NOSTOS ALGOS
WHAT TAKES YOU BACK
When we arrived at the apartment, he pulled out all of his harmonicas from a suitcase in the living room. We set up in the bedroom. There was hardly any light to see by, just a few tea lights in improvised candle holders. We crouched on a spread-out blanket, and I played the harmonicas, each in a different key. In and out. It was amazing, as he taught me, what the difference in breath, in mouth shape, can do. 
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'Room After Room' by Jonathan Safran Foer
She can see her breath in the room of her future. If it were any warmer, the Polaroids that paper the walls would develop...
Blame it on the sweet smell
and
the unusual cold air that escaped to embraced me
as he opened the door-
I was 10.
It was my first time in a fancy car;
a castle in four wheels!
I took off my worn-out sandals and jumped in.
After the ride,
I walked home wandering where my sandals went.
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The rear of the house was blown off by mortar fire. I scrambled to put out the fire so that the smoke would not cause the neighbor´s children who were hiding in my ceiling to cough revealing them to the militias roaming the streets. The morning light shone through the hole in the roof and the gutter curled upward spilling abundantly blooming fragrant vanilla orchids into the house. The scent of smoke, blood, and death forever mixed with the perfume of cloying tropical flowers.
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'Keepers of the House' by Lisa St Aubin de Teran
Lydia Sinclair was just seventeen when she arrived on her husband's estate in the Andes. Her first day went by in a haze of mosquito bites and heat and a swarm of new faces...
The morning of gunfire as I listened from my guesthouse and waited for the curfew to end.
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What did I need of crazy golf, buckets, spades and ice cream? Nothing. All I needed was a lifeboat house and a disaster: to hear the flare streak through the air and boom to summon the crew from the town, to race them (if I could) to the boathouse, to watch the tractor pull and launch the orange and blue into the waves. Could anything be more exciting? No. And I did not want the homecoming, no, only the launch of the dream of peril and triumph, with me, the brave, the hero, at the helm.
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In 1965 I was probably 15 and my brother would have been 13, and our parents let us hitch hike from Kampala down to Nairobi and then on to Mombasa. When we arrived, on the backs of lorries, my brother wasn´t feeling too good. I bought a big basket of oranges for a couple of shillings and fed them to him on the beach all night. We headed back the next day.
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'Portrait of my Father' by Jonathan Lethem
The picture floats. Someone took it in the Seventies, but the white backdrop gives no clue. My dad owned that wide-lapel trench coat for ?fteen or twenty years, typical thrifty child of the Depression...
She was there, fifteen year old, in front of his house and I did pass two whole years driving my bicycle, completely in love, without been able to say a word to her. But that love helped me to study, to go through my horrible home, to dream.
Several years later, finally, one day I met her, Maddy. It had been much better just to see her being so beautiful and imagine her being an angel.
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'Arithmetic Town' by Todd McEwen
In September Favourite Teacher handed out workbooks, and said to us, when you're done with these exercises you can go out on the field and have free play...
About sixteen miles north of central London, just before the town of Hatfield, Hertfordshire, there is a small wooded valley
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'Keepers of the House' by Lisa St Aubin de Teran
Lydia Sinclair was just seventeen when she arrived on her husband's estate in the Andes. Her first day went by in a haze of mosquito bites and heat and a swarm of new faces...
'Buddy Carmody' by Jayne Anne Phillips
Shelter County, West Virginia. Late July 1963. No one was safe walking to church in the dark, but Buddy knew better than to beg not to go...
Sunday afternoons at nan´s in Enfield: the still, damp greenhouse; dad´s uncle John´s black Nissan Sunny in the garage, polished and immaculate, alongside the well-cared-for, obsolete tools of his trade as an engineer; his casual racism, watching football with the sound off ; roast, crosswords, smoking paraphernalia, weighty ornaments.
Then, uncle John dying in the hospital years later: tired, thin, spiv moustache intact, no words, hard lines. Dad crying.
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'Buddy Carmody' by Jayne Anne Phillips
Shelter County, West Virginia. Late July 1963. No one was safe walking to church in the dark, but Buddy knew better than to beg not to go...
There are certain refrains in songs that always remind me of my grandparents´ house in West Vancouver: the chord changes in Roman Candle´s ´Eden Was A Garden´, like fresh rain changing direction. Sometimes when the sun slants an odd way across the blinds I am reminded, hot, of the faded spot in that lounge where I used to sit, reading.
Certain shades halt me: beige, shell pink or lavender, reminiscent of the gentle 70s decor populating that house. The house that is no longer there.
