the end

Crowded afternoon at the store, lots of activity and customers.  A guy gets my attention, excited to be buying the massive brass singing bowl we got from Tibet. I am excited for him as well, since it’s several thousand dollars. Not a bad way to end the day. I get cornered behind the counter by a difficult customer, raising hell over… Continue reading the end

afternoon nap

Mind wandering around as I waited for sleep to come, dozy logic moving from Macon Leary to Edward Gorey to Ernest Hemmingway . . . then, the image of a local highway, the flashing lights of police cars against the pale winter sky.

payroll

...I find that I have overslept and am in a rush to get a stack of deposits to the University’s bank by noon, otherwise all of the faculty and staff paychecks will bounce. The deposit is a stack of checks and slips totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars. There are pink and yellow carbon copies, very slippery to keep in… Continue reading payroll

just another white trash weekend

...for some unknown reason, our family has been relocated to what can only be charitably described as “the bad part of of town.” The neighborhood is a congregation of cheap, prefab homes and trailers jumbled together with only the thinnest of spaces between them. The houses stand (barely) on two hillsides with the street running between them. Each house is a… Continue reading just another white trash weekend

thugs and church

[This is directly transcribed, without changes or edits, from a journal entry dated May 4th, 2003] ...and as I’m walking through the parking lot towards my car, I see two guys approaching — I make eye contact, just to established that they know that I know they’re there . . . One of them nods and says “How’s it going?” And… Continue reading thugs and church

home invasion

[This is directly transcribed, without changes or edits, from a journal entry dated January 6th, 1997] I stand in the front window and watch as the car makes its second pass, making myself as visible as possible to the men inside . . . letting them know that there are people home and they’ll have to find someone else to rob. On… Continue reading home invasion