Why’d you call, boy? What did you want from me?””The company of a friend, I think.””Always a cheap treat.

What’d you need?””Desuetude.””Reading again, are we? Could be dangerous. It means to become unaccustomed to. As in something gets discontinued, falls into disuse.””Thanks, man.””That it?””Yeah, but we should grab a drink sometime.

Perhaps after all, for all our talk of change, redemption or personal growth, for all our dependence on therapists, religious faith or mood-altering drugs both legal and non, we’re doomed simply to go on repeating...

We’re professionals. People make deals, they need to stick to them. That’s the way it works, if it’s going to work at all.

Mostly what you lose with time, in memory, is the specificity of things, their exact sequence. It all runs together, becomes a watery soup. Portmanteau days, imploded years. Like a bad actor, memory always goes...

Then at least you’ll never be disappointed.

I was coming up on a cross street when a man wearing a filthy suit stepped out from around the corner of the building ahead and directly into my path. Bent with age, he turned...

Here we raise his children for him, cook for him, bring up his crops, butcher his hogs – even fight his wars for him – and he still won’t acknowledge our existence.