Pythagoras*
Sean MurphyI can’t speak to anyone else’s experience, but my grief has made me, against all previous likelihood, into a half-assed mathematician. Numbers were never my bag, and I’ve got the…
Strictly Business (Class): The Dreaded Day Trip*
A.M.: Departure Early, at the airport. Look around: some of the pretty people, many of the mediocre, and the rest of us, all sizes and shapes: men trying to look…
Deus ex machina*
Was that as bad for you as it was for me? That's the question I did not ask when Father _____ left our house. On to his next appointment; all in a…
2011: Time To Die (Part Two: July-December)
2011: In pace requiescat! 7/26/11: Whenever an artist dies too young, particularly when it is a self-inflicted surrender, there is an inevitable (irresistible?) tendency to romanticize or lionize. That Winehouse…
2011: Time To Die (Part One: January-June)
2011: In pace requiescat! The new year kicked off with unfortunate news when word of the great Gerry Rafferty's passing hit the wires. My tribute to him in its entirety…
The Narrow Path: A Tone Poem*
You are alone. You are back in the city and you are alone as you emerge into the open and empty space, stepping out from the stale depths of…
Fairy Tales and Feeding Tubes*
The brief experiment with the feeding tube was sufficiently impractical and unsavory that it seemed a small, if conflicted victory when we agreed to discard the apparatus. “So just call…
Thanksgiving 2011: Some Things I’m Grateful For
The dogs in our lives. The ones who are no longer here, like Leroy and Terra and the dearly -departed Quinzy. Quinzy treated the world like his bitch and while I couldn’t…
When Words Fail*
It will be okay. This is what parents are obliged to tell frightened children and what some children must one day resort to telling their parents. It will be okay,…
On Worrying*
Two things we all became experts in during those last five years: taking care of my mother and worrying. We were authorities; we worried all the time, about everything. The…