Peachy and Cream

Two dollars for a basket of Ontario peaches; butter, in a Russian lettered wrapper, sat in the fridge for over a year. I don't eat butter, but it made a good peach pad.

Worlds

Speaking of intermediate cases, in 1983 a car crash split me down the middle. I ceased to exist as one person and became three: the person who existed before the crash and the two half-entities resulting from the crash.

Crow Spirits

 

     Mother knew the horrors waiting down the road for boys who persisted in playing in the basement with crow spirits, ravens, those huge black, shiny birds of midnight. The grid of time warped and twisted, day became night and night became day. Mother warned me to cease and desist forthwith.

tuna sandwich by the sea

One afternoon I made tuna sandwiches, shared them and then went down to the sea. A tuna sandwich is easy to understand. Cats and birds don't need an explanation. The minute you open a can of tuna, cats come running and crows swoop around.

Black Cat Road

Black Cat Road leads to the ocean, to vast, desolate beaches where a mind could wander into the waves. Toss the wandering mind into a sea of amniotic fluid. An old, arthritic, half-blind, nearly deaf black cat showed up to greet us as we pulled up to a farm house off a red dirt road.

Mother's Companion

Mother began her torturous palaver, unpleasant, aggressive, but monotonous syllables of barely repressed rage, she bludgeoned her son with words forbidding sexuality, alcohol or any form of pleasure and encouraged him to pursue an ideal.

Writing as Antidote

It’s hard to write about the experience of feeling bad during the moment of feeling bad. The moment I begin writing, I feel better.