Cosette, in her seclusion, like Marius in his, was all ready to take fire. Destiny, with its mysterious and fatal patience, was slowly bringing these two beings near each other, fully charged and all languishing with the stormy electricities of passi...
Once upon a time there was a mother who, in order to become a mother, had agreed to change her name; who set herself the task of falling in love with her husband bit-by-bit, but who could n ever manage to love one part, the part, curiously enough, wh...
Just this past summer, I took online courses in introductory logic and law through civilization. Often the weight of history, with its facts heaped upon facts requiring complex chains of inference to sort through – I mean complex for someone with t...
Almondine Eventually, she understood the house was keeping a secret from her. All that winter and all through the spring Almondine had known something was going to happen, but no matter where she looked she couldn’t find it. Sometimes, when she ent...
Shall the dire day break when life finds us merely husband and wife with passion not so much denied as neatly laundered and put aside and the old joyous insistence trimmed to placid coexistence? Shall we sometime arise from bed with not a carnal thou...
Abandoned. The word alone sends shudders down a sensitive spine, troubling the thoughts of pained souls as their hurt swells in ripples. It is a sentence of undesired solitude often pronounced on the innocent, the trusting—administered without warn...
How can a three-pound mass of jelly that you can hold in your palm imagine angels, contemplate the meaning of infinity, and even question its own place in the cosmos? Especially awe inspiring is the fact that any single brain, including yours, is mad...
To be a full-blooded hillbilly was to be a living koan. Half of you wanted to be dignified and half of you couldn’t tolerate any restraint. You could see it in the regional art and hear it in the music. Wood carving with chainsaws. Cloggers who dan...
the only prospect which is really desirable or delightful, is that from the window of the breakfast-room [...] where we meet the first light of the dewy day, the first breath of the morning air, the first glance of gentle eyes; to which we descend in...
The name Mary Jo Quinn was written neatly in faded blue marker on the front of the scrapbook, its gray edges frayed with age and wear, as though it had been handled often. Such a memento was a strange thing to find in a used bookstore, especially whe...
Moreover, knowledge and investigation help promote wonder they do not destroy it. Whatever our tastes, we can generally appreciate such things as music, art or wine better when we understand a bit about them. We read up on our favourite singers or ar...
This work is the link between my Dear Natalie piece and my upcoming Agatha work. It bridges that lapse in time and shows how my thinking has changed. It shows me telling a story through the surreal and trying to use thought fragments alone to show a ...
In a universe devoid of life, any life at all would be immensely meaningful. We ARE that meaning. “And what we see, “says the poet Mary Oliver, “is the world that cannot cherish us, but which we cherish.” As though life itself is the great, u...
Fishing provides time to think, and reason not to. If you have the virtue of patience, an hour or two of casting alone is plenty of time to review all you’ve learned about the grand themes of life. It’s time enough to realize that every generaliz...
In the end, that’s what Kevin has never forgiven us. He may not resent that we tried to impose a curtain between himself and the adult terrors lurking behind it. But he does powerfully resent that we led him down the garden path—that we enticed h...
In the case of our fair maiden, we have overlooked two very crucial aspects to that myth. On the one hand, none of us ever really believed the sorcerer was real. We thought we could have the maiden without a fight. Honestly, most of us guys thought o...
On the edge of dreaming when the brain lets go, when it stops its scheming, our blood runs slow... Then the heart speaks clearly of the things it knows, things it brought so dearly at the evening's glow... And a misty sunset fills the west with yello...
My motto? Don’t trust someone who is just as cagey as yourself." "What kind of detective are you?” “A lousy one and proud of it. I write, remember?” She looked down at her hand & laughed. “Berretta doesn’t make lighters.” "Why I was a w...
Without realizing what she was doing and more on an impulse than anything else, she leaned forward and kissed him. It was a simple, yet firm kiss and she pulled back after only a moment. But it sent a thrill through her. He leaned down for another. B...
No long-term marriage is made easily, and there have been times when I've been so angry or so hurt that I thought my love would never recover. And then, in the midst of near despair, something has happened beneath the surface. A bright little flashin...
There is no mystery to happiness. Unhappy men are all alike. Some wound they suffered long ago, some wish denied, some blow to pride, some kindling spark of love put out by scorn- or worse, indifference- cleaves to them, or they to it, and so they li...
