February 2011
5 posts
In thinking of my successive tutors, I am concerned less with the queer dissonances they introduced into my young life than with the essential stability and completeness of that life. I witness with pleasure the supreme achievement of memory, which is the masterly use it makes of innate harmonies when gathering to its fold the suspended and wandering tonalities of the past. I like to imagine, in...
The hard, brown, nutlike word.
“The only form of discourse of which I approve,” Miss R. said in her dry, tense voice, “is the litany. I believe our masters and teachers as well as plain citizens should confine themselves to what can safely be said. Thus when I hear the words pewter, snake, tea, Fad #6 sherry, serviette, fenestration, crown, blue coming from the mouth of some public official, or some raw youth,...
I told her listen, at the rate you’re going you’ll be either dead or pregnant by the time you get your driver’s license. She said I don’t give a shit - consequences are for pussies.
I sat with my hands folded, looking at her a minute, then concentrating on the empty television screen, looking back to her purse with the silver chain hanging off one side - like something...
History - much like memory’s tender remission - has a certain aptitude for sifting through a period’s niceties and keeping only those worth a spot on the mantlepiece. The only thing that sensible people can do at this stage in the dissolution of American culture is kneel down with clasped hands and pray that future generations, thumbing through a high school Social Studies book,...
The colors of the earth.
“…I know that the sound of the rain will wake some lovers, and that its sound will seem to be a part of that force that has thrust them into one another’s arms. Then I sit up in bed and exclaim aloud to myself, ‘Valor! Love! Virtue! Compassion! Splendor! Kindness! Wisdom! Beauty!’ The words seem to have the colors of the earth, and as I recite them I feel my...
