Finding Home in an Interstitial Space
June 27, 2024
I knew the house was an interstitial space from which I was certain, I could find my way home.
*An excerpt from my memoir in progress, Hard to Kill.
I knew the house was an interstitial space from which I was certain, I could find my way home.
*An excerpt from my memoir in progress, Hard to Kill.
Baxter Brown was a boxer dog. I didn’t know his name when he arrived on my porch one cold March evening about five years ago, but I had seen him before. He wore an ugly orange collar with the owner’s name and number roughly engraved on a gold plate. I called the owner. “Aw, just beat him with a stick. He’ll come home,” the owner said. “Someone needs to be beaten with a stick,” I said. “But it is not the dog.” I hung up and invited the dog inside, where he belonged. He was shivering and terribly thin, so
A Walk in the Park A research trip took me to the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute in Birmingham, Alabama. The park across the road was the site of some of the worst acts of civil rights violence. It is now an important site of memory. Its history is retold through sculptures and other art installations throughout. It was a July morning so I decided to stroll through the park before it got too hot. I had paused to study a sculpture depicting vicious, snarling dogs when I heard a voice behind me. “Nothing has changed you know.” I turned around to see
“Looking back on the memory of the dance we shared…” Garth Brooks’ much-loved song “The Dance” reminds us that the best things in life sometimes lead to painful endings. The song is about a person who realizes what he would have had to miss to avoid the pain often associated with the end of a relationship. Today, the song was on my mind for other reasons. This morning, my s.o. Alan’s beloved Australian Shepherd/Border Collie cross, Topper, who’d worked his way into my heart to a degree I never imagined possible, crossed the rainbow bridge. He was 14, give or