"I will come to a time in my backwards trip when November eleventh, accidentally my birthday, was a sacred day called Armistice Day. When I was a boy, and when Dwayne Hoover was a boy, all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the ( Read more... )

It's Sunday morning, and Edie is dead.  I knew that she eventually would be, given that her 80th birthday just passed, but it seemed as far away as ever.  As an old spitfire, she knew how to plummet toward oblivion and bounce back up like a Joe Palooka doll.  (When was the last time we made one of those?  If I asked my students what a Joe Palooka ( Read more... )

I wonder if real-world excavation sites are anything like spring cleaning (notwithstanding the fact that it's autumn).  First, you decide on a place to start - a closet, a drawer, a crypt, a mound.  Today, I started in a drawer that was only half full at any given time with bric-a-brac instead of clothes.  You clear the early debris: bits and bobs ( Read more... )

These words floated back to me today on a wave of free association, apropos of nothing, and slapped me in the face with all of my own suffering.

Now being without you
Takes a lot of getting used to
Should learn to live with it
But I don't want to
Being without you
Is all a big mistake
Instead of getting easier
It's the hardest thing to take
-- Chicago, ( Read more... )

I assume my grandparents gave me toys as gifts when I was very young. I have pictures, anyway, with mounds of offerings to the tiny goddess that was me. Some of them had to have been from Grandpa and Grandma, since at that age, I spoke the language of toys quite fluently.  (I hated baby dolls my whole life; I never knew what to do with them or why ( Read more... )

Last night I dreamt that I was graduating from Cal State L.A., in a setting that was supposed to represent the school but was the weird mish-mash of dreams. Only the graduate candidates and their families were in attendance; it was a much smaller gathering than the one I actually had last year. The ceremony was indoors, in a space that was a somber ( Read more... )

You know the only word for it is "mistake," what you've done.  Because you didn't mean to betray.  There was no malice.  There was just...tailspin.

You say you're sorry again though he isn't here to hear, though it won't fix anything.  But you're listening to your own broken voice again.  Not just broken like a record repeating, but broken like a ( Read more... )

There is no way for anyone else to save me from myself and there never has been. No parent, no church, no law or lover can do it for me, particularly when they try. The eternal lament of the parent is that they can't keep their children from making their mistakes. They have to have faith that their kids will choose differently, when facing the same ( Read more... )

It was 1987, and I was a girl.

Sometimes it feels like it's still 1987 somewhere, and I'm still a girl falling in love with Patrick Swayze, like every other female I knew.  Young or old, it didn't seem to matter - the man could move.  He had a grace that was hard to match; most men had no chance, and most women envied his flow and charm.  And why ( Read more... )

I miss finding notes in your handwriting around the house ( Read more... )