Posts Tagged ‘mortality’
How a Body Responds
August 5, 2019
When the chicken slaughter began, I wasn’t thinking about mortality or food ethics or my fraught relationship with meat; I was concentrating on not fainting. It happens occasionally—a minor embarrassment in doctor’s offices, hospitals, and, once, a high school English class while I read about the Chinese practice of foot binding. The summer of the…
Read MoreHe Shall Be a Light
December 20, 2018
I could see the glowing nativity from my bedroom window, the whole set in molded plastic: Mary, Joseph, three wise men, two sleeping sheep, a donkey with a saddle, Baby Jesus in the manger. My dad arranged them reverently in the front yard and lit them with a long orange extension cord plugged into a…
Read MoreWhich Body?
November 5, 2018
There are three large cysts growing in my ovaries. The doctor says “oh my,” before asking if I’d like to take a look. I would not like to take a look. This feels like a parody of pregnancy, something my body would not let me do, because errant uterine cells began spreading across my inner…
Read MoreThe Lost Goodbye
October 3, 2018
You’ve been gone for only hours In a casket made of wood When no one else could save you I thought maybe I still could —“Goodbye” by Sister Sinjin The song catches me off-guard. It is nudged between other songs on an album of ethereal harmonies. Sister Sinjin sounds either like a trio of cloistered…
Read MoreThe Modern Predicament
August 22, 2018
You might stumble into a lengthy life through no particular fault of your own. You might, as well, find yourself in a situation of relative comfort and ease without ever exactly earning it. And who could blame you for it? Such things happen to people now and again. But what if it isn’t that important…
Read MoreWe Want Something Just Like This
January 30, 2018
“Something Just Like This” was one of the biggest hits of 2017. It reached number three on Billboard’s top 100. It was nominated for a Grammy in the Best Pop Duo/Group Performance category. The single has sold millions all over the world. “Something Just Like This” is a collaboration between Coldplay and the more recent…
Read MoreCinematic Longings for Sophia in mother! and Blade Runner 2049
October 12, 2017
Two of our most compelling film directors working in the Hollywood studio system—Darren Aronofsky and Denis Villeneuve—recently released startling movies, and the movies have obvious differences. Aronofsky’s mother! is an original psychological horror film allegorizing in unorthodox ways the Biblical mythology. Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 is a science fiction sequel to Ridley Scott’s 1982 classic,…
Read MoreAn All Too Ghostly Ghost Story: Part 2
August 29, 2017
Continued from yesterday. Four years ago, my wife and I moved into our red brick cottage. The living room and bedroom walls were a bright pink; the kitchen floor was green linoleum; a small yellow ball with a star rolled around, but we had no pet to play with it. It was as if we…
Read MoreMy Own Desert (Tortoise) Father
June 29, 2017
This post originally appeared on “Good Letters” on July 21, 2014. I didn’t spend enough time with Oscar this summer. For forty years I’ve believed time will never run out. Visiting California, I took my annual walk through my childhood backyard of bougainvillea, crepe myrtle, and fruit. I picked some strawberries, paid homage to my…
Read MoreAlleluia for the Easter Season
May 24, 2017
I used to find Easter a letdown. Lent is so full of the self-improvement activities of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. I typically add a midday prayer to my usual Morning and Evening Prayer. I decide what organizations I want to give alms to: a different one each week of Lent. And fasting: not from food…
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