I had one of my weird Buffy the Vampire Slayer moments this week. This happens when ordinary life collides with pretend life and I seem to be the only one who notices. It is unsettling, like waking up and walking around only to wake up again and realize that the first waking was a dream.
It started with the weather [...]
Archive for the ‘Conversations’ category
Hearing what you think, wondering what you heard
Crack House Diary Entry: College Application
This is only a Crackhouse Diary entry in the sense that Susan and I would have never known the author of the following college admission essay had Susan not chosen to teach in a South Central high school. The student, who wishes to remain anonymous, approached Susan for help with her application process. Susan brought [...]
Fence sitting
If my particular cocktail of genetics, science and luck follow the patterns of my grandparents, I may be at the exact halfway point in my life. I often imagine myself as tiptoeing on the top of a fence that divides youth and old age, my arms thrown wide, trying to keep it all, trying to balance; one hand [...]
What to wear?
What’re you gonna wear for Halloween? Who will you be? Who did you want to be… but never were?
On bath-ing
Doesn’t start with the hot water. Starts with the idea, the plan, the thought like the taste of liquor on your tongue, around four o’clock. Maybe earlier, much earlier, in the shower even, of that very same day. It’s there, like the promise of a call from a lover, waiting for you. Only this you [...]
DFW delays
I imagined it would go like this:
He was late. I was dressed up. Sorta. Clean jeans. Hair down. He came into the restaurant – linen table cloths, candles, no salt, no pepper on the table ’cause the chef knew the food’d be just right. He spotted me, came over, a sea of apologies that quickly [...]
Hello, my name is . . .
Last weekend I went to a party at our neighbors’ house. Billed as A BBQ in the ‘burbs; the gimmick was to invite all their hip city friends out to the boondocks to enjoy a spacious backyard and fifty year-old trees. They offered great music, a keg of beer and a guest list that included [...]
Crack House Diary Entry 03: Squatting in Someone’s Home
There are no ‘abandoned’ houses in South Central. If a house or building is left unoccupied long enough someone will eventually make unofficial use of the structure. HUD foreclosed houses are no exception even though HUD officers visit them a couple of times each week looking for evidence of occupation. [...]
A midnight showing of Narnia
There is a point in the book Prince Caspian, by C.S. Lewis, when a group of characters are hopelessly lost in the forest. The Pevensie children, four siblings transported from mid-twentieth century England to an alternate world called Narnia, are searching for the title character and an army of good guys. Unfortunately the landscape has [...]
In praise of all things not nice
Once when I was a teenager, I designed my own funeral. What might have been a medication red flag for some kids was only Saturday night with a new notebook for a saint-obsessed, Brian’s Song-Sunshine-Death Be Not Proud-movie-of-the-week-weepy addict, folk singing, beatnik wannabe. I listed the music first (very heavy on the Peter, Paul and [...]
