The sea is a body in a thousand ways that don't add up, because adding is too stable a transaction for that flux, but the waves come in in a roar and then ebb, almost silent but for the faint suck of sand and snap of bubbles, over and over, a heartbe...
The sea is a body in a thousand ways that don't add up, because adding is too stable a transaction for that flux, but the waves come in in a roar and then ebb, almost silent but for the fain suck of sand and snap of bubbles, over and over, a heartbea...
Over the years, I have developed a visceral reaction to families and victims expressing surprise at tragedy. Why are we surprised? Why do we forget we are mortal? Bad, bad things happen everywhere, every day. Humans, for better or worse, harbor this ...
Being in the depths of the ocean was like being in the womb, suspended in a liquid environment, listening to my own breathing and heartbeat. Whether it was the serenity and security of being surrounded by this living liquid, or the total distraction ...
A successful song comes to sing itself inside the listener. It is cellular and seismic, a wave coalescing in the mind and in the flesh. There is a message outside and a message inside, and those messages are the same, like the pat and thud of two hea...
Reshaping life! People who can say that have never understood a thing about life—they have never felt its breath, its heartbeat—however much they have seen or done. They look on it as a lump of raw material that needs to be processed by them, to ...
That little guy, said Boris in the car on the way to Antwerp. You know the painter saw him-he wasn't painting that bird from his mind, you know? That's a real little guy, chained up on the wall, there. If I saw him mixed up with dozen other birds all...
The eyes of the future are looking back at us and they are praying for us to see beyond our own time. They are kneeling with hands clasped that we might act with restraint, that we might leave room for the life that is destined to come. To protect wh...
She wished she had cancer instead. She'd trade Alzheimer's for cancer in a heartbeat. She felt ashamed for wishing this, and it was certainly a pointless bargaining, but she permitted herself the fantasy anyway. With cancer, she'd have something to f...
Here's what I love: when a great writer turns me into a Jew from Chicago, a lesbian out of South Carolina, or a black woman moving into a subway entrance in Harlem. Turn me into something else, writers of the world. Make me Muslim, heretic, hermaphro...
Each heartbeat begins with a single, electrical impulse, or "spark." The distinctive sound we hear through a stethoscope, or when we place our head on a loved one's chest, is the sound of the heart valves opening and closing in perfect synchronicity ...
I grinned. “So you are human after all.” I touched his chest, feeling him breathe hard in and out. “I always thought you were made of steel, you know,” I said. “Superman?” Nat arched his eyebrows. “No, the Tin Man,” I answered back. I...
Religious teachings say that animals don't have souls, but I don't believe that. Our pets cherish our every move, and wait patiently for us to return home from a day's work. Our pets would give their lives for us in a heartbeat and not ask for anythi...
Snake's Lullaby Brother, sister, flick your tongue and taste the flakes of autumn sun. Use these last few hours of gold to travel, travel toward the cold. Before your coils grow stiff and dull, your heartbeat slows to winter's lull, seek the sink of ...
I listened; I wrote; I learned. I do not know why so many women trusted me enough to speak to me, but underneath anything I write one can hear the percussive sound of their heartbeats. If one has to pick one kind of pedagogy over all others, I pick l...
Trevor cupped his hands around it, felt Zach's heartbeat throbbing between his palms. The skin of the shaft was textured, slightly rippled beneath the surface. The head was as smooth as satin, as rose petals. Trevor rubbed his thumb across it, squeez...
When I lie back and close my eyes, this farthest lip of beach right next to the end of the ocean feels like being up close to an enormous breathing being, the bass drum surf thump reverberating through the sand. Living out here with no lights, alone,...
Is it really true that the only good thing a Blackman can offer in a relationship with a white woman is thunderous sex? Of course, sex plays a vital healing role in every loving relationship. That is a fact of life. But, as we discover in the story o...
Or, God, maybe this was just life. For everyone on the planet. Maybe the Survivor's Club wasn't something you "earned," but simply what you were born into when you came out of your mother's womb. Your heartbeat put you on the roster and then the rest...
So when you’re nervous, you count?” “Not just when I’m nervous,” I said. “It’s… all the time. I count the seconds during pauses in conversations. I count the minutes when I’m waiting on something. Sometimes, when I’m kind of panic...
The rhythm of the heart...beats twice. Thump, thump. Once, first for itself and then once again for the rest of the body. It's a true metaphor for us. Like the heart we must pump life giving love and care for ourselves first, before extending that gi...
