a radio was on.

hope goes begging for fear the sugared edge of the frosting tastes, faintly, of bile. I'm half in, mostly out, of an online writers' support group for people with cancer.  I'm not sure what I expected. What happens is that the moderator, the impossibly sweet and supportive Caroline, posts prompts we are meant to respond to in prose and throw up on the board for commentary.  Today the theme was hope, and she posted some hope quotes.  Like "Hope is the thing with feathers-/That perches in the soul-" by Emily Dickinson.  I think I might have to drop out of the writers' group, because I think dark thoughts and this group, with its penchant for homilies and similes, usually greets my writing entries with silence.  I'm too sullen for this group.  That bit up there about hope and bile is what I thought of when I read the hope prompt today.  You see why they ignore me, dark horse? I'm reading a book entitled Advice for Future Corpses, and the author thinks hop...

hope goes begging for fear the sugared edge of the frosting tastes, faintly, of bile. I'm half in, mostly out, of an online writers' support group for people with cancer.  I'm not sure what I expected. What happens is that the moderator, the impossibly sweet and supportive Caroline, posts prompts we are meant to respond to in prose and throw up on the board for commentary.  Today the theme was hope, and she posted some hope quotes.  Like "Hope is the thing with feathers-/That perches in the soul-" by Emily Dickinson.  I think I might have to drop out of the writers' group, because I think dark thoughts and this group, with its penchant for homilies and similes, usually greets my writing entries with silence.  I'm too sullen for this group.  That bit up there about hope and bile is what I thought of when I read the hope prompt today.  You see why they ignore me, dark horse? I'm reading a book entitled Advice for Future Corpses, and the author ...

I walked around saying I am a cultural Jew for so long--that my family celebrated the big holidays, like Passover and the small holidays, like Hanukah (made big by its proximity to Christmas), but without God, and without any religious overtones or undertones.  Even though it was pretty true, and even though people were born, got cancer, died on my family's watch, with respect and joy and sorrow,  it has started to feel incorrect to keep using those words to describe how I feel.  Someone from my support group for people with metastatic cancer was talking about her recommitment to the Catholic Church and she said if her mom was alive, she would accuse her daughter of cramming for the final.  By the time I decided to attend to the presence of God in my life, I had passed through the valleys of sexual assault, miscarriages, divorce, and death of loved ones all without consciously turning to God. If God was knocking on my door, I was in bed, with the covers over my head....

I walked around saying I am a cultural Jew for so long--that my family celebrated the big holidays, like Passover and the small holidays, like Hanukah (made big by its proximity to Christmas), but without God, and without any religious overtones or undertones.  Even though it was pretty true, and even though people were born, got cancer, died on my family's watch, with respect and joy and sorrow,  it has started to feel incorrect to keep using those words to describe how I feel.  Someone from my support group for people with metastatic cancer was talking about her recommitment to the Catholic Church and she said if her mom was alive, she would accuse her daughter of cramming for the final.  By the time I decided to attend to the presence of God in my life, I had passed through the valleys of sexual assault, miscarriages, divorce, and death of loved ones all without consciously turning to God. If God was knocking on my door, I was in bed, with the covers over my head...

Of course I haven't been able to think of anything but caves these few weeks (note to future readers: a small group of young boys and their young soccer coach have been trapped in a cave in Thailand for several weeks and their painstaking extraction from the earth--massively covered by CNN, the station which can hardly believe their luck in finding a story where the banner "Breaking News" actually qualifies, and coordinated by fields of divers and engineers from various countries--has been on the minds of most sentient beings), but I couldn't imagine how I could write anything about this because contemplating the thoughts of anyone actually involved in the story fills me with abject terror, my heart begins to race and my breath catches, followed by guilt because who am I to have a single feeling at all on this, barely having contemplated Thailand before, and more than six degrees of separation from anyone even remotely connected to this human drama, but then my dear f...

Of course I haven't been able to think of anything but caves these few weeks (note to future readers: a small group of young boys and their young soccer coach have been trapped in a cave in Thailand for several weeks and their painstaking extraction from the earth--massively covered by CNN, the station which can hardly believe their luck in finding a story where the banner "Breaking News" actually qualifies, and coordinated by fields of divers and engineers from various countries--has been on the minds of most sentient beings), but I couldn't imagine how I could write anything about this because contemplating the thoughts of anyone actually involved in the story fills me with abject terror, my heart begins to race and my breath catches, followed by guilt because who am I to have a single feeling at all on this, barely having contemplated Thailand before, and more than six degrees of separation from anyone even remotely connected to this human drama, but then my dear f...