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Other Animals

Amniocentesis, the royal chamber, the head of Horace Greeley

Grief And Happiness At The Home

The Home for Refined Ladies was an old, turreted, red-brick building converted from a Catholic girls’ academy which had moved to a newer building in a better part of Dubuque, Iowa, up on the hills overlooking the Mississippi.

The Secret Of Life

I recall another day back in junior high. He wrote upon the blackboard large: DNA/RNA. He pointed to the letters lying there like some Kabbalistic mantra, then said, “This is the secret of life.”

Lord Shantih

At the Monastery of the Sacred Night the priests perform the ancient worship of sleep. By secret methods they fashion their dreams into a kind of prayer to the gods, and in this way they offer praise on levels which to ordinary men remain hidden.

My Happiest Moment

Turtles, the pearl of great cost, a blue dragonfly

Sunbeams

Where there is great love, there are always miracles. Miracles rest not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming to us from afar, but on our perceptions being made finer, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what is there about us always.

Willa Cather

Love

Before my father died I loved my mother, but now it’s different. I can no longer go to her, put my arms around her, or anything like that. She has become somehow strange to me, and so, not lovable.

Eating Rattlesnake

I was sitting at my desk near midnight, when the hair on the back of my neck rose, and a chill ran down my spine. I think someone is standing somewhere a ways behind the cabin, watching me through the windows.

Going To Sleep

Fraidy-cats, the Holy Ghost, Mein Kampf

M’Orgasms

Halfway up University, in front of Walt’s Drugs, I said, “Mom, I’ve never had an orgasm with a man.” I said the “with a man” under my breath but it got us off placemats. When mother was surprised she’d get a little smile on her top lip.