Which Is Why We Have Songs Of Praise
"Life isn’t easy and straightforward. It’s full of challenges and difficulties. Trouble will come to us uninvited and without warning. Man is prone to trouble as sparks are to fly upward, and under...
View ArticleAnd Numberless Blades of Grass
The editor looked at the painting, which showed an astronaut walking toward a spaceship, with a trail of discarded objects behind him, representing parts of his life which he had discarded on his way...
View ArticleYou Have Permission To Dance
I climbed off the table slowly and carefully.“Are you in any pain?”“I’m waiting for something to begin to hurt, but so far, nothing does. That’s miraculous, but also kind of…eerie, considering what...
View ArticleIt Was After Dinner
I was washing the dishes, thinking over my options for the rest of the evening, when I was suddenly struck with an appalling feeling that I didn’t like any of them. That I hadn’t really liked any of...
View ArticleThe World Needs You
Gaea was holding out both hands imploringly, rather than Uncle Sam’s commanding finger in the “I Want You” poster, but this poster’s meaning was just as emphatic, and just as manipulative. It was a...
View ArticleThe Questions You Might Want To Ask
“Hello, Amy, can you hear me?”“Um…yes?”“That’s good. My name is George, and I’m here to help you. Are you comfortable right now? Is my voice too loud or too soft, for instance?”“No, it’s fine. I’m . ....
View ArticleChoir of One
“He really does have a beautiful singing voice, doesn’t he?” my wife said as Fly Me to the Moonended.“Who is it?”“Are you kidding? It’s Vic Makropolus. Haven’t you ever heard him before?”She picked up...
View ArticleThe Various Faces of the Moon
"You used to only see one face of it.""That idea is really difficult to grasp. I'm so used to seeing all sides of it night after night.""Yes, well, you're used to seeing it with water and plants on it,...
View ArticleStill Singing Through
“Some days, I really can feel her,” I said as I dug my hoe’s tines through the dirt, pulling morning glories from around the roots of the pea vines.“Feel whom?” Glory asked, not looking up from her...
View ArticleHow Will I Hide?
“It’s funny. Have you ever read the original story, Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde?”“The original? By Stevenson? No, I guess I haven’t.”“It’s funny. The original story doesn’t have...
View ArticleI Wonder If I Will Miss
“I wonder if I will miss my headaches.”“What?”“Stranger things have happened. There’s a familiarity to the ritual of feeling the pain begin to gather, of taking my pills, of going through my routine,...
View ArticleIn Season
“…in season or out of season“Stand up and back him in all men’s sight, with that for his only reason.“Nine hundred and ninety-nine can’t bide“The shame or the mocking or laughter“But the thousandth...
View Article"When The Wind And Light Are Working Off Each Other"
“Oh, I love it when the wind shakes the trees this way.”I paused to look at the row of trees as they shook in the wind. Each of them three or four storeys tall, their branches were shaking wildly,...
View ArticleImperfections
“It’s surprising just how chilling it can be to see a small area of fresh grass and trees.”“Knowing that there were dozens of tents pitched there a week ago?”“Yes. All those people, swept away in that...
View ArticleI'm Here To Tell You
“I’m here to tell you…” his voice echoed from the amplifiers, distorted by the walls of the buildings on the plaza and the gathered bodies and by the weird electronics they used on this timeline,...
View ArticleA Letter From Kathe
The other day, I received a call from the Reynolds Law Firm, which has handled our legal business in various matters over the years, telling me that they had a letter which they needed to either...
View ArticleDuckies
It was a running gag in the household for some time, the portentous voiceover from a satire of those "mysteries of pseudoscience" TV shows: "Ducks. What are they? Where do they come from? Why are they...
View ArticleUnborn
“It’s strange. For the most part, she had a very good memory, but she remembered quite vividly something which couldn’t possibly have happened: going out on the playing field of her high school with...
View ArticleWhat Songs Travel Toward Us
I sat on the roof with my guitar, plucking at it. I wondered what the people passing by thought of me: was I a lazy bum, idling away my evening? Was I a hard-working man unwinding after a long shift...
View ArticleWhere Memories Are Kept
I wish I had a place in my brain were memories were kept, secure and reliably stored, as in a digital recording.Instead, I have a strange, unreliable holographic mechanism in which what is recorded...
View ArticleI Hear You
“I hear you”, I replied. It seemed like an inadequate response, but on the other hand, it was the truth, and the easiest of all my complicated reactions to express, one that I could send quickly...
View ArticleBreathing
At the end of the play, the executioner walks onstage and pulls off his mask. It’s Everyman again. He holds his hands to his chest and says, “I’m breathing. It’s good to breathe. If you want to keep...
View ArticleShe Requires You To Be Beautiful
“Nature has certain characteristics which are consistent at all scales, from the microscopic to the cosmic. She displays a clear preference for symmetry over asymmetry, for elegance over complexity,...
View ArticleIt Is All One Thing
“It is all one thing.”I couldn’t tell who had said it. Literally, it could have been me. The way we were all huddled together, our bodies touching, breathing one another’s air, smelling one another’s...
View ArticleThe Blessing of Olfactory Hallucination
As the group gathered itself by way of a shared meditation, the person guiding it invited us to hold our own hands and picture us holding one another's hands. I closed my eyes and imagined us as a...
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