When I was a kid, my parents shipped me off to camp for the entire summer, right after school ended. This isn’t really true; I was probably only at summer camp for a couple weeks, but it was every summer, until I was old enough to get a summer job. First it was day-camp, then it was Girl Scout camp, then it was church camp — which isn’t as bad as it sounds. I grew up Lutheran; church was pretty chill, and so was church camp.
This had been a complete waste of time. Pete knew that even before the old man died. He’d known it just as soon as he arrived. There was nothing for him here.
I have two cats named Friday and Marvin. Marvin is a black and white short haired cat with a mellow and friendly disposition. He’s 13 years old. In my previous apartment (SEE: In the Shadow of the Hills), I left my balcony door open all the time, day and night. I lived on the second floor …
Matthias jumped out of the van, his sneakers crunching on loose gravel. He couldn’t believe he was here. He’d never done anything so grandiose as making a vow never to return, but he’d sure as hell never wanted to come back. The place even smelled the same: the deep green loamy funk of the encircling forests, mingled with the sweetness of the milkweed growing wild at the edge of the motel parking lot.
Karen stood with her back to him, hands on her hips, looking around. Her brother Wes stood right beside her, his hands poked into the front pockets of his jeans.
“What do you say, Karen?” Matthias asked her. “Is it everything you dreamed?”
It didn’t occur to me until after I had written this blog post that it would make its debut on April first. I promise you, this is not an April Fool’s Day joke. Everything I’m about to tell you, really happened. It’s all true. My neighborhood is kind of crappy. I live in a supposedly …
My unlaced sneakers went slip-slopping down the pavement as I carried the the recycling to the end of the driveway. It had been raining buckets for days, and now the air was cold and fresh, the hanging haze all washed away. The hills stood out sharp and green underneath a pale gray sky.
I’ve tried, really really tried, but I cannot pin down one single moment in my childhood memories when a switch flipped and I went from being scared of everything, to liking the scary stuff.
Someone says his name. They’ve said it several times already. Heron becomes aware of this slowly, like he’s walking out of a fog bank. The world brightens into focus, the conversation with his father dissipates into mist.
In January of 2020, I decided to start a No-Buy Year. I would only buy the things that I really needed, and I’d use the things I already owned. Then 2020 happened. I was fortunate enough to keep my job, although it was a near thing. In late March, the company I work for cut …
I used to live in an apartment building in a small, hip neighborhood in the foothills of Mount Lee: north of Hollywood and west of Los Feliz. From the bottom of the street two blocks west of my old street, you can see the Hollywood Sign. More than once, I saw a tourist standing in …
