Wrestling Old Ghosts

That’s how you belong—not by finally arriving, but by having longing for arrival quickened, by being willing to long after life by living. - t seems to me that as you get older, you might bear down upon your life and give it the quiet consideration it deserves. Do so, and you could catch...

They used to call them ‘records’. I still call them records. People concerned with my cultural literacy gently recommend that I should use the word ‘cd’. It isn’t a word. I can tell that it isn’t a word, and so can you. It’s like ‘esso’, or ‘sunoco’: They told you it was a word...

One of the things that seemed to concern my mother during her parenting years was the danger of rearing children who turned out 'bold'. That was the darkening term, as I recall. 'Don't be bold': she didn't say it more than a few times, but the caveat was thoroughly practiced, and I recall it...

It could be that some of you have been waiting for this small piece of news a long time, perhaps longer than a long time, or perhaps it has seemed that way. The waiting list for a new school grew to many hundreds while I wandered the hemispheres on the Mankiller Tour, (which began...

Still, mostly. That's where I sit tonight. Perhaps you are still, too. It's already begun. There'll be torrents, and the building up of memory, and the betrayal of endings. But not from here. It's still, mostly, where I am. I made some pretty stout vows about this day, some rash and utterly faithful declarations. I questioned the merit of...

I have – it is no secret, and there is no suspense – made something of a living by being troubled aloud about ordinary things. This has been my fortune. It could be that many of you reading this have had a hand in it; you have my thanks. There has from time to time...

I was at a film festival a few years ago, having just screened Griefwalker, and I was sitting beside Ian Tamblyn, one of Canada's finest troubadours. We knew each other not at all, but it can happen that something like an Old Sorrow binds people for a time, to the moment of their meeting...