I am playing this game of trying to cut through my own bullshit. As i shift the pieces i keep finding …ah! look! more bullshit! It is painful and ridiculous, but it feels so true. In spasms of indecision that sometimes feel debilitating, what i am trying to remember is that it doesn’t really matter …
Category: Aging & Dying
Crazy little snowflakes
I am a crazy freak and my life is shot through with beauty. You are as crazy as me. I can and I do bitch all day about the queasy terror of the Big Whateva—and it is. Terrible with a capital T. But oh, my god, the sweetness! Of the sitters in the zendo, of …
Remembering Tammy Fudge
I remember Tammy Fudge. That really was her name. As if that wasn’t enough, Tammy was gangly and awkward and kind of funny looking. She had no friends. If you sat beside her you wouldn’t have any friends either. You knew that in that dangerous and delicately balanced pre-adolescent universe, to befriend Tammy Fudge would …
A grouchy old woman
I go to visit Rose at her assisted-living facility once a week. She is 98, tiny and frail, semi-blind and semi-deaf. She can shuffle slowly around with a walker, but needs a wheelchair to go beyond the building. As she breathes she makes a high peeping sound in the back of her throat, an effect …
Lost: my precious thing
Somewhere between Fort Rodd Hill and the Tsawous rez where I camped for the night, my little black notebook disappeared. All my notes from the past year at Upaya and beyond, my lists, contacts, ideas, drawings, quotes, maps, jokes. The archive of my experience, the fresh tracks of my mind. The one item most precious …