Originally published 16 years ago on a now-extinct blog, I remembered this today and read it out loud to my wife, who’s been weepy all morning as a result. It’s a sad story, in other words, a trip back in time to when I was barely 12 years old in darkest West Texas and really, [...]
family
Well, you know. Sometimes you have to come at things in a different way. It isn’t easy. Take the firehose of negativity at 4:00 a.m.—where does this stuff come from? I sort of know by now, of course, and this week came across a chunk of solid proof. But that’s not where the effort lies.
Live the dream, they said. We’ll take up Christmas at another time!
I don’t remember exactly when my mother announced she wasn’t “doing” Christmas or Thanksgiving any more. Probably around the time I went off to my first year of college up in Dallas after we’d all moved to Houston. I do recall her saying that nobody cared. That wasn’t true, because we loved to eat, and [...]
The block ahead has half a dozen empty storefronts. Can’t buy groceries or nails for half a mile.
For the record, real-life hero journeys kind of suck. On the other hand, the cool thing about being an artist is you never get to quit. None of this lying around and feeling guilty like my mother did because the doctor used forceps to pull my brother Bill out after he got twisted when she [...]
Heavy smoke from out there, somewhere. (Looking back into the plume.)
I keep thinking she’s in the bedroom asleep, and then I remember I took her to the airport in Albuquerque this morning. She landed in Minneapolis at almost the exact moment I hit the last stretch of bumpy dirt road on the way home. I cried a little on the freeway. All my sins, you [...]
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