There are all sorts of families," Tom's grandmother had remarked, and over the following few weeks Tom became part of the Casson family, as Micheal and Sarah and Derek-from-the-camp had done before him. He immediately discovered that being a member o...
The fury of confession, at first, then the fury of clarity: It was from you, Death, that such hypocritical obscure feeling was born! And now let them accuse me of every passion, let them bad-mouth me, let them say I’m deformed, impure, obsessed, a ...
I am now 33 years old, and it feels like much time has passed and is passing faster and faster every day. Day to day I have to make all sorts of choices about what is good and important and fun, and then I have to live with the forfeiture of all the ...
Chiron had said once that nations were the most foolish of of mortal inventions. "No man is worth more than another, wherever he is from." "But what if he is your friend?" Achilles has asked him, feet kicked up on the wall of the rose-quartz cave. "O...
Why’d you want to kill yourself? Didn’t you feel anything, or didn’t it hurt you?” Mandy questioned, looking puzzled. “Yes, I suppose it did, … it was strange, it was sharp, that’s all I can think of to describe it… and cold, but not ...
As I said, I don’t expect you to understand—” “And I don’t,” he cut in. “Ye ask how I can live a life that I know will end with the hangman’s noose. Well, at least I am alive. Ye might as well have climbed inside yer husband’s coffi...
I have been studying for forty years, which is to say forty wasted years; I teach others yet am ignorant of everything; this state of affairs fills my soul with so much humiliation and disgust that my life is intolerable. I was born in Time, I live i...
Katrina held Bram in her arms, speaking softly, reassuringly, as they approached baby Modoc. This was an important moment, a beginning, for she knew the boy would spend his life with animals, especially elephants, and the meeting was of utmost import...
[...] I grew up out of that strange, dreamy childhood of mine and went into the world of reality. I met with experiences that bruised my spirit - but they never harmed my ideal world. That was always mine to retreat into at will. I learned that that ...
The Search for reason ends at the known; on the immense expanse beyond it only the sense of the ineffable can glide. It alone knows the route to that which is remote from experience and understanding. Neither of them is amphibious: reason cannot go b...
A God who could make good children as easily a bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who could have made every one of them happy, yet never made a single happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; who gave his angels ...
God did not make this person as I would have made him. He did not give him to me as a brother for me to dominate and control, but in order that I might find above him the Creator. Now the other person, in the freedom with which he was created, become...
Why is it that it is often easier for us to confess our sins to God than to a brother? God is holy and sinless, He is a just judge of evil and the enemy of all disobedience. But a brother is sinful as we are. He knows from his own experience the dark...
A Letter to Andre Breton, Originally Composed on a Leaf of Lettuce With an Ink-dipped Carrot On my bed, my green comforter draped over my knees like a lumpy turtle, I think about the Berlin Wall of years that separates us. In my own life, the years a...
I ran a constant low fever waiting for my ride to come and take me away to something finer. I lay in bed at night, watching the red beacon on top of the water tower, a clear signal to me of the beauty and mystery of a life that waited for me far away...
The tattoo artist inflicts pain and I take it. With each breath I count to one again. Each inhale, each exhale, time passes in the smallest of pieces, and pieces still smaller than those. This is how you count a life. This is how you go through it. E...
For me, family means the silent treatment. At any given moment, someone is always not speaking to someone else.' Really,' I said. We're passive-aggressive people,' she explained, taking a sip of her coffee. 'Silence is our weapon of choice. Right now...
Grover Underwood of the satyrs!" Dionysus called. Grover came forward nervously. "Oh, stop chewing your shirt," Dionysus chided. "Honestly, I'm not going to blast you. For your bravery and sacrifice, blah, blah, blah, and since we have an unfortunate...
Long after our cities are condemned and deserted, our city parks will stand as a testament of the serenity of our weekends to distant trespassers. As we wait in the bushes to embrace their heavy garments, the trespassers may think, cuddling themselve...
Sometimes, as Eve was born from one of Adam’s ribs, a woman was born during my sleep from a cramped position of my thigh. Formed from the pleasure I was on the point of enjoying, she, I imagined, was the one offering it to me. My body, which felt i...
Dogs possess a quality that's rare among humans--the ability to make you feel valued just by being you--and it was something of a miracle to me to be on the receiving end of all that acceptance. The dog didn't care what I looked like, or what I did f...
