Essays from an american mutt

Giggling at hell

There’s a man who makes birdhouses. He’s a jolly guy, the kind you’d think would be good to suit up as Santa come December. He’s a craftsman who hits the southeastern arts festivals, sits...

This is our home

The kid’s shot to right field was the kind that made you gasp. It came off the bat like a laser, and it didn’t matter that little leaguer was barely 70 pounds. The ball...

Marriage and the power of luck

She nibbled, and I didn’t understand why. I came from a family of people who took fresh bites of their food before fully swallowing what they’d just chewed. Michelle, a petite girl who played...

Gratitude, by degrees

If I’ve learned one thing this weekend, it’s that gratitude comes in degrees. I was unable to be in Beverly Hills on Friday night, and I honestly don’t know if I would’ve had the...

Those people…

A storm is coming, but it’s not the one you think. Yes, there will be snow in the south. It will fall for hours. When it’s done, the schools will close, the grocery store...

Thanks for sharing

I started Rapid Eye Reality in 2001 when my friend Susannah pulled me aside at a wedding and said there was this thing called a “blog” that I might find interesting. Since that time,...

Mistakes

This is a story of two mistakes with eternal consequences. They happened almost exactly three years ago, but I’ve never written about them publicly. There are a lot of things that happen when somebody...

Threadbare troubadour

Getting old is easy. It happens without your permission. It happens on its own. It’s literally effortless. The hard part is finding any good in it happening. Something happened last night, and it made...

My dog swallowed what?

I learned a new word this weekend: radiopaque. It’s not the kind of word you just throw out over coffee, or really, in most polite conversation, but it is the kind of word you’ll...

Remembering the first kill

This week in Arizona, a nine-year-old girl shot and killed her shooting instructor by accident. The instructor was teaching the little girl to shoot an automatic 9mm Uzi. Sit with those two sentences for...