Go

Grey light. The first bird chirps and breaks the stillness. On the next street, I hear a car start. Throaty engine rumble, crunch of tires on gravel. Changing pitch as it drives away. I listen to the sound fade and vanish. I want to be in that car. Go anywhere, wherever it is going. Go away from this constricted house and its nightly groans.

From the Sacramento Bee.

DNA plays nasty tricks, sometimes.


"Brian Chadaris has grappled with an undiagnosed skin disease for more than a decade. What started as seemingly harmless rashes on his bottom developed into aching, cyst-like growths that have spread across his face, neck, back and groin. The large bumps, which cause pain and pressure as they grow, unfailingly become infected, making surgical removal necessary."


There's always somebody worse off than you.

(There's a picture gallery too, (link at top of right column next to the story) but it's pretty disturbing.)

I really don't know what else to say about this. I just hope that Sally Jesse Raphael doesn't get ahold of this kid. His life is difficult enough.

Autumn Coming

This afternoon, there were a dozen or so fallen leaves under the mulberry tree. It is always the first tree to begin losing its leaves, and the last to finish losing them. For the next third of a year, I will be raking them. Only a few, at first, and then more and more. I am always astonished at how many leaves this tree manages to drop every year. They don't seem that many when they are on the tree, but on the ground there seems to be no end to them. The price of dense summer shade, I suppose.