“In such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, not to be on the side of the executioners.”- Camus
You Can Listen Here Books matter to me. No, that’s too weak. Books are transcendent objects. No, that’s too abstract and bloodless. I believe that books and reading can rescue us when nothing or no one else gives a tinker’s damn. Charles Dutton , the actor, changed his life in soiltary confinement — he read Day of Absence by Douglas Turner Ward on his belly next to his cell door. The light escaping from the hall under the door was the […]
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You Can Listen Here Nixon on the beach is smiling, a young looking forty. Pat is smiling. Neither are looking at the camera or seem self-conscious. Their dog Checkers, later to become a prop in a famous speech, is performing. Dressed casually, his hair ruffling in the breeze, he looks more contented than I have ever seen him, at ease with his family in the Jersey sun. He was the great vampire of my […]
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You Can Listen Here The all-purpose room has cream-colored walls. Its linoleum floors shine. The attendants are all women; they seem to like their jobs. They move smoothly from table to table – delivering trays, smiling and brightly greeting the men and women who wait in wheelchairs. Two come to our table and pass a good afternoon to my mother by her name, Christine. She smiles at them, the sweetness of her temperament undiminished. […]
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You Can Listen Here Any time we are not held in thrall by our silly-ass selves is well spent. Nothing focuses me on the pulsing, resounding present more than episodes in nature. However brief their span, their sudden action provides temporary relief from what can be a frivolous, yappy, burdensome self-consciousness, one that so persuasively enforces its domination. These encounters outside of ‘I’ blast the ‘I’ into another realm, and we then may see into the moment as if […]
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