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Songs Of Aging Children

My mother is seated in the shade of the balcony of her apartment in San Diego, the sun relentless in this desert-become-a-city. She stares into that cloudless blue sky. Cancer has begun its final assault upon her body.

Reunions

A repressed memory, a custody battle, a summer on the prairies

Visitors

Sharing C rations, picking up where you left off, stealing forbidden knowledge

Three Audreys

Lil’ Audrey had heard that joke weeks before at school, but she didn’t think people, even her Daddy, should be telling jokes about the dead. Besides, she knew Octavia’s grandson, Skeeter, was one of Dr. King’s followers.

Why I Like My Father

The Renewal

His renewal began with the appearance of that most despised of all the midnight messengers, THE COSELL, and the anguished realization of that most dreadful day’s certain coming.

August Moon

A 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.

Gary Blake

I met Gary Blake at the meditation hall. It was a place of silence, but Gary Blake was not a silent man.

Curlews

We are immortal until the hour death first seizes our imagination. This goes for species as well as individuals. To die you must once consider death and think of it as beautiful. All spiritual advances are advances in aesthetics.