Whenever I try to say what matters, what matters pulls back, slips out of view. But it is there. I felt it in the Jewish Cemetery in Prague, between the wet leaf and the broken stone. There, in the still breathing of the painted mime in Barcelona. In the jaw of Table Mountain overlooking Cape Town. In the shadowy trees lacing the face of Paris. There, in our open mouths when we make love. And in John’s last smile as... Read more

My father’s developing cataracts at 87. The doctor gave him drops. Now he swears he doesn’t need glasses. It’s a second sight that people his age get. It doesn’t last too long. I want to ask, “What will you look at with your one fresh eye?” If only seeing this way would let him know me. At night, I dream of something clear and potent to burn the film I carry. Today, a scuffle between a homeless man and a... Read more

I started writing because life took my breath away. It was how when stunned by beauty I tried to stay stunned. How when touched I tried to keep the touch alive. The miracle of sun on water, for instance, when dwelled upon, begins to say, you see, this is what love can do to pain. The old woman sifting tea through a large wood-framed screen, who learned this from her mother; she sifting tea in the light morning wind without... Read more

As fans flit about and land, it’s the empty field that awes me. Going through the tunnel, the history of every game ever played hovers like the memory of lightning in a canyon, a force no one can make appear or keep from fading. And the great ones know that they only borrow a much-needed grace, if they’re lucky. All the work, all the running and swinging, all the seasons of dirt and leather, so that one inning in May... Read more

They may never have heard the other’s name. Ten years apart, the older combing her pigtails out, the younger just learning how to braid them. Maybe the younger saw the older laughing in the hay. But both, as innocents, steamed their way to America where there were more people than cows and more streets than fields; where everyone spoke in strange, quick clips. Both dreaming in their brick tenements of the goat’s milk they were given just before dawn. Both... Read more

It’s taken almost sixty years but I’ve stopped figuring out what people want. Now I’m working on not being afraid of not giving people what they want. I’m trying to absorb light which from a person feels like truth. Trying to let light pass through which when it happens feels like love. Then I stumble on Heidegger’s notion of dwelling with care in the being that underlies everything. Feel myself saying yes. Only to discover he supported Hitler and enforced... Read more

I love how I feel after swimming. I feel for the moment that I’m no longer catching up, that inner time and outer time are moving at the same speed and my breath is what connects them. The way I describe this sensation is to say I feel thorough. The word thorough means complete in all respects. When I feel thorough, it is an indication that my life is in sync, however briefly, with life itself. Not surprisingly, I think... Read more