Out There

Out There

I was putting myself out there. On my return to San Francisco from a bleak Thanksgiving with my surviving relatives in Illinois, I downloaded Tinder, Bumble, and a few other apps I’d seen Instagram ads for. I resolved to pass judgment on several hundred men per day,...
A Girl Is A Half-Formed Thing

A Girl Is A Half-Formed Thing

The house is dry and creaky. I am sopping on the floor. I hear him. No. Aunt or uncle rolling over in the bed. I’m not at peace here anymore. Now today. Glad. They’ll be gone. Still. I hear something. I know that step. Forty-one just like new. He is coming early down...
JR

JR

—Structuring the material in terms of the ongoing ahm, situation yes, on Mozart’s, ah, Ring, is it? —I noticed something here . . . Mister Ford spoke for the first time with the commanding indifference of an old-school drawl, running his finger down a catalogued...
A Girl Is A Half-Formed Thing

A Girl Is A Half-Formed Thing

The beginning of teens us. Thirteen me fifteen sixteen you. Wave and wave of it hormone over. Like hot flush cold splash down my neck. Spilt with new thoughts, troublesome that is and things that always must be said. Spill it out. Spill it down. Where’s that father?...
There Are Rivers In The Sky

There Are Rivers In The Sky

‘Grandma, those winged giants that you said Leila saw in her youth, what happened to them?’ ‘The lamassus? They’re gone.’ ‘Where?’ ‘Who knows – Europe, America … Now they’re kept in big houses called museums. They’re not in their native soil any more, although...
The Brothers Karamazov

The Brothers Karamazov

Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love,...