Green-Eyed Monster
Writers are seldom happy with other writer’s success. There, I said it. It’s not that you want to be the only one to do well but you want to be spectacularly successful and for the rest to be merely okay. When people, as they invariably do, refer me to other writers as potential pals I wonder why they think we will have anything in common. I imagine it’s a bit like recommending people with broken legs to other people with broken legs. Yes, we understand the other person’s pain, but the chances are they will not be helpful, and we will just compete about who has suffered more.
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Leaving the World
My first exposure to Buddhism was during a weekend in a monastery in upstate New York, a gorgeous place with gleaming wood and a literary pedigree, albeit one that had been tarnished by some shady behavior (no, it’s not just the Catholics). The weekend was offered as a sober retreat, and I was willing to go mainly because I had a major crush on an angry Jewish guy who had signed up. We had been flirting, and the four-hour drive sealed the deal enough that, upon arrival, we snuck into what later proved to be a private sanctuary for the students and monks and made love in the hot tub.
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On This Birthday I Promise It Will Never Be Like This
My mother stands in my room – not my room, but the room I use when I visit my parents – and she tells me I am missing school, missing the bus, late for high school. She is eighty-six, I am fifty-three and no one is supposed to be at school. She will not drive me; I must hitchhike as I did when I was in high school if I overslept. Her tone is urgent and slightly frightened. I say, “No Mom, go back to bed, go back to bed. You’re dreaming.” She disappears and I lie there in that room that isn’t my room, in the bed that is single and narrow, and I try to fall asleep again, but it is hard. I am afraid she’ll come back and scare me like she used to when I was little and the night had lasted forever with my father shouting, the sound of glass breaking, my mother’s pleading about something, more yelling, possibly a car starting – who will die tonight?
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