But the three siblings were not born yesterday. Violet was born more than fifteen years before this particular Wednesday, and Klaus was born approximately two years after that, and even Sunny who had just passed out of babyhood, was not born yesterda...
It would take more than long-stemmed roses to change my view that you're a despicable cowardy custard and a disgrace to a proud family. Your ancestors fought in the Crusades and were often mentioned in despatches, and you cringe like a salted snail a...
from Pearls and Poison… “In two minutes the cops are going to come barreling though that door,” I whispered to Auntie KiKi hoping to get her mind off the body in the back room. “Any suggestions how we tell these workers out here their candida...
The pleasure of sport was so often the chance to indulge the cessation of time itself--the pitcher dawdling on the mound, the skier poised at the top of a mountain trail, the basketball player with the rough skin of the ball against his palm preparin...
How do you even know I'm someone you'll want to remember? We've only seen each other once before.' (Amber) 'Have you ever looked at a painting and known you had something in common with it? Have you ever seen something so beautiful you feel like cryi...
Showing up begins long before you stand at the start. Prove yourself an exception in a world where people talk more than act. Intent without follow-through is hollow. Disappoint yourself enough times and empty is how you feel. Make yourself proud. Fi...
Last night they came again. The soldiers had set up a defense perimeter, but there were simply too many—they must have come by the hundreds of thousands, a huge swarm that blotted out the stars. Three soldiers killed, as well as Cole. He was standi...
Jesus, why would he hook up with Becca?" "Well, she's not known for her personality or generosity of spirit,so it's probably because she's hot." "She's not as hot as you," I said, before I could think better of it. "That's always seemed so ridiculous...
Jesus, why would he hook up with Becca?" "Well, she's not known for her personality or generosity of spirit, so it's probably because she's hot." "She's not as hot as you," I said, before I could think better of it. "That's always seemed so ridiculou...
For poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music, we hear those primal warblings and attempt to write them down, but we lose ever and anon a word or a ve...
Asleep by the Smiths Vapour Trail by Ride Scarborough Fair by Simon & Garfunkel A Whiter Shade of Pale by Procol Harum Dear Prudence by the Beatles Gypsy by Suzanne Vega Nights in White Satin by the Moody Blues Daydream by Smashing Pumpkins Dusk by G...
The garden has wrapped itself in autumn haze. An unusual autumn, lacking that thrill of vegetal warmth when the sap is still alive and holds up the trees, drunk on solar gold. It is the sorrowful climax of a summer's drought. Never before was I so st...
Before my first visit to Waorani territory, I was introduced to don Casimiro Mamallacta, a traditional Kichwa healer and family man living in the outskirts of the jungle town of Archidona, by his daughter Mercedes, whom I met at the Jatun Sacha biolo...
The order never varies. Two slices of bread-and-butter each, and China tea. What a hide-bound couple we must seem, clinging to custom because we did so in England. Here, on this clean balcony, white and impersonal with centuries of sun, I think of ha...
I can’t remember the moment I was labeled bitch for the first time, but it sure wasn’t in the blogosphere of 2008. It was well before the blogosphere, let alone the World Wide Web, existed. The first time I was called a bitch, the home computer o...
In our twenties, when there is still so much time ahead of us, time that seems ample for a hundred indecisions, for a hundred visions and revisions—we draw a card, and we must decide right then and there whether to keep that card and discard the ne...
He held his fingers to my lips. “Shh, don’t say it, Tyler. Don’t say the words that will fucking break me. Don’t say the words that will tear my world apart.” Dean sighed and gripped his eyes shut before looking back at me again. “Don’t...
They made me one of them, a part of a family in a way I never had been before. Beyond gratitude and obligation, I chose them. I chose them because they love me, because they accept me, and maybe because they’re wild and rowdy. Maybe because they br...
Shit!"Holly said when our eyes fell on her bra lying at our feet. I snatched it from the ground, trying to stuff it in my pocket, but Dad was already inside the room, looking us over carefully, eyes scanning us head to toe, pausing at the bra danglin...
This fellow is wise enough to play the fool; And to do that well craves a kind of wit: He must observe their mood on whom he jests, The quality of persons, and the time, And, like the haggard, check at every feather That comes before his eye. This is...
The faces of your young people in general are not interesting—I don't mean the children, but the young men and women—and they are awkward and clownish in their manners, without the quaintness of the elder generation, who are the funniest old dear...
