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Perfect Moments: The Author’s Book, to Its Author
[Ed. Note: minor identifying details of this recently discovered letter have been obscured, to preserve the anonymity of the parties involved.] Dear J_____, So, you have finally finished me. I suppose I should offer not only thanks but congratulations to you — if so, then, sure: Congratulations! But I also can’t help thinking that maybe we [...]
Perfect Moments: Two Beautiful Women, a Certain Amount of Booze, and Maybe I’ve Got a Story…!
In the mid-1990s, boy, was I ever confused, perplexed, and probably (by many measures) in need of adjustment. Especially about my writing. Here’s what my quote-unquote oeuvre consisted of then: A non-fiction Op Ed memoir(ish) piece in a regional edition of the New York Times. A published mystery. (Depending on who I was talking to at [...]
Perfect Moments: “I Shot ‘im, Paw.”
The house in which The Missus and I live now is over twenty years old, as is our immediate neighborhood. But the area in general has only recently started to get built up. Real honest-to-gods wildlife, not yet squeezed out by housing and new roads, can still be spotted here and there — foxes, a [...]
Not “The End,” But Maybe The End
Nothing definite yet, of course. (It won’t be definite until I wash my hands of the last galley edit, ha.) But I think Seems to Fit ends as follows: Woot.
What Takes You Back?
Yesterday, Granta magazine kicked off a new collective-memory project called “Nostos Algos.” From a publicity release which just made its way to my Inbox: The word ‘nostalgia’ comes from the Greek words nostos (‘a homecoming’) and algos (‘pain, grief, distress’). We have all known the desire to return to another place or time, and the [...]
Perfect Moments: The Boy, the Wintry Day, the Film, the Flash of Panic
On a recent wintry day, The Boy (Who Was No Longer a Boy) and The Missus decided to go to a movie. Now, because the day was in fact wintry, and because “wintry” seldom applied to weather conditions where The Boy and The Missus lived, they needed to undertake certain careful preparations in advance. Warm [...]
Perfect Moments: Birds of an Earnest Young Feather
How do people form their first enduring friendships, anyway — I mean, their very first friendships (like at age 5 or 6), and very enduring (like spanning decades)? Maybe it’s different now, what with parents arranging “play dates” and similar activities. But when I was a kid, these things (looking back on them now) seemed [...]
Of Time, Things Small, and Things Green
From whiskey river: The Moment Walking the three tiers in first light, out here so my two-year-old son won’t wake the house, I watch him pull and strip ragweed, chicory, yarrow, so many other weeds and wildflowers I don’t know the names for, him saying Big, and Mine, and Joshua — words, words, words. Then [...]
Perfect Moments: The Boy, The Boy’s Father, The Sandwich
When The Boy grew up, he would tell people — with slight hesitation, thinking first of pizza — that his favorite food of all was sandwiches. But there was a time when this was not true. There was a time when all that The Boy knew of sandwiches was what his mother made for him, [...]
Perfect Moments: Stone Harbor; Late ’70s; Night
A series of professional and personal disappointments. A young man on the brink of his 30s. No idea where his life is bound — forward, over the precipice? or backward, over that one? — or what he’ll find once he gets there. A motorcycle. The details of the disappointments aren’t important. (Once you reach a [...]
