It was around 3:00 AM on Saturday September 22, 2001, My oldest brother, Phil, and I were sitting in his living room waiting for the cancer to take him.
He was 56.
He started it.
On a sunny August morning in Paris at the French offices of a multinational corporate octopus I unknowingly brought a gun to a knife fight.
In the early 2000’s I was 53 and leaving middle age. I was wondering what’s next when some nasty questions popped up. Like. Have I accomplished anything worthwhile? What’s next? How much hair can I grow from my ears, nose and eyebrows? Do those ED drugs really work?
On the day Niles first opened the workroom door, the three Norns cast his fate.
They lived in squalid shelters along a trail that led from the sea, beyond the palm trees, through the regimental headquarters area and on toward towering mountains. There was a swamp nearby and it sent forth a briny stink. The shelters weren’t substantial enough to be called huts. They were, at best, crude shebangs made of ponchos and stripes of canvas laced to flimsy warped frames fashioned from tree branches lashed together with vines or scraps of tent ropes. There was enough shelter to fend off some small part of the daily rains.
Here’s a video of me reading a story in February 2020 before Covid brought the world to its knees.
At the first funeral I ever attended I ended up in the grave.
