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Sunbeams

That which you worship is the first thought that comes to your mind when you are suffering anxiety.

Ibn ’Abbad of Ronda

The Illustrated Diary Of Doris Koppleman

Only about half the number of people come to Ma’s funeral as to Dad’s. And Paul didn’t even bother to show up. I might have been madder if he did, anyways. At church Father Dietz didn’t have much to say about her. A woman’s life is not worth as much as a man’s, especially on a farm.

Sunbeams

Some people think that doctors and nurses can put scrambled eggs back into the shell.

Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Acts Of Love

“Dr. O’Brien told me about your, um . . . act of love,” says Syd, the therapeutic-shoe salesman, shifting uncomfortably from one foot to the other. “I was totally moved.”

Of Sorcery And Dreams

An Encounter With Carlos Castaneda

Death is the one inexorable fact in our transitory lives. Perhaps I will die a doddering old fool; perhaps I will die before the sun sets tonight. But I will die — that much is certain. In the meantime, what remains within my control is the groove of my life, the track upon which I choose to walk between the exclamation of my coming and the ellipsis of my going. At its purest, this track is trackless, like a path covered by freshly fallen snow. And trodding such virgin paths is the most enduring image of my adolescent dreams. By speaking directly to that memory, Castaneda has reawakened it within my heart. Given the perilously low ebb I have reached in life, I can only describe this feat as a genuine act of sorcery.

Miracle Cure

I saw the whole thing in my rearview mirror. In the final seconds before fate in the form of a silver Volvo station wagon collided with me, I was fascinated by the slow unraveling of the inevitable. I was stopped in traffic, a car in front of me, cars to either side of me.

Finding Peace After A Lifetime of War

From the day I was born, I was trained to be a soldier, encouraged in the way I was brought up to hunt, kill, dominate, rule, and control my environment. My family life was a form of war, filled with anger and violence, which made it no different from that in most of the houses around mine.

The Day I Got Buck-Naked With A Daisy On My Ass

Linda Hoag of the Los Angeles Free Clinic writes that “denial can be a healthy survival and coping technique. Often, those chided for denial have fought best and lived longest. . . . Denial and hope are two sides of the same coin and no one but the patient can know which side of that coin is face up at any given moment.”

The Wasp Eater

The wasps looked the same dead as alive: you could be fooled by their sci-fi armor into treating them more warily than they deserved. That was why, when you slipped one of them into your mouth and the wings and legs dissolved and you silently rolled the hard skeleton over your tongue, you were swallowing fear itself.

Annie’s Hair

As she sat up, Annie kicked at a pile of hair near her feet. The hair screamed and begged for mercy. She told it to shut up or the broom was going to get it. After that the hair was quiet.