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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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 …
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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