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Stefanie Kalem

the nonsensical ravings of an overly verbal mind

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Stefanie Kalem

December 31, 2020 By Stefanie Kalem 2 Comments

Congratulations, 2020

Like most people, I am far more haunted by my failures than I am buoyed by my triumphs. The last month of the year is particularly hard for me in this respect — I usually spend the month of December in a sticky spiral of "what-ifs" and "I didn'ts," briefly blasted out by the light of holiday celebrations and culminating in a dark slide into a a hedonistic New Year's Eve. I wake up on January 1, my body and brain battered, and feel hopeful once more. But …

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August 8, 2019 By Stefanie Kalem 2 Comments

Death of an Heir of Sorrows

David Berman meant a lot to me. Means a lot to me. "Advice to the Graduate" hit me right around when I graduated college, and its advice hums in my veins at regular intervals: always use the old sense of the word; the things that you do will always make your mother cry; don't believe in people who say it's all been done, they have time to talk because their race is run. Not that long ago I got snagged on that last bit, convinced that my race was one that …

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June 28, 2017 By Stefanie Kalem Leave a Comment

Lots of fancy-striking (letters from my father, part 5)

It's my dad's yahrtzeit today. I don't know if that means it started last night or it's starting now, at 8:30 p.m. as the late summer day starts to stretch out its last. The app I have on my phone that tells me when it's the third day of the Jewish month of Tamuz doesn't tell me if it's erev or not. And I didn't buy a candle, anyway. They're getting harder to come by, it seems, so I buy three at a time. But now that Harv is gone, too, I go through them …

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Recent Posts

  • Congratulations, 2020
  • Death of an Heir of Sorrows
  • Lots of fancy-striking (letters from my father, part 5)
  • “Show me a man who smiles all the time and he should be in an asylum” (letters from my father, part 4)
  • “For every hour he spends with mankind he needs 3 hours in his closet” (letters from my father part 3)

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