Since this all started, I haven’t seen heads or tails of the raccoon that lives under the shingling of my neighbor’s roof. In winter I occasionally sighted him, a dark shape travelling against an unlit alleyway- or slowly emerging from where the gutter had come loose and swung in the wind. My chances were better … Continue reading Living in the Roof
Up the hill, after the center of Widcombe and the train station and the canal crossing, is the house that will outlive me and all my old friends. There was no canonical order to the history of careless nights spent in the cheapest public houses of old Bath. As we dug into the now-extinct culture … Continue reading Prior Park
Your letter in the mail is the overdone romantic comedy played repeatedly on the Betamax player of my brain. I keep rewinding and repeating the moments, until the wow and flutter distort the memory of when I first pulled apart the glued security seal. In manufactured magnetic static, what you wrote would be the opposite … Continue reading Betamax
My father Robert grew up in Shaker Heights outside of Cleveland Ohio. I have been to the house where he grew up numerous times to vast my grandparents: his mother, and his step-father Terry. The house itself is three stories tall, with old lighting and bathroom fixtures from the 1930’s. The driveway, which leads to … Continue reading Spirit Reports Chapter 8: Robert
I think my friend James was born in the wrong time in history. He and his violin were made for the palaces of the Habsburgs as they stood before the Great War. He was meant for the world described by Winston Churchill in the opening passages of his book, “The World Crisis," when he wrote, … Continue reading Spirit Reports Chapter 7: James
On a Spring afternoon during my final year of college, I was approached by a young man while I waited for a crosswalk signal to turn. He had a passage from one of the gospels marked out with a bit of string with a loop tied at one end for his thumb as a bookmark. … Continue reading Spirit Reports Chapter 6: Her
The dirt driveway that leads up the hill to Lizzie’s house is marked by an enamel sign that reads “Lucky Pines.” I remember when I first saw it. It was the first time I’d stopped by to drive Lizzie to school early one fall morning in our senior year of high school. It’s been … Continue reading Spirit Reports Chapter 5: Lizzie
When I think of my younger brother, I picture him when he was just a little kid, no more than ten or eleven years old. Back then, he had long straight blonde hair and a gentle round face with defined dimples when he smiled, which was often, even when he was trying not to. Always, … Continue reading Spirit Reports Chapter 4: Cooper
When I was in elementary school, I stumbled across a book in the North Falmouth Elementary School library on Sir John Franklin's Lost 1845 Arctic Expedition called "Buried in Ice" by John G. Geiger, Owen Beattie, and Shelley Tanaka. I remember I returned the book to the library several weeks late, partially because I had … Continue reading Spirit Reports Chapter 3: John
I’ve wondered for a long time now what it meant to be Joseph Cressy’s grandson. I’ve written a lot about him since he died six years ago. On the night his lungs failed, I found myself in the front yard of my parents’ house on a swing hanging from the branch of a maple tree … Continue reading Spirit Reports Chapter 2: Joseph
Ryan Shockey Davis 