Going home means going back in time. It's not a trip you care to take alone, and anyway, isn't that the main reason to take a mate? So you have an ally in the civil war against your parents?
I want to understand the elements that compose courage in the same way I understand the periodic table. I feel that by knowing the periodic table of courage I can be courageous, at least periodically.
I want to scream sometimes, because I hate when people refer to a dead person as the “late” so and so. I’m sorry to break that bad news, but that person isn’t just late—they’re not even coming!
Before I die, I want to change my name to "Here," so that my tombstone could simply read, "Here lies." And then people who knew me could walk by, shake their head, and say, "Ain't that the truth.
I want to grow a flower for every time someone tells me “F*** you.” Then I’ll go back to that person and pin the flower on their lapel in a gesture of friendship. And while they are looking down on it in astonishment, I’ll bunch up my knuckle...
I want to be in the Guinness Book of World Record’s for something ridiculous like juggling poison-tipped porcupines, playing the piano blindfolded while tightrope walking in tights, or throwing a rubber ball in a circular rim adorned with a danglin...
I want to start a band called "Friday Have Been Cancelled" and then hold open auditions every Friday. The sign will read, "Auditions For Friday Have Been Cancelled." I sure hope nobody shows up because I certainly won't be there.
The sun appeared between the twin spires of the cathedral as its light reflected off the crescent and star that rose out of the dome on top of the mosque. It was beautiful, and surreal. In one instant, the bells rang out from the cathedral and if I c...
Among this people there is no leisure class. We often forget that in the United States over half the youth and adults are not in the world earning incomes, but are making homes, learning of the world, or resting after the heat of the strife. But here...
Home. It's such a simple word, one I never knew would come to mean as much to me as it has. It once was my dad's house, then my uncle's farm. Mostly it's meant wherever Charlie and I were together. Now, though, it's you. It's your letters, your words...
It was Don Paolo's birthday and all the people of the village were gathered in the piazza to celebrate him. The band played, the wine flowed, the children danced, and, as he stood for a moment alone under the pergola, a little girl approached the the...
But these weren't the kind of monsters that had tentacles and rotting skin, the kind a seven-year-old might be able to wrap his mind around--they were monsters with human faces, in crisp uniforms, marching in lockstep, so banal you don't recognize th...
What would Golan Do? That way I can ask myself before I do anything. Before I take a dump. How would Dr. Golan want me to take this dump? Should I bank it off the side or go straight down the middle? What would be the most psychologically beneficial ...
Knightley Academy stood out against the moonlight in silhouette, a ramshackle collection of chimneys, turrets and gables. Both boys stopped to take in the sight of the manicured lawns and tangled woods, the soaring chapel and the ivy-covered brick of...
There is a rustle of dead leaves. Dried sap, a branch crack, the whirring teeth of Mr. Omaru's saw. My father--my real father--is a limb that got axed off the family tree a long time ago now. My mother coughs and cleans phantom juices off her silver ...
I look for my sister but it's hopeless. The goggles are all fogged up. Every fish burns lantern-bright, and I can't tell the living from the dead. It's all just blurry light, light smeared like some celestial fingerprint all over the rocks and the re...
We are fragmented into so many different aspects. We don´t know who we really are, or what aspects of ourselves we should identify with or believe in. So many contradictory voices, dictates, and feelings fight for control over our inner lives that w...
Independence is counterfeit freedom. We think if we can make all our own choices and do our own thing, we will be free. But the opposite is true. By trying to be independent, we are attempting to take God’s place as the ruler of our lives. We can n...
How we perceive, feel about and respond to people and situations is far more guided by the lessons of early childhood than we would like to believe. We may be adults, chronologically and physically, but too often the youngest parts of our personality...
Sometimes, looking at the many books I have at home, I feel I shall die before I come to the end of them, yet I cannot resist the temptation of buying new books. Whenever I walk into a bookstore and find a book on one of my hobbies — for example, O...
His skin like grey bark, his eyes pale as a winter pool, time and age had worn my father to the bone. In our youth, he’d been a strict master lording over my lessons while tender with the flower of his heart, my sister Anabine. Ana, the lovely, blo...
