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A Dog Named Ouzo
“Because I paid for Ouzo, I claimed naming rights and, though he had no ‘papers,’ we knew he had a pedigree. Ouzo was a pure-bred dalmatian, with all the havoc such breeding (such…
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The One-Legged Yogini
“Iyengar Yoga master-teacher, Kofi Busia, writes: ‘Health is not, and cannot be, an individual affair. It is a community—indeed, a cosmic—affair. Individuation is the root cause of all suffering. A community, even a…
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The Difficult Lesson of Subtraction
“The year of work was intense and solitary. Helen, on her coast, set me tasks; I, on the other coast, took them on. One involved visualizing the mindful subtraction—element by element—of parts of…
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A Half-Century of Seeing with Luis Orozco
“What I do remember, and perhaps few others are alive to share these memories now, is that, before the tourists, came the painters. Greece, and the Cyclades in particular, with their ethereal, stunning…
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James Dickey: The Toad in the Word-Garden
“He was old when last I saw him. He’d quit fighting the mirror. His hair was clipped short, unlike the Cinnabon concoction of the 70s. No more that hopeful objet trouvé swirling over…
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The Far Land of Affliction
“Affliction is a well-visited destination, but one on no one’s published itinerary. Our visas are universally stamped (in invisible ink) at birth (and, often, before birth) in our mutable flesh. But, until we…
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Our New Old Home Place
“On the first of January, though, these dreams abruptly ceased after my husband and I drove north, out of Florida, through Georgia, and on up into the Piedmont of South Carolina. Drove home,…
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Happily (-Enough) Ever After
“I hasten to declare that I have been married to my present spouse only since 2002, though I knew I loved him the moment I saw him on 3 October 1999 and, in…
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The Jot’em Down Store, Townville SC
“I know I made some small talk then, but the rest is a blur: the pot-bellied stove and the shelves (and shelves and shelves) of pickles and preserves, put up by Mama Boleman…
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A Vial of Wind: “Homo articus”
“Reader, pause here. What followed was, and remains, an utterly unique experience in my life. This was no shop girl waving strips of scented blotting paper, hawking mass-produced aromas in a mall. This…