When I arrived back at Intro to Basic Art again later that week, I thought for a moment we had a new student who didn’t know about the assigned seats. Sitting at my table was a girl in a long flowered dress, very vintage-hippie. She actually was we...
I only accept and pay attention to feedback from people who are also in the arena. If you're occasionally getting your butt kicked as you respond, and if you're also figuring out how to stay open to feedback without getting pummeled by insults, I'm m...
Oh God just look at me now... one night opens words and utters pain... I cannot begin to explain to you... this... I am not here. This is not happening. Oh wait, it is, isn't it? I am a ghost. I am not here, not really. You see skin and cuts and frai...
He stops pacing. 'I know, Miranda, I did it because I—' 'Stop! Don't say it. I don't want to hear you say it.' 'I have to say it,' Noah says. 'No, you don't.' If I hear him say the word love, I don't know what I'll do. I still have my gun. Maybe on...
I noticed Xander had subtly adjusted his posture. He slouched slightly to the side, let his head hang, and then looked up through his bangs to gaze at something in the middle distance. Uber James Dean. Xander managed to pull it off as if he was looki...
Coyotes move within a landscape of attentiveness. I have seen their eyes in the creosote bushes and among mesquite trees. They have watched me. And all the times that I saw no eyes, that I kept walking and never knew, there were still coyotes. When I...
Now I know why I had that dream last night. It was a premonition forewarning me of the death of my cooking career!" "I doubt that your cooking career is over. You may be working at Coney Island until you retire, but you'll still be a chef," smiled Co...
Do you see those dull stars?" She outlined the formation with her finger. "A pentagram," whispered Scott. "Yes, but not just any pentagram. Take a look through the telescope." Scott approached the eyepiece. "They're not stars!" "What do they look lik...
Salomé, Salomé, dance for me. I pray thee dance for me. I am sad to-night. Yes, I am passing sad to-night. When I came hither I slipped in blood, which is an evil omen; and I heard, I am sure I heard in the air a beating of wings, a beating of gian...
You guys like to tell jokes and giggle and kid around, huh? Giggling like a bunch of young broads in a school yard. Well, let me tell you a joke: Five guys sitting in a bull pen, San Quentin. Wondering how the fuck they got there. What'd we do wrong?...
Stories are a kind of thing, too. Stories and objects share something, a patina. I thought I had this clear, two years ago before I started, but I am no longer sure how this works. Perhaps a patina is a process of rubbing back so that the essential i...
The clear awareness of having been born into a losing struggle need not lead one into despair. I do not especially the idea that one day I shall be tapped on the shoulder and informed, not that the party is over but that it is most assuredly going on...
One last mystery: on one of the little ponds, this morning, I saw wind riffling the first of the waterlily leaves. They haven’t all emerged yet, but new circles tattoo the water, here and there, a coppery red. When the wind lifted their edges, each...
Not enough books focus on how a culture responds to radically new ideas or discovery. Especially in the biography genre, they tend to focus on all the sordid details in the life of the person who made the discovery. I find this path to be voyeuristic...
Ritsu: "I’m a complete failure. At everything I do, I’m absolutely worthless. I know this, and yet I continue to burden the human race with my presence. Every day I rob the world of valuable air by breathing. I’m a thief, and I hate myself for ...
The purest moment, tranquil hour of Earth's expectancy. We lay on the soft rose sands beside the sleeping sea in happy land of fragrant meadows I dreamed a dream of. The whisper of the tide, the sighing of the trees. You gentle silver song births my ...
What I have a problem with is not so much religion or god, but faith. When you say you believe something in your heart and therefore you can act on it, you have completely justified the 9/11 bombers. You have justified Charlie Manson. If it's true fo...
When I find myself in times of trouble, mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom, let it be. And in my hour of darkness she is standing right in front of me, speaking words of wisdom, let it be. Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be. Wh...
There are those wonderful moments of clarity in life when one is reminded how irreparably flawed we humans are. Once, when I was nineteen, on the subway in Boston I lost my balance slightly and bumped into an elderly woman. I quickly apologized and s...
I could still see that Pauline was one of the most beautiful girls I had ever met, but of the ancient fire which had caused me to bung my heart at her feet that night at the Plaza there remained not a trace. Analysing this, if analyzing is the word I...
I am a librarian. I discovered me in the library. I went to find me in the library. Before I fell in love with libraries, I was just a six-year-old boy. The library fueled all of my curiosities, from dinosaurs to ancient Egypt. When I graduated from ...
