It was one thing when OS was just messing with my tea habit.  A parade of countless cups of tea sat on the kitchen counter steeping themselves into bitterness and tepidity while I steeped myself in one or another hilarious, marvelous, enlightening, poignant or simply mean-spirited post.  (I… Read full post »

Oh, for dog's sake.  I'm weepy and discombobulated because I'm never going to see Ricky (aka Licky) again.  Ricky isn't even my dog; he's my brother's dog.  He's a tail-less, small caramel Spitz my brother and his family rescued years ago.  I can't remember how he lost his tail.&n… Read full post »

My brother called yesterday.  He says I'm the only one he can talk to, the only one who understands he can't, he just can't, talk about rainbows and pink bunnies: the only one who knows he wants to grab a rainbow and beat a pink bunny to death with it.

He… Read full post »

I need to invent a symbol, something not unlike "The Artist Formerly Known as Prince" 's - but not like it, either.  No, not really like it, at all.  But a heiroglyph of some sort.  I want my symbol to convey what I can't, to take the place of my unwieldy,… Read full post »

One day I walked out my front door.  Then I walked out of the world as I knew it.  A few steps past the hedge,  suddenly I wasn't there in the same way  I was before, instead I was everywhere: my ribs weren't a cage, my skin wasn't a soon to… Read full post »

Fingering the night air like a cold black rosary,

I lie awake and wait

for the sound of someone else's voice.

 

I try to tell you this - how I forget

any season so long or so filled

with so hollow a regret.

 

But to you it's a place at the lake's edge

you just… Read full post »

Clancy Jones, 62, died Saturday night of a massive coronary. His wife thought he was sleeping in and didn't realize he was dead until he failed to berate her for running the vacuum. He is survived by Helen, the wife he belittled for 35 years and his two children:  Judy who… Read full post »

On airplanes, in waiting rooms, he liked to find magazines with blank crossword puzzles and fill in a word for each of the puzzle's quadrants.  He did it because it was fun and because he had, admittedly, no follow-through.  He liked imagining the puzzlers who came across them, perhaps dis… Read full post »

Things bother me.  Big things and little things.  Generally I'm pretty easy-going, I'm one of those "you do your thing, I do my thing -  hey, we're cool"  kind of people.  Or I like to think I am. Until I'm not.

Anyway, this little thing has been bothering me. … Read full post »

For a while I worked on Wall Street.  The address was 1 Wall St.  Trinity Church was a quiet, shadowed presence across the street and the World Trade Center at Liberty and Church was but a short stroll.  Every so often my friend Jane and I would meet and wander over… Read full post »

We all want to confess.  Can I get a witness?  We all want a witness to our lives.  I mean, it's not like Torquemada is standing over me brandishing thumbscrews:  I'm dying to tell you.  I'm dying, I tell you.  Not now, no, not any more than you are and possibly… Read full post »

To begin at the beginning...

what was the word?

They have stood on corners calling

Ave, ave, "Taxi!" ave.

There is no name that you will answer to.     

The book, they will say, tells us.

The poem, they will say, speaks.

In Florida, even, a woman

sings in order to… Read full post »

We were staying at my aunt's house and there were too many people or not enough beds.  I slept on the couch, or tried to: the seat cushions angled down into the backrest and it was hard getting comfortable.  Any movement, a stretch, a juggling of joints, and gravity dragged me… Read full post »

allegro moderato

He settles himself in a world without whys;

I search for truth, but still accept lies.


He takes what he wants, does not ask for more;

I take what I get, though I don't know what for.


He searches for nothing, has nothing to find;

I search for the light and slowly… Read full post »

Would you sell your soul to this guy?

Viktor Mirosiichenko of Kontora loan company

Kontora loan company in Riga, Latvia is giving loans to people willing to pledge their souls as collateral.   Seriously.  200 Latvians have already signed contracts pledging thei… Read full post »

What is inarticulable remains so.

Now I am told things differently
and everything speaks of you.
I have learned a new tongue
and tell you grief.

Yes, everything speaks of you,
but not for you -
sanctimonious Sunday gossip,
it is not to be trusted.

But under my own breath, hidden
and bereft of formal ins… Read full post »

Aunt Sister Mary William scared me.  She was the oldest of ten children and helped to raise my father before she entered the convent, I suspect to escape a small house filled with nine younger siblings.  She was stern and didn't suffer fools gladly, or at all.  She was interesting.&nbs… Read full post »

I was fifteen and just settling into my desk in Latin class, setting out my textbook and three-ring binder, checking out who else was there, looking up at the clock above the door with the wooden sign beneath it that said TEMPUS FUGIT and searching for my pen when the first… Read full post »

The problem was that everything required some tremendous leap.  Even

tellling the story of your life meant balancing precariously on the slippery

rocks of meaning and language in the muddy and fast-moving river of

intention.  Leaps of faith, leaps of reason, leaps of abandon - altogether… Read full post »

I am saved by the strong love felt for things familiar:
the fine ceiling crack, the tongue-welcoming chipped cup.

Fixing breakfast,  (O! graced!)  making the bed,
even the simplest act requires heavenly direction.

How else to account for the beauty of a peach
left three days to ripen on t… Read full post »

When I was a kid my mother had me convinced she knew just about everything and could do anything.  Or if she couldn't do it, she could make someone else do it.  I saw it with my own eyes.

She'd make a fist with a raised middle finger knuckle and… Read full post »

Sitting at a table in the coffee shop he called her peripatetic. That "ick" ending made it sound like a medical condition, like maybe something was wrong with her. She wasn't really a gypsy; she just moved around too much and long enough to learn the shortest distance between two points… Read full post »

After loss comes a having;

it goes beyond the whipsaw-ways of want

and settles into the seriousness of smiles.

If you live you learn to appreciate the joke, 

the way blades of grass rip into your skin.

You learn what antecedes the scar.

Not with a bandage, but badinage,

we… Read full post »

Today I read a post by  Scott Rosenberg. It's about the ten year anniversary of Salon's IPO and other things.  He remarks upon creating and developing Open Salon.  And he mentions a book he wrote about blogging called Say Everything. (Interesting video there.)

Back in the day, I sneer… Read full post »

Someone I know wants me to write a story with action.  He says the problem with my writing is there's no action.  I know what he means, but also I don't.  Action is tricky for me; it's so easy to get sidetracked.  Sometimes something starts out as action and suddenly takes… Read full post »