Showing results for "ulf wolf"

This never happens to plumbers.The plumber's world makes sense. It's all about water and gravity and slanting pipes. You channel the water in, you channel it back out. You slant the pipes earthward a little. Not much, just enough for the water to head in the right direction. Gravity does most of the work.Mine is not a plumber's world and my world makes no sense. Marie is on the floor and my knuckles hurt.The plumber has an easy life. Copper pipes bring water in, cop...

I attempted suicide in 1965. I wasn't very good at it.For one, while I have since learned that the lethal dose of regular 75 mg aspirins lies on the far side of 500 tablets, I attempted my lethal feat with 121 of the little darlings (yes, I kept a tally).For two, I did lose my nerve late that fatal afternoon, and alerted my dad to my Bayeresque overindulgence.This is not to say that this was not an interesting exercise, it was. I was sincere in my banging on that da...

Before the beginning of time there was no such thing as surprise.By the way, by the "beginning of time," I mean the beginning of this time, the one that we're now busy living and dying and doing things in, the one we're currently complaining about. There may well have been other times, you understand—there quite likely were, in fact—with their own beginnings and endings and complaints, but our time, the one going on right now and the one we are concerned with here, knows nothing of...

When Thomas Boyer, Jr., the richest and most powerful man in all the land, detected that public consumption in all provinces had leveled out and showed no signs of breaking through what appeared a consumption ceiling, he sponsored a study to find out why. In fact, he sponsored many.Surveying messengers were sent far and wide and they, as charged, took the consumption pulse of every province and city in the land.When they returned with their findings they all said, "People n...

There is a visual suggestion. Not much more than an unexpected movement of the air, a fluttering in the corner of his eye.Perhaps not even that—it was more like a barky whisper as he strode past the old tree on his left, a gentle tap on his shoulder that didn't register for a few more steps: words, it said, words carved here in this bark.At that he stopped and turned. He looked back, then up; took the tree in. An oak it was, old and grand and mum, as if denying having said ...

"You don't really exist, do you?""Well," he said, pulling at his long beard with a gnarled little hand, his booted little feet barely reaching the edge of the seat and showing dark leather soles scratched and patterned by years and miles, "that depends on who's looking."He didn't exist, of course. Couldn't.Still, as if to humor the hallucination, I asked, "Can I touch you?"He hesitated, but after a heartbeat or two answered as if he had not, "Of course."...

It is a painting of a Yeats poem, a canvas of a dark night where, in a star-lit glade, he wishes for the cloth of Heaven. And yes, this cloth are many stars.She, watching the painting, can see them spread before her, but she of the picture does not see these stars and she treads on the starry cloth. His cloth. His dreamed cloth. For he dreams this cloth, and she treads on his dreams and she does not tread lightly but tramples these stars with unseeing feet. His stars, his desire. S...

Tell me, what good is it to have God visit you if you can't tell anybody about it? Or, if not God, then somebody looking very much like him, or how I had pictured him. Perhaps, to be safe I should call him god, you know, lower case "g."No, that won't do. There's no escaping it: it was the Almighty all right, our capital "G" Father-of-the-Son God. I don't think there's any doubt about it. Let me rephrase that: There is no doubt about it.Yes, yes, I know it sounds crazy, but ...

I am Kurr. I am young at seven hundred seasons.I am not yet wed, I have caught no manchilds, and the mountain thinks me odd.But as with many things, when I sit to think on this I see that what is seen as odd is often seen through odd-seeing eyes and that is what I tell myself, that I am not so odd perhaps as the mountain thinks I am, and this I sometimes tell my father and sometimes tell his father and sometimes tell his father too who is over four thousand seasons old for ...

Then the old cobra rearranged himself on the stage, settling in for the telling. The three monkeys in white returned and sat down by his side.Beside us Mandar and Manini also sat down, easing into comfortable lotus. A restful silence now settled on the large hall.Then he began."Hanuman's oldest son was blessed with an outstanding memory. This is the story he told, and for which he in turned thanked the blessings of those many memories that had gone before him:

The Bodhisatta Setaketu saw that the time had now come.After a nearly uncountable span in the Tusita Heaven awaiting his destiny, awaiting his return to the little blue planet so far below, how could he know that now was the time?Because, far below, man had begun once again to ask meaningful questions. Because nearly incessant war and slaughter had finally begun again to subside, and the northern part of the large Indian subcontinent now lay spent but peaceful after centuri...

He knows that life is precious. He knows this like he knows that water is wet and that stars are distant—he's not sure how he knows, but he knows as he knows that life is not a given.But is also wonderful. Especially on nights like this. Is also hungry. Is also cold. Is also lonely. But magnificent. Is sometimes short, like his mother's. Is sometimes long, like his father's. Is sometimes always, like his own, tonight.Is sometimes vast and spectacular.Is sometimes wo...