Charles Bridge, Prague Black Prague Black, black, black. How can I see when it is all black? Where am I? My eyes are open but I cannot see. My fingers reach beside me. It is gritty, ropy, some kind of texture. The smell of must pervades the air. I was sleeping but there is no …
Coming home from school was a bit of an adventure. Kenwood School was on Dorchester Avenue on the South Side of Chicago. The best part of walking home was going by St Paul’s Episcopal Church where I was in the girls’ choir. Mr. Rayfield was the choir director and also a piano teacher. He was …
Dining Room 1940s The Dining Room The dining room was the hub of activity for our house. Big dinners were everyday occurrences. By this time Ted and Jean Bloch had arrived to stay two weeks–that was a month ago. Jean and my mother worked things out well in the kitchen. I loved being in the …
THE RED SWEATER TWIST Why do I feel these fingers pulling at me? Why are needles pushing at my strands? Who is doing this to me and why? I was just lying curled around myself like a slinking snake in a basket filled with slinking strand creatures like myself in blue, green, purple, black, brown, …
ENTRANCES AND EXITS I fly through today to tomorrow. Do entrances /exits Take on special meaning? Way in / way out L’entrée / la sortie Departure / Arrival Depart / Arrivée The first time You enter a building, A room, A relationship Or a country You pause. That moment of entrance burns your senses. Eyes …
“Here, take this.” “No, you take that.” “Are you going to give up?” “Are you going to take up?” “Take up what? “Take up the cause?” “What Cause?” “What matters?” “What matters to you or what matters to me?” “Why do you ask?” “Well, it is not clear. Is this for you or is …
In the lobby of the Prime Deluxe Balaji Hotel in New Delhi, the wind swept in and delivered one wiry, handsome, remarkable man known as Ravindra A broad smile spread over his face like the sun breaking out of a rain cloud. As we had talked by phone the night before, I was expecting …
Oh, it has fallen right in that pile of wet leaves. It’s fragments of some old paper. Maybe tissue paper. Whose is it? Wait, it is a letter from Christmas past. No, that is not possible. Pasts don’t write letters. But letters write pasts. Some of the words are obliterated. . . . It looks …
Sometimes you feel you have lost something really important in your life but in the end it provided the motivation to change. I remember a time in my life when I had moved to Honolulu to be with a new partner. “The man” and I had met the previous year and he had made several …
“You ain’t been blue” is how it starts. I recall as a teenager playing that record (a disk with grooves that when encountered with a special needle produced sound) over and over again. I would dance and dance around the room singing with the music, getting dizzy and singing louder each time it played. But …