Cheese when it’s starting to go off smells the way I remember the boys locker room smelled. Like feet and bodily gases, something chemical-like or blooming, something alive that shouldn’t be. I consumed things well past their shelf life as… Read More ›
Memoir
Placement services
As a reward for getting overtime work I ordered seven yards of landscaping bark since now we can justify a cosmetic expense. And the bark smells good, makes all the beds look clean, keeps the weeds down, feels like summer…. Read More ›
Deep Charon blues
No one else would eat my cheesecake so I ate it every day, all week. I loved that it was just cream cheese, sugar, flour, eggs and cream. And that it bloated in the oven and turned a deep brown…. Read More ›
Rainbows
As a treat to myself for finishing David Wallace’s difficult book I bought another difficult book, JR by William Gaddis, 760 pages of pure dialogue, a book that influenced Wallace. I’d tried reading Gaddis’s first book but gave up and… Read More ›
Unfinished
Dawn and I sat in the car in the Dairy Queen parking lot eating our sundaes with the windows down watching the other cars come and go through the drive thru, all the people in the suburbs walking their dogs…. Read More ›
Hot desking
Springtime as a young consultant though not really young, almost 48. An office of about 200 with capacity for 150 and me in the oldest 10%. Young consultants dressed to look older, older consultants headed the other way. Office chit… Read More ›
Cart boy
No one called me cart boy to my face but they probably did behind my back. That was the crux of my job, pushing reports on a Rubbermaid cart, dropping them off for each CSR. The reports were DOS-matrix style,… Read More ›
The Pale King
An hour before dusk the birds start going bananas. Clicking their tongues, chirping, tweeting. The pollen is like lime-green cocaine covering everything. I get to the park so early it’s still dark and the little streams reflect the pale light… Read More ›
Sunday sermon
I went outside and sprayed coyote urine on the tulips to keep the deer and rabbits away. I don’t know if it’s coyote urine but it smells like hell. I don’t know how they get it in a bottle either…. Read More ›
Saturday morning entry
Closing my eyes to the after images of weed leaf patterns. The sharp edges of being fully in the now. Taken to mid-morning naps on the sofa in the den with the morning light and pets, a greenhouse warmth and… Read More ›