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'Portrait of my Father' by Jonathan Lethem
The picture floats. Someone took it in the Seventies, but the white backdrop gives no clue. My dad owned that wide-lapel trench coat for ?fteen or twenty years, typical thrifty child of the Depression...
It was a little bit of rain in Pittsburgh. I confuse myself; I always ask, "What rains? The climate? The clouds?" I come back for that "it", a moving humidity that invigorates my lungs while keeping my sight clear. It´s a clear path, not to empty horizon, rather to hills and hills and homes and apartments. It´s a crowded path and a gray sky, neutral enough to force me to make my own path, inviting enough to make me want to march.
[cant put ´ in title?can you? if not plz email mfmarks@yahoo.com]
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'The Chelsea Affect' by Arthur Miller
I decided to move to the Chelsea in 1960 for the privacy I was promised. It seemed a wonderfully out-of-the-way place, nearly a slum, where nobody would be likely to be looking for me...
Hot sun, beating down and baking up from potholed tarmacadam, sweat pressing up through the strap of the heavy schoolbag, the dark-blue-and-light school uniform, tired feet in shoes and socks trudging along the one road through town. My town. And yet: “White girl!” comes the taunt. Giggles. Young boys, primary schoolers, might be in my high school next year if they try hard enough, are bright enough. Not likely, if this is their amusement. I don’t answer. Then again, a deeper tone, “Ey, white girl! What â€appen, yu tink yu nice?” Young man, lounging in a doorway. Would have been handsome, but for the jibe. I walk on in silence. “Go back we’ yu come fram!” I turn around at that. “Already there,” I shoot back. I have the same accent. His eyes widen. The little boys jaws drop. I am almost out of sight before they recover. Curses follow me around the bend.
I left. But still the endless refrain, “You’re from Jamaica? Wouldn’t you rather live there?”
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'Buddy Carmody' by Jayne Anne Phillips
Shelter County, West Virginia. Late July 1963. No one was safe walking to church in the dark, but Buddy knew better than to beg not to go...
I remember the delicious taste of cold hose water after whiffle ball at the park, can never forget the first jump through the lawn sprinkler startling my breath - but it isn’t these memories that bring the deepest joy.
It was the smell of hose water drying on hot cement that made summer real. Water with a magical mix of elements drying on the driveways and sidewalks of suburbia. When I smell it now, I stop and look up at the sun, remembering that some things don’t change. Such simple bliss !!!
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'The Hole' by Romesh Gunesekera
My mother was the one who told me he was dead. I ran into the bathroom and bolted the door. There was a small window in there with two round jail-house bars...
It´s my birthday and I´m remembering everything that came before and anticipating everything ahead. Life is as fresh and changing as it will ever be and I´m lucky to look back on the joyfullness of my past world and feel the winds of change on my cheeks with perfect, delicious, trepidation.
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'Room After Room' by Jonathan Safran Foer
She can see her breath in the room of her future. If it were any warmer, the Polaroids that paper the walls would develop...
It has been almost 8 months & 5 days now that she has passed away/dead/dissappeared from my life, only memories left of her are that she was one gentle/loving & caring/self reflective/trustworthy/honest/warm/mother/wife/daughter/sister of a bunch of people called family, whom i miss almost every moment. from my tongue´s taste to my sense of touch, the feelings called love, care & kindness & all other things i have got from her. but i still want to believe she might be somewhere thinking of me...
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'Buddy Carmody' by Jayne Anne Phillips
Shelter County, West Virginia. Late July 1963. No one was safe walking to church in the dark, but Buddy knew better than to beg not to go...
A relative gave my mother three matching brooches, tiny realistic crabs with gold legs and pearly bodies in green, pink and blue. Irresistible to my sister and me, we later took them out of our mother´s dressing table drawer, in their tissue paper, and secretly played. We kept them, and when she couldn´t find them, we denied taking them, but guilt ruined our fun. Eventually we flushed them down the toilet, taking several goes, panic rising as the golden twinkles reappeared in the bowl.
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'The Hole' by Romesh Gunesekera
My mother was the one who told me he was dead. I ran into the bathroom and bolted the door. There was a small window in there with two round jail-house bars...
It came at the worst moment, a reverie of winning an award I didn´t think I´d ever win, heartening me, just as I was hardening myself for rejection. I took a sip of coffee. It had grown cold, which invariably happened when the interviewer in HR learned I was a felon. The Question, as I´d come to dread it, was usually proffered after ´What are your favorite hobbies?" or "What would you bring to ______?" Then here it came, quaveringly adolescent or hard, gutting the bonhomie right out of the room.
