd for a card introducing a newborn, but that’s what I see: woman warrior.

Original Sin

I knew well enough that, without drastic cause, mothers like mine do not entrust their adolescent sons to aunts like Louise. Surely, Mother would have kept me among her own people if there had been any.

Denial

How old is the habit of denial? We keep secrets from ourselves that all along we know. The public was told that old Dresden was bombed to destroy strategic railway lines. There were no railway lines in that part of the city. But it would be years before that story came to the surface.

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