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Showing posts from December, 2009

Bad Things Good People

When something bad happens we play it back in our minds, looking for a place to step in and change things. We should go outside right now, you might have said. Or: Let's not drive anywhere today. The sea rises, the mountain collapses. A car swerves toward the crowd you've just led your family into. We all look for reasons. Luck isn't the word you want to hear. What happened had to, or it didn't. Maybe the exceptional man can change direction in midair, thread the needle's eye, and come out whole. But even the hero who stands up to chance has to feel how far the world will bend until it breaks him. He can see that day: the unappeasable ocean, the cascades of stone. A crowd gathers around his body. He sees that too. someone is saying: His luck just ran out. It happens to us all. -"The Hero's Luck" by Lawrence Raab, from The History of Forgetting

Where's Your Sacred Place

After the teacher asked if anyone had a sacred place and the students fidgeted and shrunk in their chairs, the most serious of them all said it was his car, being in it alone, his tape deck playing things he'd chosen, and others knew the truth had been spoken and began speaking about their rooms, their hiding places, but the car kept coming up, the car in motion, music filling it, and sometimes one other person who understood the bright altar of the dashboard and how far away a car could take him from the need to speak, or to answer, the key in having a key and putting it in, and going. -THE SACRED by Stephen Dunn