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'Tokyo Year Zero' by David Peace
'Detective Minami! Detective Minami! Detective Minami!' I open my eyes. From dreams that are not my own. I sit up in my chair at my desk. Dreams I do not want...
it´s 1am, 30min from the UES vet to my slope, and i have 3 plastic syringes and a pail of millet powder and 3-digit numbers added to my credit card bill. i take a scarf out, purple and gold and green with the little bird nestled in it, and try to drop him in my palm. but the winter wind is blowing and he´s scared and bites hard, surprisingly hard, whirls out. his flight path spirals around & down & lands with a thud. i scoop him up but he flutters once, twice, stops with a last chirp in my hand
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'Arithmetic Town' by Todd McEwen
In September Favourite Teacher handed out workbooks, and said to us, when you're done with these exercises you can go out on the field and have free play...
Development, as in Third World Development, is a debauched
word, a whore of a word.
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On my first day of school, Nan found a lost puppy on the street and brought him home. I baptized him La-bush (little paws) and played with him all day. By the time I finished year one he was already a full grown mongrel, half collie and half something else. He used to run round me every time I got back home and I remember once he managed to pull me down with his rope. Grandad was worried La-bush would get the taste of chicken and start killing his birds - that’s why he kept him on a short lead.
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'The Hole' by Romesh Gunesekera
My mother was the one who told me he was dead. I ran into the bathroom and bolted the door. There was a small window in there with two round jail-house bars...
All I have to do is hear it, and my mind starts to jump back on its own. Back to my childhood, watching the rain fall on the window and marvelling at the small "rivers" that raindrops created as they slid down. Back to my youth, and the deafening sound of rain inside my red Mustang. Watching the wipers clear the windshield endlessly. Back to yesterday, when I flew into Madrid´s airport, and the air was heavy with cold, wispy raindrops. I raced home trying to beat the weather. And lost.
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'Keepers of the House' by Lisa St Aubin de Teran
Lydia Sinclair was just seventeen when she arrived on her husband's estate in the Andes. Her first day went by in a haze of mosquito bites and heat and a swarm of new faces...
Water is a blessing to this baked earth
Insatiable from birth
Armed for the feast of the Tabasky
Mark how even the Joshua tree observes
This double-bent figure –
Putchist-turned-mendicant
Out of the depth of a threadbare bag
An ever-empty bowl, beseeching.
The seed has been sown
A positive move plunges him into reveries
Of his troubled dawn
Punctuated by showers of Allah’s benediction
The contrary unleashes his forked tongue
Which slices the air, the heart too
He moves on with his army of flies
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'Startled in the Dark' by Ryzsard Kapuscinski
Morning and dusk are by far the best times of day in Africa. The sun is scorching, but these times allow you to live...
When the valley cools in October, there is, on certain nights, a distinct smell--a combination of cold-cut air, dying leaves, city pollution, and who-knows-what-else. My friend and I call it the October smell. It tugs me back over twenty years to an early childhood neighborhood when I was merely a one-year-old. At two, we moved away, but since then when the pre-winter air is right, I remember a neighbor named Tom, who lived next door and had a red truck and a very square, wooden-looking house.
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'Tokyo Year Zero' by David Peace
'Detective Minami! Detective Minami! Detective Minami!' I open my eyes. From dreams that are not my own. I sit up in my chair at my desk. Dreams I do not want...
It is the smell of gentle rain on the ground that does the trick for me. When it permeates the air, it transports me to my childhood when there were still fields around and we could play football, hide-and-seek or just wander around exploring the place. I remember myself making paper boats and setting them to sail down the little streams formed along the gutters and following them till the borders of the neighbourhood where I would let them continue their journey to the beyond.
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'Arithmetic Town' by Todd McEwen
In September Favourite Teacher handed out workbooks, and said to us, when you're done with these exercises you can go out on the field and have free play...
My grandfather, who we called Poppy, died in 1988 but I think about him all the time. For many years I visited with him every Sunday. We´d have lunch. He insisted I eat pieces of chicken and chopped liver sandwhiches during my vegetarian years. I would clean his hearing aid, or chop ice off the outdoor stairs during the winter. I´d take his shopping list and buy him groceries. We´d talk about hockey or politics, or share stories. He´d give me a big wet kiss to say goodbye, until the next week.
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'Buddy Carmody' by Jayne Anne Phillips
Shelter County, West Virginia. Late July 1963. No one was safe walking to church in the dark, but Buddy knew better than to beg not to go...
