The Moment After the Blow
Preface In 1885, the Russian painter Ilya Repin created one of the most unsettling images in art history: Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan on November 16, 1581.
The Mocking of Christ
" The Mocking of Christ " by Carl Bloch, ca. 1880 (Christ's) penetrating look breaks the fourth wall, turning us from observers into participants, forcing a confrontation with the suffering we witness. - Author Unknown I stop because something in the room has already noticed me. Not the guards. Not the crown. Him.
Mary Shelley’s Corridor
Thirteen, on Lincoln Street, I read by forbidden light - a plastic flashlight breathing weakly beneath the blankets, its beam a narrow tunnel through cotton and heat into someone else’s dark.
Sting-Rays and Summer Nights - 1974
Elmira, 1974 We shouldn’t have been that far from home. That’s what I understand now. But that summer the air was thick and bright, and Mom said, “Just around town,” which in Lincoln Street language meant anywhere the road kept going.
3:13 a.m.
At 3:13 a.m. the night sharpens. Even the dark feels awake. The house holds its breath.
On Almost Beginning
One sits and reads, and the hours pass, and this passing seems not loss but a kind of staying. - adapted from Virginia Woolf’s notebooks The library was not a building but a condition sustained by attention.
Give All
in conversation with “ Give All to Love ” by Ralph Waldo Emerson Give all - not because it will return, not because it promises shelter, but because love, once named, will not accept remainder.
And...
And is the word I use when the truth won’t fit cleanly. Family and friends. I needed both. I still do.
CIVIS ROMANUS
CIVIS ROMANUS The Concept, History, and Political Meaning of Roman Citizenship An Essay by GBS jr 2026 Abstract This essay examines the concept and historical development of civis Romanus, Roman
Prayer for 2026
Let us pray first for steadiness - not triumph, not ease, but the ability to stay when the ground feels thin.
The Grammar of Staying
Midwinter, 1980–81 The cold had a grammar then. It conjugated the body into ache and wait, into not-yet. Doorways learned my outline. Cardboard kept the minutes from breaking apart.
Proof That the Meek Endure
There is nothing mightier than the meek. - The Twilight Zone, The Night of the Meek An Hour Where Goodness Won I learned wonder in a small bedroom on Lincoln Street, where the light from the television was brighter than the streetlamp outside and the world made sense for half an hour at a time.
The Whistler on Harris Hill
Spoken by One Who Didn’t Listen People around Elmira tell the story different ways, but it always starts on the north side, where the Chemung drags slow through town and the hills decide who they’re going to notice.
The Ferryman Waits
Not all who wait at the threshold mean to enter. Some wait for you to step out. Fog thickens...congeals - the way dread settles when it chooses a host. Only then do I notice the lake breathing again, its exhalation brushing my skin like a hand returning from earth with something to confess.
October in Stockbridge
A New England reflection We came where Berkshire whispers dwell, To walk the streets where silence fell On painted doors and windowpanes, Where autumn’s breath through white walls strains.
A Fireside Carol
The wind outside begins to wail, a snowstorm rattles roof and rail. But here within, all calm and clear, I sit beside the fire’s cheer.
