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.
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.
The Usher and My Father - 2022
On Lincoln Street I sat... book open, heart open, summer sun leaning through the window, time thick as molasses in a jar.
The Headless Horseman Rode Through My Homework
I met him once in fifth grade - right there between spelling words and a math test I hadn’t studied for.
The Mystery on the Driveway
The motorcycles rounded a bend in the road and before the boys lay a wide stretch of open highway, descending in a gradual slope. To their right lay Barmet Bay, sparkling in the afternoon sun. At the bottom of the slope was a grassy expanse that opened out on the beach, the road at this point being only a few feet above the sea level. The little meadow was a favorite parking place for motorists, as their cars could regain the road easily. - Hardy Boys, The Shore Road Mystery
The Firelight and the Unseen
On reading The Invisible Man The fire breathed low in the evening room, Its heart aglow through the tender gloom; The coals like thoughts that rise, consume, Then fade in molten dreaming. Outside, the wind began to moan, Yet here I sat - content, alone - With Wells’s words, soft-uttered tone, Through pages dimly gleaming.
Something Wicked to Lincoln Street Comes
Both touched toward fourteen; it almost trembled in their hands. And that was the October week when they grew up overnight, and were never so young any more. - Something Wicked This Way Comes, Ray Bradbury The book was a door that winter.
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s "Mr. Higginbotham’s Catastrophe" - An Essay
A rumor can outrun a man’s own footsteps, yet it’s the living breath of truth that finally catches up. I read Nathaniel Hawthorne ’s “ Mr. Higginbotham’s Catastrophe ” this morning. And though it isn’t one of the stories folks usually brag about reading, it’s got a certain hometown flavor to it, the kind of tale you might hear from an older neighbor leaning against his truck in the driveway, telling you a story he swears is true even though the details keep sliding around on him.
West Egg on Lincoln Street
I was fourteen, cross-legged on the bed, a paperback widening the space between my hands as evening slid across the walls, that uncertain hour when ordinary things begin to glow at the edges.
