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Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Just This Breath
I can’t see the virus, but I feel its seeds in me. I can’t see my faith, but I feel its seeds in me, too.
June 2020
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Monotheism At Thirty Thousand Feet
Below me the world turned slowly through the night, unaware of the multilayered geopolitics my coffee-jangled brain was imposing upon it. I could find reasons to forgive Judaism and Islam their present-day sins. Christianity was another matter.
May 2020
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
The Empty Set
I was six years old when I became aware that death was something that would happen to me. I was in the car with my mom, in the backseat because she followed the rules, and we were on our way home from the grocery store.
April 2020
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
No Accident
It was the first Friday of spring break, 1984, when I climbed into the bed of Greg’s compact truck, leaned back against the cab, and watched the keg party fade into the distance as we drove away.
April 2020
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Drinking With The Creek
What I do is sit with the creek. If it’s hot, perhaps I’ll sit in the creek. Two or three times, assisted by an inflatable pool toy, I have sat on the creek. But the preposition of choice remains with.
April 2020
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Home Range
The mare saw two of her herdmates die when she was captured. One, an exhausted gray stallion, fell and broke his neck in the trailer; the other, a chestnut foal, only weeks old, was chased until its leg fractured, and it had to be euthanized. That was the first this mare knew of our kind. Of our kindness.
April 2020
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
The Orange Appreciation Award
I keep a few backyard oranges mixed in with the baseballs in the bucket I take to practice. Every time one of my teammates peeks in, he’s like, “Oranges?” question mark, when it really ought to be “Oranges!” EXCLAMATION POINT!
March 2020
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
How It Ends
It begins like this: You drop your son off at kindergarten. His first day of school. You think that nothing in your life will be as big as this: the moment he drops your hand, he who has clung to you since birth, since that first breath of air, first scream, first frantic rooting for the breast.
March 2020
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Recipe For Strawberry Bliss
Learn the word ennui. Resolve to do something meaningful with your life. Do something selfish and stupid instead. Go to prison.
March 2020Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
100 Dollars
Are you thirsty? Do you like to drink water? Are you from a generation that thinks it’s OK to drink water out of single-use plastic bottles? Then the world works for you!
March 2020
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