Browse Topics
Aging
Your Life’s Stakes
Full of Energy breaks well and jumps out into the lead, with Sense of Invincibility and Junk Food close behind. Galloping into fourth is Heart Murmur, who is now reined in and drops back into fifth beside Astigmatism on the rail, the rest of the pack trailing by a good nine lengths.
August 2007
Slides
In 1955, when I was nine years old and my sister was ten, my father bought his first 35 mm camera with money he didn’t have and dragged us and my mother on a cross-country trip for the opening of Disneyland. He went crazy taking pictures of us standing at the edge of cliffs, holding snakes, showing scrapes and bruises, and pretending to be happy.
August 2007
The Man From ’Stanbul
I am the “man from ’Stanbul.” Yes, I cannot pee. Oh, I can squeeze out a few drops here and there. I can dribble; I can even trickle. Occasionally what passes for a stream arcs into the commode. But it’s no McDonald’s golden arch, let me tell you, not the yellow rainbow of satisfaction I once knew so well, the Victoria Falls of my not-so-distant youth.
June 2007
Killing Time
I was in a state of denial, of course, not only about the future, but also about the present. For there were many days I didn’t write in my journal, or even look for ways to better my family’s economic picture. I simply did nothing. Looking back from a distance of decades, I wish I’d been more aware that we are given a certain unknown number of days in our short lives.
November 2006
John Lennon Is Dead And It Really Bothers Me
My Aunt Maggie had actually gone to see the Beatles (my Uncle Peter had taken her when the band had come to Houston), and we would beg Maggie to tell us about the concert. When she consented, it was as though we were in catechism on Sunday, learning about the saints.
July 2006
Dinosaur
When he was very young, he waved his arms, snapped his massive jaws, and tromped around the house so that the dishes trembled in the china cabinet. “Oh, for goodness’ sake,” his mother said. “You are not a dinosaur!
July 2006
May 2006
What a big appetite fear has. What a succulent morsel I was last night.
May 2006Winter Solstice
The longest night of the year and I’m awake / in an overheated apartment on the Upper West Side. / I roll over and over like a rotisseried hen / while Janet’s breath softly rises and falls / and our son sleeps soundly on the floor, / his broken leg silently knitting bone to bone.
January 2006
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