It occurred to me today that I’m not as far along as I thought.
I remember a time when I dreamed of what I could do with an extra hundred years, or two hundred, or three. I would become the world’s foremost authority on nineteenth-century French literature. I would develop the patience to cook a soufflé. I would speak flawless Spanish with a perfect Castellaño accent…or with the accent of the aristocrats of Mexico City or Lima, or of the marketplace in San Juan.
I would learn to ski. I would win trophies at singles tennis—in my age bracket, of course, but that’s still a worthy accomplishment at 250.
Who was the man whose life ended last night beside the running trail? Was he a regular at the park? How often had I passed him going the opposite way? How many times did he lap me jogging as I walked the three-mile loop? Did we ever nod at one another, give some sign of recognition as fellow members of the community of park denizens? Would I have recognized his face were it not for the abrasions and the pallor of his skin? Will I recall him by some process of elimination as I scan faces in the coming weeks?
Did he feel any warning signs of the cardiac event or cerebral accident, or was he enjoying his run until the moment he was struck down?
I knew it was broken when she bolted upright and blinked a couple of times. She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth, looked at it, looked at me, and asked, “Who the hell are you?” Before I could answer, she shouted, “Goddamn! I have such a headache!”
I struggled to rise from my kneeling posture by her side. “Your highness, I come—”
“Is there nothing to eat around here? Can’t someone bring me something to eat?”
The servants I’d seen posed around the edges of the room …more
“I don’t know whether I would have made the choice to enter the treatment trial.” Listen to you! There’s that word again, always coming up. The idea of “choice” became a defining feature of our lives in the early years of the twenty-first century.
As medical knowledge—especially in the field of gerontology—moved forward in quantum leaps, we came to understand better the role that certain choices play in our destinies. To quit smoking, to enter a treatment program for addiction, to seek an optimal weight, to enroll in the clinical trial for a radical new anti-aging therapy…but I’m getting ahead of myself. These aren’t the choices I wanted to talk about.
At All Times, in All Seasons, the Earth Casts a Slim Wedge of Shadow into Space; When the Moon in Her Journey Passes Through that Umbra, Let Us Gather Under the Stars to Reflect, One to Another, That There Is No Charioteer Who Illuminates the Day, Nor Huntress Who Hides from the Sun’s Face, But Only Reason That Lights Our Understanding of What Nature Has Ordained
There will be a total lunar eclipse beginning at 9:01 p.m. Central Standard Time on Wednesday, February 20, 2008. My roommate and I have decided to make this astronomical treat the occasion for a party. If you’re reading my blog and you find yourself in the Houston area on February 20, if you’d like to join us.
Note: The prompt was to “create a working title that is the longest one you’ve ever written.” I’m not in the habit of giving working titles to any of my texts, so coming up with any title at all made for a challenging assignment. I like the idea of looking up at the ruddy, darkened moon and thinking of all the fanciful explanations that primitive people might have conceived for this lovely phenomenon. Giving myself permission to turn this exercise into a party invitation was the cherry on top.
I played my usual game in the bank drive-through. I pulled into the lot to get out of the street, but hung back a moment to size up the traffic flow. In Lane One was a late-model Cadillac with a wisp of white hair barely visible above the headrest, followed by a panel truck decorated with cheap magnetic signs for “Hernandez Bros. Electrician.” In Lane Two, a soccer mom waited behind a PT Cruiser. Lane Three started with six or seven construction workers piled into an old Ford pickup, then a pretty blonde in a convertible bimmer. Lane Two seemed like the obvious choice, so it had to be wrong. I flipped a mental coin and nosed my rust-bucket into Lane Three.
From my vantage point at the tail end of Lane Three, …more
This piece is so far from being complete that I thought it might clarify matters for my readers if I put my note at the start instead of at the end, which is where I usually have been placing notes about the texts.
The assignment was to write about a book that’s had a big influence on me. I’m having a hard time figuring out exactly why this has been the hardest exercise for me since the 50/50 class started. I love books—lots of them! I could name many books that have had a profound impact: The Chronicles of Narnia, any Ray Bradbury short-story collection, The House of the Spirits, Illusions, Walden, A Christmas Carol, Welcome to the Monkey House…the list goes on and on and on. But I settled on One Continuous Mistake a few moments after receiving the assignment, and I’ve been chipping away …more
There is an expression in the Roman language, genius loci, “the spirit of a place.” It has acquired a modern, figurative sense in the realm of landscape and architecture—a characteristic atmosphere. But its meaning is rooted in a literal, supernatural sense—the guardian spirit that protects a place.
I try to describe Rome to you without resorting to the clichés and hyperbole that pour from the reservoir of what I have read and heard and seen on television:
I’ll bet you thought you were never going to hear from your youngest grandson again. I wasn’t too regular about writing to you for the last decade or two of your life, so you certainly shouldn’t be surprised that you haven’t heard from me since you left us.
From your vantage point, I would think it’s easy for you to see why I didn’t stay in closer contact. Not long after the last time I saw you, when we got together with Laura and Yvonne, Karl and Edith, little Karl, Linda and her kids, Jane, Dad, and all those others at your place in Middle River, my life started heading in a direction that I wasn’t ready to share with you. I hate the way that time and circumstances isolated me from you. It wasn’t that I thought you couldn’t handle the secret …more
I have about 30 minutes left to tell you everything I need to say, and there’s no way it’s enough. God, I don’t even know where to start, so I’ll just dive in with a couple of minutes of background information, how I got to be typing this letter right now, and then I’d better get straight to the message I’m supposed to deliver. That’s the important part, but it also seems pretty important (to me, anyway), that you have some reason to believe that I haven’t gone completely out of my mind and run off to Belize like I always talked about doing.
This symbol means negation. This isn’t part of the message per se, but they say it’s important for you to know this if you’re going to understand all the rest.
No time for the whole story, so here it is in a nutshell: I was sitting on the picnic table on the patio, and I heard a noise down in the woods, a kind of crackling sound. …more
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