The Acorns
At the base of a tree — a fruitless mulberry tree, that may or may not still exist, that harbored young juvenile refugees on imagined harrowing ocean voyages, and imagined […]
Author Archives: cartochronographer
Fiction
The most extreme, cheerful, and fantastic view of art to which I ever subscribe is one in which the art object requires no viewer or listener — no audience whatever […]
Velveteen Spleen — Chapter One
First we must make a container. For this world. For this universe. So I open my eyes. I decide to apply most of the standard rules of physics and biology–leaving […]
Respite
My garden. All weekend at the end of a week of exams, papers, labs, extracurriculars. Parent teacher conferences. My garden, in a community garden, a plot of earth, mine for […]
Three — Part Un
The names have been changed. There are no names. There are no innocents. It was ten o’clock in the morning on a misty day in early October. There was a […]
Disintegration
A year ago, a then new friend told me, as we began to know each other, that more than anything, I seemed very far from home. It was true. I […]
My Sister, Linda — An Introduction
I both do and do not want to write this post. Characters will meander through this space, and I feel you should be acquainted with some of them. Some will […]
I am not a writer (2008)
I am not a writer. I woke up to a full ashtray on the nightstand and the dogs pouncing on me to go out. Writing takes discipline. There are dishes […]
Three lights into the cave
In Northern California, in the gold country, in a small and charming town called Nevada City, you and I stopped into a bookstore. Many years ago. You would leave from […]
Eva
Gray light streamed from the oversized loft windows, very thin light, everything gray scale in the early, early, far before dawn morning. You took convincing to join me in this […]
Cat gut
The body is a thing. It is a material thing. It is small, it is finite, most of its parts are soft, and the hard parts (teeth, bone, heart) offer […]
Rules
Let us pretend there are rules, they’re our rules, their, our, rules, and let us then pretend that we intend to follow them. Let us also pretend that sometimes we […]
Textures, tendons, transplants, tenderness
The approach to La Guardia over Manhattan on a late night in November included a blood red moon. Blood red. Hovering over the skyline of the city. Seen from above. […]
Twenty four plus fifteen minus eternity plus infinity
This is the number of years that will have passed until the last time I pulled my sister’s hair and told her she was stupid and slammed the door in […]
Of trees and houses, and houses in trees
In a window of time spanning many decades, that may or may not now be closed, there was a tree, in what was my backyard, in what was my childhood. […]
Run
The loop in Central Park is almost exactly six miles. The rain came like a monsoon, and I ran in the dusk until my glasses were too wet to see, […]
Sacred places, timeworn traces
We put two reefs in the mainsail in calm winds, and it looked like a mistake. The forecast was for 25-30 knots of wind in the harbor–not too much to […]
First Steps
The tide turns slowly. From far above, when I take time to watch, I can see rivers in rivers, currents moving independently, tracing invisible formations underwater that cause otherwise inexplicable […]
only one thing matters 