Whenever I feel an icy sting, air on my face that burns and makes my eyes water, I am standing outside of my gradeschool, looking up and trying to find the courage to go inside.
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'Arithmetic Town' by Todd McEwen
In September Favourite Teacher handed out workbooks, and said to us, when you're done with these exercises you can go out on the field and have free play...
Arriving to an airport at night when I was a boy; seeing the lights of the runway, the almost infinite possibilities of destinations cradled in the departure screens. The connection we have as strangers that are all in transit, that all have a place to go, but for that hour or two between checking in and getting on a plane, are all connected by the definite possibility of departure. I´ve since always savored the time in departure.
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'Keepers of the House' by Lisa St Aubin de Teran
Lydia Sinclair was just seventeen when she arrived on her husband's estate in the Andes. Her first day went by in a haze of mosquito bites and heat and a swarm of new faces...
The smell of long car journeys on hot days and listening to Bon Jovi, Def Leppard and Soft Rock compilations continuously on a real tape-playing walkman. Clapton´s Layla and The Who´s Won´t get fooled again were my favourites. I always got bored of them before the journey was over, and I was never looking forward to wherever we were going.
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'The Hole' by Romesh Gunesekera
My mother was the one who told me he was dead. I ran into the bathroom and bolted the door. There was a small window in there with two round jail-house bars...
The vivid memories that I´d sit and think about all day where I felt so at peace I could cry. And in those memories I´d just see you and my heart would feel as if it´s been stabbed. Right there. In the middle. All it´d take is you.
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Arriving at Tan Son Nhut airport in Saigan in January 1971, I was impressed by the bustle of military personnel at the open-walled terminal, but even more by the sudden immersion in the swampy heat and the alien scent of Vietnam. My first excursion outside the United States, this baptism in a war. I felt an immediate affinity for a new land, unbidden and unexpected, but also was instantly aware that the premise of the voyage would subvert its potential pleasures.
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'Call if You Need Me' by Raymond Carver
We had both been involved with other people that spring, but when June came and school was out we decided to let our house for the summer and move from Palo Alto to the north coast country of California...
It´s amazing that so many people care to read so many other people´s stories, despite the fact that i doubt anyone could sit in on a conversation with someone about the other person; and yet i found myself writting about myslef.
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'The Hole' by Romesh Gunesekera
My mother was the one who told me he was dead. I ran into the bathroom and bolted the door. There was a small window in there with two round jail-house bars...
I was in France, at Sorbonne to be precise, during the battle of the streets, of the 1960s, and I was one of the soixante-huitards, a former Communist, and then a flaming, ready-to-go ´Maoist.´ I recall our somewhat puerile attempt to storm the HQ of the PCF -- George Marchais was the then general secretary, and the rebuff that we received from the cadres of the PCF backed by the working class people of the zone, left us doing a quick-double take on our ideology. E-mail me at kolinn@dataone.in
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'Tokyo Year Zero' by David Peace
'Detective Minami! Detective Minami! Detective Minami!' I open my eyes. From dreams that are not my own. I sit up in my chair at my desk. Dreams I do not want...
'Portrait of my Father' by Jonathan Lethem
The picture floats. Someone took it in the Seventies, but the white backdrop gives no clue. My dad owned that wide-lapel trench coat for ?fteen or twenty years, typical thrifty child of the Depression...
swimming in the english channel as a child, the shocking cold water, salt smell and the sound of my father laughing
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'Portrait of my Father' by Jonathan Lethem
The picture floats. Someone took it in the Seventies, but the white backdrop gives no clue. My dad owned that wide-lapel trench coat for ?fteen or twenty years, typical thrifty child of the Depression...
Scrub as he might. Dad could never erase the scent of pitch-black motor oil sunk deep into the cracks of his knuckles. I was young, and memories were formed from smells and sounds and visions put on repeat. Every weekend, Mom and I drove from our home in California to the refinery outside Tonopah, Nevada. Dad´s big, just-washed hands reaching through the window infused the air with the scent of his profession and the safe, comfortable feeling of familiar love.
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'Kiltykins' by Ved Mehta
When I was seeing Kilty (how, even today, the word 'seeing' mesmerizes me), the fact of my blindness was never mentioned, referred to, or alluded to...
The sound of an old radio, with the dial moving back and forth, tuning into the world news.
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'The Chelsea Affect' by Arthur Miller
I decided to move to the Chelsea in 1960 for the privacy I was promised. It seemed a wonderfully out-of-the-way place, nearly a slum, where nobody would be likely to be looking for me...
