Category: memoir
-
Memoir: The seasons of my life (1961- present)
From ages 0-20, the springtime of my life, I spring into being, growing from a puling, helpless babe over two decades into a brash, sensitive young man. Early spring’s violent emotional storms batter my tender shoots. I grow as best I can. In the rocky soil of my family garden, my eyes scan the sky for…
-
Memoir: The hard card (1982)
I am 20 years and eleven months old, alone in an empty dorm the Thursday of Spring break. I have no girlfriend, nowhere to go, no interest in driving home (no home at all, just a room in mom’s condo), and no tolerance for extended periods of regular consciousness. I consider myself worldly and “with…
-
Memoir: A summer job (1981)
So much great culture was happening for me in 1981. My high points: But my memoir prompt–to describe a summer job in 500-ish words–limits me. So as I was enjoying the culture above referenced, here’s my chapter: I was 20 years old the summer of 1981, living rent-free with dad in his two-bedroom apartment off…
-
Memoir: One day in 1975
When South Oak Park’s David Bowie passes us on the school playground, my friends smile and shake their heads in judgment. “Would you get a look at that fag? He’s wearing his mom’s makeup!”
-
Memoir: Goodbye, old friend (1982-98)
Dear Mes, I wasn’t at your side in 1998 when you crossed the “rainbow bridge” to your afterlife, which I suppose holds endless green meadows teeming with flocks of pliant sheep that you direct and protect for eternity. You had your father’s shepherd heart, and you shepherded me and my growing family through my young…
-
Memoir: first experiences with Punk (1976)
Last Saturday, as authoritarians in charge continued steering society over the guardrails and into the ditch of savagery and greed, the 20th annual Riotfest took place in Douglass Park, Chicago. The three-day festival features musical acts inspired by and spawned during the Punk rock era, when I was a youngster. It celebrates an attitude of…
-
Memoir: Safe spaces (animist edition) (2023)
Is it a coincidence that when there was nothing but lawn about those beds, we were sorely preyed on?
-
Memoir: Every song that mattered to you can tell a story (1971)
“Yes,” I could say, “my family life might be shameful, but I know who bats third for the Cubs (Joe Pepitone) and who guested on the Flip Wilson Show last week (Bill Cosby, Gina Lollabrigita, and John Sebastian).”
-
Memoir: a lunchtime intervention (1972-73)
By year two of our lunches, I’d become conversant with the riches of the district’s media collection accessed through her authority: endless filmstrips and 16mm history and science films.
-
Memoir: a road not taken (1968-72)
My first physical fight with another male occurs shortly after we move to 1022 S. Scoville. I was five years old. In the backyard, under the cherry tree, one of my soon-to-be playmates, a couple of years older than I, had somehow provoked me. We fell to pushing and grappling, and pretty soon he got…
The Wikiness 