One morning toward the end of her life, my grandmother suffered a crisis of some kind. She woke up and started complaining loudly about chest pains and difficulty breathing, as her frightened caregiver told me on the phone. I left my book and my coffee, dressed quickly, and ran to my grandmother’s apartment two dozen numbers down the street. It was difficult to communicate with her to get a clear…
Exactly one year ago, as I was on my way home with groceries, I was accosted by a television reporter. It was the day after the municipal elections; he shoved a microphone at my face and asked me how I was feeling about the results. I answered with relative confidence, but then he followed up with a more specific question, at which I stammered, and, after a prolonged pause, I apologized and…
This morning they came and cut down the tall poplar tree outside my window. It didn’t exactly come as an unexpected blow; I had been preparing for it for the better part of a week, ever since I noticed the safety tape stretched around the tree and an ominous-looking sign nailed to the trunk. I then promptly wrote an alarming message to my councilman, who wrote back with nothing useful; on my own,…
Spring arrived abruptly this year, bringing with it a number of associated phenomena that have already been described in sufficient detail in other sources and need not be enumerated here. I am nothing if not appreciative. Everything I could hope for is there, bathed in the warm yellow sunlight. The mandarin ducks have come out of their hiding, the purple and yellow crocuses have sprouted on…
Her twin, born dead, pressed against her in the womb, leaving one side of her body paralyzed. Her parents took her out of prescribed physical therapy that might have helped, fearing it would be too painful for the child. A vocational counselor after elementary school advised her to become a seamstress, a career for which she was manifestly ill-suited because of her impaired arm, effectively…
The doctor wasn’t in. The patients were arriving at a slow but steady rate. They were congregating in several regions of the corridor opening into a larger waiting area with a cloakroom: some leaned against the walls, others slumped on the uncomfortable seats. From time to time a nurse would emerge from the doctor’s office, read out a name, and then herd its owner inside, where they were subjected…
It seems that as of late even the night can no longer be relied upon, and all its once alluring promises would best be forgotten. It was not so long ago that I would eagerly anticipate each nightfall, seeing it as a welcome return to stability and security after all the disturbances brought on by daylight; I used to think of the night as my familiar ground, my refuge, a space where I could move…
“Excuse me, are you the one managing all this forest?”, a stranger asked me once as I was walking through a forest; which would have been an astonishing question, if only it were in any way more astonishing than what people say to me as a matter of course. Yesterday I was accompanying a friend who had to drop off some books at the offices of a certain Catholic magazine. “Have you ever been here…
I told her that we would have to postpone our arrangements because at the present time I needed to withdraw into the private sphere . She raised an eyebrow (she may not have actually raised an eyebrow; I don’t think she did) and asked: isn’t withdrawing into the private sphere all that you do anyway? With a vague smile, I lowered my eyes (or at least I believe I did). I can see your point, I said.…
Any such return must be accompanied by a certain heaviness, a certain heavy uneasiness, like a sense of guilt so indeterminate that it can only suggest itself as a slight pressure in the throat, leaving no possibility of atonement. All one’s movements slow down and become strangely reluctant, almost regretful, at the first sight of the place not visited for so long; these are the movements of…
Oh, to be torn to pieces by a pack of rabid dogs! One could scarcely name a more fitting and elegant solution to so many challenges of late. And if the dogs in question could be guaranteed to be exceptionally filthy, reeking of sewer or of gutter, assuming either convenience could be arranged, and preferably also scabby, perhaps even furnished with some pus-filled open untreated wounds, if only…
It is a satisfaction beyond words to have finally found, after all the years of searching, years of failing, years of doubting, the little room with the little man inside. Under these circumstances, the temptation arises to claim that the hope of finding the room has never altogether gone away, and thus to frame the present success as the victory of the indomitable human spirit. This, however,…
I regret to inform any interested parties that on this occasion I have nothing to report. Any observations I may have made in the preceding weeks should be disregarded as invalid, as they were conducted essentially in bad faith and with what can only be described as a deplorable lack of care and conviction. These were the observations of someone behaving as if under duress, someone behaving like…