My parents warned me that the jam tarts were hot, but I grabbed them anyway and burned my hand. An early lesson; I have been over-cautious ever since.
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'Portrait of my Father' by Jonathan Lethem
The picture floats. Someone took it in the Seventies, but the white backdrop gives no clue. My dad owned that wide-lapel trench coat for ?fteen or twenty years, typical thrifty child of the Depression...
The feeling of being in a refugee camp, drinking warm fruity wine made from sheets used to wrap the dead, and letting the air hang thick around you, and it hits you that you are in a place the world has forgotten.
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'Tokyo Year Zero' by David Peace
'Detective Minami! Detective Minami! Detective Minami!' I open my eyes. From dreams that are not my own. I sit up in my chair at my desk. Dreams I do not want...
The smell of new schoolbooks in September.
School starts in September , in Greece.
Summer is over.
I kiss my new schoolbooks.
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'Arithmetic Town' by Todd McEwen
In September Favourite Teacher handed out workbooks, and said to us, when you're done with these exercises you can go out on the field and have free play...
Every little thing that happens, often in repetition over time, takes me back to a fond realization about my surrounding. Despite the confusion, drudgery and falsehoods, the truth always emerges so fragile and penetrating that we are revealed to it a little at a time. So every little thing that happens, once again as it had happened, reminds me of the truth behind life, a little at a time.
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'Chickens and Eggs'
'What a scatterbrain, what a feckless girl' - so my mother would say of me to a guest, a visiting policeman, a neighbour coming over about some farm problem...
I had no idea what I´d find when I got there. The smell of incense was the first thing to hit me - not the cheap stuff from high-street stores, but the real deal, the kind that makes you think you´re in a temple in Thailand, despite never having been east of Manhattan. She was lying there, still as a rock, asleep for all I could tell. But probably in some stupid trance. I stepped away then and there, left and never even wrote to her.
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nostos algos.
the day my ancient greek teacher in high school told us the etymology of the word nostalgia. that it was made of two ancient greek words but it was created in modern times. hence in the whole Odissey, the take you back master piece, the word is never mentioned.
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'Arithmetic Town' by Todd McEwen
In September Favourite Teacher handed out workbooks, and said to us, when you're done with these exercises you can go out on the field and have free play...
Few things in modern life, at least here in New Zealand, have changed as little as caravans have. When I see one, I can´t help but think of my trip around Australia in the ´80s, mostly staying mostly in "vans" permanently parked in small-town caravan parks. Never were these units new, and rarely were they particularly clean or repaired, but the service was what we expected. Today, our local caravan retailer sells new caravans that look very much like they haven´t changed design since 1953.
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'The Trouble with Money' by Ian Hamilton
Did you know that a hundred-gram jar of Nescafe filled with lp coins buys two packets of Benson and Hedges?
My old duvet covers take me back...particularly this one that said SLEEEEP in massive black letters. God, it was cool! I went to a boarding school, where duvet covers were all the rage and you were always competing with your friends over who had the best. In a dormitory of 13 girls, I can still picture the grand array: ranging from jazzy Minnie Mouse to dull tarten (a clear sign of practical mothers, who thought it best to give their poor daughters ones that would last their whole school lives.)
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'Buddy Carmody' by Jayne Anne Phillips
Shelter County, West Virginia. Late July 1963. No one was safe walking to church in the dark, but Buddy knew better than to beg not to go...
Walking down Round Riding Road, passed Miller Street, there are houses where Dumbarton´s historic ground used to be. May 1972 saw Dumbarton beat Berwick 4-1 to win the 2nd division and return to top flight football after 50 years. Unimaginable nowadays there was a crowd of 9,000 for this midweek game. As a 13 year old the emotion was something I had up to then not experienced. Although we have had our occassional promotions again, non e was quite like the first time.
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Fever and heat and the broken fan, Mara/You had your white dress and your white face/And your calves were white and firm as well/Like a Marbolo Light recently removed./Fever and those horrible dreams, Mara
Rough and intrepid delusions like the love of the paradox/and you drank my father´s gin and read/that book by Corbière/and you killed the ant
that tried to climb up the leg of my bed./"There is not a color but the memory of color"...
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'Portrait of my Father' by Jonathan Lethem
The picture floats. Someone took it in the Seventies, but the white backdrop gives no clue. My dad owned that wide-lapel trench coat for ?fteen or twenty years, typical thrifty child of the Depression...
Bells. Church bells in the morning or when you come home in the evening. I would listen to them in my childhood and still listen. Whenever I catch this blessing sound, I assume I´ve got in a friendly place. There must be a bellfry somewhere, old stones, a city center, the presence of men living there before.
