“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
It seemed always cold then, wake up come-alive weather, but on the bus a murmuring quiet all through bland Jersey to Weehawken where it rose up to the river road that curves down to the tunnel: there, the City Glorious, like a dream from childhood of a Galactic Imperium washed in winter air, light-cleansed, the Glass City breathing in the sunlight it also owned, and a power like a steel voice humming into your ear, ‘this is for you, this is where the […]
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The Third Man The zither plays on and on for her long walk between coppiced trees in that low, lovely winter light. He waits for her long arrival, but she never shifts her gaze away from the straight line of the road, and like that she leaves. He takes a long time to light a cigarette near the grave of her lover that he shot, a mercy killing in a sewer of one who murdered children — this […]
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I work in a bookstore that also serves coffee. Bookselling, already an intimate business, becomes more so when you make someone a drink. Each of us want another to listen to our stories. I hear many stories. I met a man who drew his losses upon his body with tattoos. It is as if he drew his body into pain and joy to ease the pain of both parents dying so […]
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If you find a small pool of ice this winter, kneel next to it, and place your flattened hand upon it and press slowly and evenly until the surface fractures. Look at those lines of fracture – dozens of microcracks, each a fault line spreading out from the pressure points in ways no one could have anticipated. Think about the strain each one of those cracks reveals. Think about the […]
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