I remember being young and small and barefoot on the concrete floor: look closely and see how the cicada shells vibrate as the Texas Hill Country winds sift in.

It’s the first time I remember feeling that superstrong tween indignation that he’d taken something that was supposed to be just mine.

At six years old, my father wanted to introduce me to his church friends. As a part-time pastor, it was crucial he make a good first impression.

I was 20 and I went around to have naked time with Matt.

Girls in white dresses. Girls with boys. Girls hanging on the arms of boys and girls who turn to give you a look as they pass by, asserting their position. Girls who know how to flirt with boys.

I could never straighten my legs for a cartwheel and with roller skating, I could never move them right.

If I’m going to be honest, my life has been running at something of a parallel to Husker Football for the last ten years, over which time I’ve tried to hack it as a musician, restaurateur, and writer.

My mother once jumped off a boat into a swarm of jellyfish. Why did she think they would not sting?

I awoke no more than ten minutes ago and already so much has been consumed

I used to write in circles. Starting in the center.

Part 1 of 4
Part 2 of 4
Part 3 of 4

Apart from all these violent events, Raziel, De Kuff, and the other cult members have been moving between Jerusalem, Safed (site of the ancient

My body is uncomplicated. It is a tool, finely tuned for this moment.

The next day, I woke first and made French toast. I had a teenaged hangover, buzzing and giddy.

The story of religious mania and the story of political violence look very likely to converge on each other.  Having consciously elected the first, Lucas keeps being drawn, sometimes unwillingly, sometimes unwittingly, toward the other. Both feature his new inamorata, Sonia Barnes.

There is a universe of existence we have no words for, and maybe that is why we sequester ourselves in naturally quarantined cities: fear of the unknown and unintelligible.

During our first few years together, Leopard went through the washing machine after I peed on him, many times.

If Lucas is the most obvious Bob Stone avatar in Damascus Gate, Adam De Kuff might also be a contender, sharing with his author an improperly managed mental illness (it’s made very plain that De Kuff has stopped taking his prescribed bipolar meds a long while back)

“How do I know if it’s right?” I wrote. “How did you know?” “I just knew,” she texted back. 

I ain’t supposed to know about these woods. But I did know the coyotes.

My Magic cards were the coolest thing about me.

Stone had two modes of handwriting: one a gnarly cursive he used to talk to himself and the other block capitals, more easily legible. On a scrap of torn paper in a crate of Damascus Gate research material is a draft of a self-mocking doggerel poem...

I could not imagine the dark well of her grief. I wanted to pretend it had nothing to do with me. But I felt compelled to bear witness somehow.

In the book Les Misérables, it is not raining while Eponine dies. She is simply bleeding so much that she believes it is raining. So saturated in blood that her brain belies reason.

Two thousand nine is the centennial year of Malcolm Lowry, the British novelist and poet, whose extraordinary novel Under the Volcano appeared in 1947. Lowry’s first version of it was a loosely constructed story about Britons who witness a violent crime in Mexico.

What stands out in my memory now is the silence in that barn.