about hitting rock bottom.
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just killing the pain.
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I’m squatting with my right knee angled to prop the fridge door open, a human doorstop. One hand holds an opened carton of milk, the cap now clamped under the pinky finger, which reduces my control over the half-gallon container as I raise it. The other hand has a harder task. The fingers wrap around the plastic body of my daughter’s bottle and two of them also pinch the rubber nipple, while the heel and the wrist have to maintain the right degree of pressure on the toddler’s shoulder to keep her from tumbling off my left thigh, which I’m holding flat like a bench for her. Of course, I can’t press too hard, or she’ll fall back off the other side. The fridge door kind of bounces off my knee. I tip the carton and pour the milk when everything is poised just so, like a galaxy that seems immobile while it spins in clean, self-perpetuating arcs. [Read more…]
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KID: Why is Uncle Mike’s house so dusty?
WIFE: He’s getting older, sweetheart. We should see about getting him a housekeeper.
ME: Did you know the biggest component of dust is dead skin cells? We were pretty much breathing Uncle Mike’s old dermis the whole time.
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by Tadhg Muller
I remember when I was a virgin, recall the impending prospect of bliss. I have been thinking of my first encounter with a whore. Why do I recall this now? It’s the news footage of people being shot in the ancient streets of some of the world’s oldest cities—Cairo, Damascus, Tripoli—in this new awakening in this impending spring. Faith and power, innocence and corruption are wound in death throes, and only history will show what side of man will prevail. It is this shadowy conflict that calls to mind the end of my own innocence on those same ancient streets.
***
It happened in a train station in Alexandria. I had found myself lost, unsure of the platform I was departing from and desperate for help. It was mid-morning, the air was fragrant with the sweet smell of black tea and mint, mingling with the smell of citrus coming from the numerous fruit vendors. Lining the platform, the vendors’ tables were piled high with fruit, herbs, and also fabrics. And hurrying everywhere, marching with purpose, were smartly dressed men and women, crisp, clean. I felt like a dull stain against the colourful backdrop, dressed as I was in tired Australian denim that I had worn all the way across the northern tip of Africa from Marrakech, through Algeria, Libya, and into Egypt, en route to Afghanistan. [Read more…]
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KID: When are we going to be at Grandma’s? I want to get out.
WIFE: It’ll just be a couple more minutes.
ME: If we survive. There are more than 30,000 traffic fatalities a year in this country.
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