Going The Distance

Rubin Carter’s Long Journey From Convict To Crusader

When you spend a great deal of time in darkness, in solitary confinement, where everything blends into one, if you’re fortunate, you’ll begin to see things more vividly than you’ve ever seen them before. It may take days, weeks, months, years, but you’ll begin to see things as they really are. You’ll begin to see yourself as you have never seen yourself before. Because when you can’t see outside, you can only look inside.

The Boy Who Kissed The Soldier

In the ruins of Jenin, an old friend of mine is digging bodies out of the rubble where Israeli bulldozers have flattened houses, burying people alive. She describes the scene to me: Blackened, maggot-ridden corpses are displayed to anguished relatives for identification.

Rules Of The Dream

Last night I dreamed I was a Chinese man who worked in a nuclear power plant. The plant leaked radiation, and I spoke out about it and was denounced by the authorities. At home, my mother looked at me coldly and said that I was no longer her son.

A Partial Inventory Of The Great Mistakes I Have Made

Burning the teakettle to a crisp because the whistle was broken and I forgot I’d turned it on.

Any Marine

Before the ground war started, we hunkered behind berms, firing shots at targets built from crumb rubber, careful not to shoot the Bedouins and their camels when they appeared on the horizon. We stood in jeeps and flashed the Saudis on the highway, making lewd gestures with our tongues and fingers at the Saudi women sitting in the back of their husbands’ Mercedes, because only men can drive in that country.

Playing Ping-Pong With Pontius Pilate

In the YMCA sauna, Bill Drucker, a pharmacist, was holding forth on the subject of mutual funds, pros and cons, when the door banged open and an icy blast of air slapped everybody’s cheeks. Pontius Pilate strode in, his wool robes shushing against his naked, hairy ankles. “Hello, boys!” he said.

Stop

In A Dream It All Has To Be True Like The Moon

Turtle