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'Chickens and Eggs'
'What a scatterbrain, what a feckless girl' - so my mother would say of me to a guest, a visiting policeman, a neighbour coming over about some farm problem...
I love the roadsign ´all directions´. It seems to lead to infinite freedom and to the road of self-determination
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'Kiltykins' by Ved Mehta
When I was seeing Kilty (how, even today, the word 'seeing' mesmerizes me), the fact of my blindness was never mentioned, referred to, or alluded to...
It´s odd, but the scent of oranges and car exhaust takes me back to the five study-abroad months I spent in Sevilla. The smell of fried dough and hot chocolate does the same for me - chorros de chocolate.
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'Arithmetic Town' by Todd McEwen
In September Favourite Teacher handed out workbooks, and said to us, when you're done with these exercises you can go out on the field and have free play...
Ι
The unsteady familiar rhythm of known voices
Like some haunting siren song suffocates
My thoughts. Deep within the darkness of
The cave lies a punctured genesis.
With two voices piercing each other
I watched the changing scenes
And, in pure macho fashion, the rib was silenced.
ΙΙ
They hang above my head—voices from the past—
Like the silvery fog
Ringing in and out, running through my head
But do they all belong to the past?
Alas, not all. Shadowy scenes swing
From end to end, crying to be heard
Dissimilar images
Of places and people—
Some forgotten, others suppressed.
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'The Hole' by Romesh Gunesekera
My mother was the one who told me he was dead. I ran into the bathroom and bolted the door. There was a small window in there with two round jail-house bars...
Foo Fighter´s "This Is a Call" always reminds me of going downstairs for breakfast at a youth hostel in Luxembourg, winter of 1999. Go figure.
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Drinking Orangina always makes me think of waiting for the bus in Eagle Rock. My boyfriend and I were visiting a friend of his there, and he (the friend) had bought an entire crate of Orangina. So we´d each grab one as we left for a day of sight-seeing.
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'Arithmetic Town' by Todd McEwen
In September Favourite Teacher handed out workbooks, and said to us, when you're done with these exercises you can go out on the field and have free play...
I must have been 7 or 8 and Ammee ( my mom) surprised me with a badminton raquet gift
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I find a row of telephone boxes and fumble for the ten pence piece I took out in readiness hours ago. It feels thin and hard against the fleecy lining of my pocket. I yank open the door and am greeted by the faint whiff of urine and disinfectant. I pick up the receiver. A wiry young man walks past the box and does a double take. Maybe he thinks he knows me. The receiver feels cold against my cheek and drones indifferently. I dial. The same man walks by again. This time he smiles, but I don’t acknowledge him. The phone bleeps and I insert the coin.
â€Hello. It’s me.’
â€Gill! Where are you?’ says my mother.
â€Euston. The train was delayed.’ There’s no point explaining about the slow train. What difference would that make now? There’s a brief exchange of words in which my father’s not mentioned. As I am putting down the receiver, the man opens the door of the booth and barges his way in. His features are disproportionate: his eyes too small, his ears too big. He pushes his face close to mine. He smells strongly of sweat and garlic.
â€You are lonely? Maybe we can have some fun,’ he says. Christ! Not this. Not now.
I say quietly, â€My father’s just died.’ He looks shocked, as if I’ve slapped him, then slinks away.
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'Portrait of my Father' by Jonathan Lethem
The picture floats. Someone took it in the Seventies, but the white backdrop gives no clue. My dad owned that wide-lapel trench coat for ?fteen or twenty years, typical thrifty child of the Depression...
For far too many yesterdays the dam was dry. Each month creating a new low water line. We measured rain when it came by counting the drops, almost. As it got drier so did we. We yearned for a time when there was more water. Years went by, children grew who had never seen rain fall from the sky in abundance. Until now, the rain has come and kept coming. The creeks are running and the dam is full to overflowing. Cell by cell I feel the dryness receding.
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'Arithmetic Town' by Todd McEwen
In September Favourite Teacher handed out workbooks, and said to us, when you're done with these exercises you can go out on the field and have free play...
'The Hole' by Romesh Gunesekera
My mother was the one who told me he was dead. I ran into the bathroom and bolted the door. There was a small window in there with two round jail-house bars...
'The Hole' by Romesh Gunesekera
My mother was the one who told me he was dead. I ran into the bathroom and bolted the door. There was a small window in there with two round jail-house bars...
