Ten years ago, after the collective trauma of a marriage falling apart with love slipping through my heart like barbed wire, loss of child (read: too many to count), not to mention loss of place after a return to the home that haunts me only to watch it sink under a toxic stew, and then a slow progression into madness, I picked myself up. Even though I had built my marriage over much compromise, love,…
Ten years ago, I had a cataclysmic undoing, part was the neglect of others, and a major part was the federal government. Today, my friend in the midst of a divorce over a margarita confessed, “I was not a good steward of my marriage.” Ten years later, my family suffered an assault, again the neglect of others, and I indict the government again for willful neglect in its glacial prosecution. Everyone is writing about Katrina…
I left for Spain having lost six pounds the hard way (running, weight lifting, watching what I eat) and managed to gain eight while there. How’s that possible? I now believe it comes down to too much salad. A slim friend in Spain told me that she doesn’t do a lick of exercise, but only controls everything that goes into her mouth. When I told her a typical day’s meal at home in New Orleans,…
Stargate: Madrid, July 29, 2015 Inma and David came for a visit and to go with us to China Mandarina for dinner. Inma brought three presents for Tin: 1) a nerf hoop game, 2) an abstract puzzle with magnets, 3) a dinosaur sticker and coloring book. And lagniappe was a pencil with a shark on top and a wooden T to hang on his door at home. Inma had a lot of questions for Tin,…
My “family” was in town this weekend joining other “family” for events that I was wholly unaware of. Let me remind you that the family I put in quotes made a decision some years ago to part ways over something that my niece’s husband, Mark, claimed happened to him. It started with a strange phone call one night. It spread through my family like a virus. And it culminated in this rift that is nothing…
The Layers BY STANLEY KUNITZ I have walked through many lives, some of them my own, and I am not who I was, though some principle of being abides, from which I struggle not to stray. When I look behind, as I am compelled to look before I can gather strength to proceed on my journey, I see the milestones dwindling toward the horizon and the slow fires trailing from the abandoned camp-sites, over which…
Last night my nephew and his family were over because they are visiting from Atlanta. Yes, I was across the counter from a man that I knew as a baby all grown up now with a child around half the age of my son. Well that’s a history in and of itself. Yet, that’s not what is on my mind. The world has grown so heavy, so violent, and frightening and well, I feel that…
Sometimes when I have a lot on my mind, I go to bed and read until the book is falling out of my hands. Well, I always go to bed and read till the book is falling out of my hands, but sometimes I notice that as I close my eyes and drift into slumber my mind is speed racing through thoughts that feel as if they have landed on a dreamy loop going round…
I have contemplated work for the last three years. What is it? What am I doing, who am I doing it for, and what is the compensation? Is my time worth this work? My shift has been glacier, but steadily I have moved away from the work that came easily to me to that which feels less like an excuse and more like a reward for having lived so long. “Give me whereon to stand”,…