On May 3, 1986, I met the real Jason Bourne. It was on a ferry between Korea and Japan. I’d gone to Korea to extend my tourist visa so I could work another three months before having to find a work sponsor. Korea was a nightmare of inexplicable, shudder-inducing strangeness. It was the only nation…
The worst year of my life
December 31, 2013
This was the worst year of my life. For over a decade, Tim and I would say to each other, “This was the worst year yet,” but 2013 was the absolute bottom. I say than knowing full well that I’m daring the fates to make 2014 even worse, but it can’t be. The depths have…
Broken arms and exploding piglets
December 28, 2013
I broke my right arm in 1971. Mom and my siblings were watching an oil well being drilled at night in the vacant lot two houses down in Campo Verde, Tia Juana, Venezuela. The Club is in the foreground; right above the words “photo courtesy,” you can see the giant swimming pool where a nineteen-year-old…
On the run with a Canadian
December 15, 2013
When I first arrived in Tokyo in September of 1985, I moved into a guest house. I got to know several of the long-term residents, one being an older Canadian woman named “Rachel.” Tall, slender, and elegant, she was…unnerving. She seemed wracked with pain, even though she had a good sense of humor and laughed…
A forgotten memory resurfaces
December 13, 2013
Mom saved all my letters. I found them in a box marked “Tom’s letters,” sensibly enough. Mom didn’t always write such precise descriptions on her many, many, many boxes. Most are unmarked, or they say, “Memorabilia,” or “Photos.” Even the boxes marked “Wictor photos,” for example, have lots of non-Wictor images in them. Tonight, in…
I’m not the right guy to ask
November 26, 2013
Someone sent me a link to Scott Adams’s post “I Hope My Father Dies Soon” and asked me my opinion on it. In his piece Adams says the following: My father, age 86, is on the final approach to the long dirt nap (to use his own phrase). His mind is 98% gone, and all…
I feared all the wrong things
November 25, 2013
All my worst fears came true. Since childhood I feared pain, isolation, humiliation, incurable illness, predation, failure, suffering, loneliness, not fitting in… And earwigs. More about the earwigs in a minute. In retrospect I feared all the wrong things, since everything I feared eventually came to pass. Tim and I have had this discussion many…
Collapsed by the community
November 24, 2013
You may have noticed that I don’t allow comments on my posts. I’ve been told that an unmoderated comment section would increase my traffic dramatically. I doubt it. That applies to political blogs, but the people who like my books aren’t the type who visit blogs all day to either support or oppose the latest…
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