Photo Source: Unsplash Janet This morning I woke thinking of Janet, a 20th century college coed. I met her in college in Boston. She was pretty enough to attract attention and rode moods like a Tilt-a-Whirl. She could stay out until all hours and the next night refuse to leave her dorm. She was a party animal and a nihilist in her spare time. I'm shaving. The blade goes one way, my thoughts another. Maybe she spent too much time with those French existentialists. And that French...

Photo Source: LibreShot THE ONES I LIVE WITH Yes I know the past is not even past but must it move in with me? Good people and bad, they fill the rooms, take up almost every space, I can barely breathe, only remember. I didn’t realize the present could be so encumbered with what happened last week, last year, all the way back to my childhood. But here they are. And there’s me doing stuff with them and to them. Meanwhile, they’re affecting me. Every move I make requires their consent....

Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons In the Land of the Rattle Sure it's all frightening, shrieking from the branches, lightning's molten core, dead leaves and gray clouds trying to smother the Earth while stray noise upsets everything like a night cry, the unfolding murmur of a soon to be wild wind. So every child born is half that sweet talc smell, half roaring and unhinged, no answer to the ignominy of a parent's egregious monotone merely a babbling of grim expectation, a fear of bath...