A colleague came into work yesterday in a voluminous black & white patterned maxi dress. I was immediately transported to my living room in 1971, watching the Eurovision Song Contest
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From 'The Franchiser' by Stanley Elkin
He'd been driving for hours, on his way from his St. Cloud, Minnesota, Dairy Queen to his Mister Softee in Rapid City, South Dakota – his milk run, as he liked to call it...
Description of being on a research boat and finding fewer organisms in the channlel between Icealnd and Europe that was already evidence of the Greenland pump getting weaker
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Wherever I find myself in the world, that breath of summer invariably brings me back to summers with my grandparents outside of Chicago.
I only smelled it twice this year in London...
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'The Chelsea Affect' by Arthur Miller
I decided to move to the Chelsea in 1960 for the privacy I was promised. It seemed a wonderfully out-of-the-way place, nearly a slum, where nobody would be likely to be looking for me...
Boats rising on the incoming tide at their moorings in an estruary, running lines tapping in the breeze.
Sharp tang of coal smoke; warm smell of hot oil of a staem locomotive.
Church bells, blackbird song, taste of real ale.
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'Tokyo Year Zero' by David Peace
'Detective Minami! Detective Minami! Detective Minami!' I open my eyes. From dreams that are not my own. I sit up in my chair at my desk. Dreams I do not want...
jumping into haystacks at the height of summer. when they smelled of an old monsoon, that morning´s sun and cradled the shadows of evening. they left small scratch marks on my skin that stung much later.
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'Call if You Need Me' by Raymond Carver
We had both been involved with other people that spring, but when June came and school was out we decided to let our house for the summer and move from Palo Alto to the north coast country of California...
The bedsheet from home. It has the soft touch of cotton and the smell of freshly washed linen. I am again back in my old bed in my house. Safe, warm and secure. It helps me sleep. I dont feel alienated.
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'Tokyo Year Zero' by David Peace
'Detective Minami! Detective Minami! Detective Minami!' I open my eyes. From dreams that are not my own. I sit up in my chair at my desk. Dreams I do not want...
There is this particular smell of vanilla -- or the imitation of it -- that reminds me of a doll I used to play with, sitting on a carpet somewhere. The doll was a cupcake that turned into a girl when you flipped it inside out, and she smelled like something baking.
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'Chickens and Eggs'
'What a scatterbrain, what a feckless girl' - so my mother would say of me to a guest, a visiting policeman, a neighbour coming over about some farm problem...
Diesel fume and tv cocktail and hypertension. And then you see - or even hear - a jay bird and in a flash you smell ripening paddy, the smell of pride, of success and joy.
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Now when I light my cigarette, it lingers, sometimes, unsupported on my lower lip - for a split second before I pull deeply. I think of my father lighting his cigar, the final stub, magically suspended on that purple lower lip - for a split second before he puffed matter-of-factly.
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'Buddy Carmody' by Jayne Anne Phillips
Shelter County, West Virginia. Late July 1963. No one was safe walking to church in the dark, but Buddy knew better than to beg not to go...
Two boys, Alex and me, lying on the warm grey road, cloud-watching, talking, listening to the wind sway the trees. Sometimes hearing, but rarely seeing, the kingfishers and water-rats splashing into the nearby stream. And because no-one ever used to come this way, not having to move for hours and hours until a tractor, homeward bound and flaking off clods of heavy Essex clay from its wheels, would hoot us out of the way.
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From 'The Franchiser' by Stanley Elkin
He'd been driving for hours, on his way from his St. Cloud, Minnesota, Dairy Queen to his Mister Softee in Rapid City, South Dakota – his milk run, as he liked to call it...
I remember my childhood as a long hot summer - odd as I grew up in England. But I used to love the hazy heat coming off a road. I´d stare and stare at it, jump at the chance to see some, and sort of wish that the whole landscape would melt like that, just so i could see it.
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'Keepers of the House' by Lisa St Aubin de Teran
Lydia Sinclair was just seventeen when she arrived on her husband's estate in the Andes. Her first day went by in a haze of mosquito bites and heat and a swarm of new faces...
whenever i sport this calvin klein scent, i immdeiately get taken back to the early 2000´s.
sweden. high heels. men entirely too old for me. red lips. dark, dark blood dripping from my wrist.
despair and desperation.
i still have no idea why i continue wearing it.
i guess my past is my eternity.
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'Room After Room' by Jonathan Safran Foer
She can see her breath in the room of her future. If it were any warmer, the Polaroids that paper the walls would develop...
