Browse Topics
Alcoholism
The Laundromat
Stolen clothes, a miniature copy of The Night before Christmas, a red halter top
March 1998Roommates
Sacred underclothes, a sheer negligee, a note pinned to a mattress
November 1997Small Acts
I like to picture my father, thirty years ago, standing in a half-built department store, with a hammer in one hand and a forty-five record in the other. The forty-five is Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Are Made for Walking.” My father is alone, it is early morning, and he is trying to decide what to do with the record, which he hates.
May 1997The Clear Path To Creativity
An Interview With Dan Wakefield
The key is to clear yourself in order to become a conduit for creativity. In my book Expect a Miracle, Ann Nadel, a San Francisco painter and sculptor, said that when the work is really coming, there’s something flowing through you that’s not you. To me, that feeling is tangible proof of the existence of spirit: something we can tap into that’s beyond ourselves and our senses. The highest goal we can aspire to is to become transmitters of that.
April 1997The Mother Material
A picture hangs on the wall of my study. In it, my mother is kneeling to pose with my brother, my sister, and me. The picture was taken a few months before my mother died, and we are all smiling, cheerful, innocent, unaware of the ways in which our lives are capable of changing.
November 1996The Birthday Present
The last time I’d seen Madame was right after I returned from Hazelden, a fancy drug- and alcohol-rehab center in Minnesota. It was now a year later, and my birthday, but considering the circumstances you’d think I wouldn’t have to remind her not to buy me wine.
May 1996Anatomy Of A Lie
I can’t tell you this, but my mother has a dot on her lung. It’s a small dot, on the left lung. If her lung were a map of Texas, the dot would be roughly the size of the city of El Paso, which is large enough to be written in boldface type by Rand McNally.
October 1994
