Archive for the ‘Death’ category
Holding out for a hero
When I was in sixth grade, the teacher gave us a writing assignment. “Write about one of your heroes,” she said. As my classmates immediately thought of firemen, their grandma or Jesus, I had to ponder my options. Joan of Arc? Harriet Tubman? Louis Braille? Superman? Athena? Woody Guthrie? Teresa of Ávila? The list was [...]
Murder
I remember three things about William: 1) He got in hot water in Sophomore English for asking Mrs. Hill whether the verbal paradigm for “to lay” remained the same in certain non-standard usages of the verb. 2) He had terrible skin. 3) When we all went on an orchestra trip to Cincinnati, he told me [...]
How I came to be the last man on earth
It’s usually in times of emotional distress (like December through March, for example) that I start thinking about what it would be like to be alone on earth. I should say it’s functioned as a fucked up escape fantasy for me for a long time, an alternative to stepping into the street and knocking men’s [...]
I want to get old
Reading this excellent, somewhat-Shandean meditation on the glories of post-menopausal life by Roseanne Barr got me all jealous. Maybe it’s the fact that I’ve been spending a lot of my time around post-menopausal women lately, but I’m going through a phase in which I simply can’t wait to be in my mid-50′s. I think that’s [...]
Happy birthday to me, I mean you
The alarm went off at 5:00 am last Tuesday, but I was already awake. I had been lying there wondering if I could still cut one last rose this season to put in a bud vase. I got up with atypical morning energy and began the planned preparations. Over the next hour and a half [...]
Irene’s mother
Six years and a week after Katrina, New Orleans is still bustin’ open with music and oysters and muffalettas and floats and masks and slang and cocktails and friendliness. At night the street corners spill over with virtuosic brass bands. In the “right” parts of town, you’d never know anything had changed. Just like always, [...]
I believe that children are our future. This is not a good thing.
I had to watch in 1-minute intervals and I missed a lot of it because the part of my brain that processes language would periodically blow a fuse out of some self-preservation instinct and I would stop understanding the words. If you can watch the whole thing at a stretch without dying of vicarious embarrassment, [...]
I am sad Amy Winehouse is dead
I am sad Amy Winehouse is dead. I said this to a coworker on Monday morning. He said, “People die of addiction every day, why should her death be any sadder than anyone else’s.” He responded quickly, as if he had thought about it. Throughout the week I have heard bits and pieces of conversation. [...]
