SOMETIMES YOU THINK YOU KNOW WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN. YOU’RE USUALLY WRONG. AND THAT’S PROBABLY NOT A BAD THING. I used to teach in a program called Artists-in-Schools, as did my longtime friend, musician Bill Haymes. I’d come into schools, a visiting writer helping students (sometimes very young, sometimes teenagers) write. Bill did the same, but with music and song-writing…. Read More
Grief, in the early stages; grief, after the first layer of shock has worn off: so excruciatingly painful is it, and so discontinuous with the reality we knew before death took the person we most loved in the world, that we do not want to feel it. And, as we struggle against it— for who would willingly accept such pain?… Read More
This is the way it works. You return to a town where you used to live. You go on a short walk, on a street you have walked many times. You are only stretching your back and legs and getting a few more steps in so your Fitbit will be happy at the end of the day. You are only… Read More
“He cannot be dead,” said Paul, my father’s editor at Playboy. “It is Friday. I am sitting here looking at a pitch letter he sent me on Monday.” Things you don’t realize will be part of your job description: returning voicemail messages left for your father, who has suddenly died. “Well, Paul,” I said, “Maurice always said he wanted to… Read More
We planned to go for a walk at twilight tonight, David and I, but when we stepped outside the dusk was chillier than we'd anticipated. "I wonder if I should go check the forecast," he said. "Yeah, you should," I said, "because if it's going to get below freezing we probably need to do some harvesting." He went back inside,… Read More
The original inventers of twittering have been coming and going from the feeder all day today. Whenever I look out, from the bathroom window upstairs or the french doors in the kitchen downstairs, different visitors are at the cafe. Finches yellow as canaries, finches as reddish-purple as if they’d bathed in grape juice. Sparrows, in tweedy brown-gray-black-white. Black-caped chicadees. Grosbeaks,… Read More