The smell of my grandmother as she held me on her lap- aged four; a freshly scraped knee, salty tears, buried in the crook of her neck; I felt surrounded by the ocean of her smell. I can still hear the steady beat of her heart as I pressed my head against her chest. Her chest rising and falling in the failing light of the kitchen. I can remember clearly how I focused on that patterned beat. How I willed that heart to go on forever.
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'Buddy Carmody' by Jayne Anne Phillips
Shelter County, West Virginia. Late July 1963. No one was safe walking to church in the dark, but Buddy knew better than to beg not to go...
For a band that I don´t particularly have a passion for, any of their songs fill my mind with stale puffs of smoke, cheap beer, and the beginning of my life living free...
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'The Hole' by Romesh Gunesekera
My mother was the one who told me he was dead. I ran into the bathroom and bolted the door. There was a small window in there with two round jail-house bars...
From a young age I´ve had intense vivid dreams which i can remember in detail. Sometime images or words trigger my old memories of some of these dreams which then lead me to recollect moments, people and other aspects of my life during that time.
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The taste of Corona reminds me of parties in a basement and a boy´s lips and mouth (with braces and without). It tastes of summer, bad decisions, and being seventeen.
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'Call if You Need Me' by Raymond Carver
We had both been involved with other people that spring, but when June came and school was out we decided to let our house for the summer and move from Palo Alto to the north coast country of California...
Airports are always places of happiness and excitement , also they are sad when we have to say goodbye. I always remember the first time I left my parents house and I moved to London. I will never forget that corner of the airport next to that coffee shop that smelt as toasts and strawberry jam with an old lady on the till, it was the first time I saw my father crying saying goodbye to me, until I came back one year after to say goodbye to him ...
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'The Chelsea Affect' by Arthur Miller
I decided to move to the Chelsea in 1960 for the privacy I was promised. It seemed a wonderfully out-of-the-way place, nearly a slum, where nobody would be likely to be looking for me...
When I was about 13, my friends and I used to play a game with a candle, wax paper, and a glass. Kind of like a Ouija board, we drew circles on the wax paper with letters and words inside, heated the glass and let it slide around on the paper to reveal the future. Deciphering the nonsense was a thrill. To set the mood, we burned sage. We heard it was sacred and drove away bad spirits. When I need to focus or make a new start, the scent takes me back to that excitement of the untold future
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'Arithmetic Town' by Todd McEwen
In September Favourite Teacher handed out workbooks, and said to us, when you're done with these exercises you can go out on the field and have free play...
I love that anime characters often smile with their eyes closed. (like Media from Pani Poni Dash) It makes them look so cute, but also like they want to keep their happiness to themselves for just a moment. They take me back to closing my eyes before making a wish on my birthday candles. When that wish is just mine.
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'Chickens and Eggs'
'What a scatterbrain, what a feckless girl' - so my mother would say of me to a guest, a visiting policeman, a neighbour coming over about some farm problem...
When I was 17, I went on my first date. We got ice cream then took a walk. We talked about mainly politics. The whole thing took about 4 hours. Afterwards, I felt great, until I got back home and looked in the mirror: I had chocolate ice cream all over my face. My mouth, nose, and forehead were completely covered, and had been for the entire walk. Now, whenever I hear a political discussion, I always think back to 17-year-old me, talking about the same stuff, face covered in ice cream.
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From 'The Franchiser' by Stanley Elkin
He'd been driving for hours, on his way from his St. Cloud, Minnesota, Dairy Queen to his Mister Softee in Rapid City, South Dakota – his milk run, as he liked to call it...
Whenever I see a stack of UNO cards, I always think back to the summer I spent at my grandma’s house when I was 9. Every morning we followed the same routine: get up at 7, have coffee, play UNO. Despite being pretty smart, she was terrible at UNO because she couldn’t keep a straight face. Every time she got a Wild Card, for example, she would have on this huge smile and then start laughing and then, sometimes, start mouthing the word “wild.”
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'Call if You Need Me' by Raymond Carver
We had both been involved with other people that spring, but when June came and school was out we decided to let our house for the summer and move from Palo Alto to the north coast country of California...
Unpacking the tent reminds me of camps -
the panic during late night games in the forest, mud caked boots never to be worn again, obscure rules about raising a flag each morning, trying to evade washing up duty, facing the climbing wall and obstacle course. And of course the worst kept secret of the last day water fight. We heard the call "Bring your mugs" and headed to the meeting point. Us veterans smiled and got in first, and I remember the surprise ecthed on the faces of our victims well.
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'Failing to Fall' by A.L. Kennedy
This is the one thing I know from the minute I lift the receiver and slip that voice inside my ear: it will happen...