“Lonely Teenage Walk”
“Sometimes, when he found himself inspired, Skylar overcame the combined influences of submission-to-a-hard-fate, fatigue, mild depression, and serious self-pity and arose like Lazarus, came out of his bedroom cave, and went for a walk. He loved these walks. A light shining out from the window of a house on a distant block evoked feelings of […]
Continue reading“Expecting to Fly”
“Skylar had always been acutely sensitive to feelings: his own and those of others. The rite of passage marked by college graduation acted to distil and galvanize his emotions, which had the widest possible range, extending up celestially to that of a sopranino and down infernally to that of a basso profondo. “Expecting to Fly” […]
Continue reading“Simple Happiness”
“Against this outlook, Skylar took his stand. Whether through the fairy tales he had been exposed to as a child or the literature he had read as a youth, through the lessons he had learned from films or from simply watching adults in his environment, the seeker knew that happiness and peace could not be […]
Continue reading“Adolescent Daydreams”
“Once his mother left the room, he flounced toward the bed and dropped himself down onto it with the dead weight of a falling dumb bomb. Horizontal, eyes closed, arms extended along his sides: this was the position he assumed as he wrestled with the nymphs, wolves, and ghosts of adolescence. In the background, the […]
Continue reading“The Magic of Music”
“Music had always, since his early childhood, shown Skylar the transfiguring power of art. Music possessed a facility for communicating directly with one’s soul and, once in communication, an ability to extract from it a fine and delicate feeling. From this feeling, music could shake off all excrescences and dross, leaving a filament which it […]
Continue reading“The End of Exams”
“It was about two o’clock in the afternoon on the day after Skylar’s last final examination. A cylinder of yellow sunlight passed through the narrow casement window in the sophomore’s bedroom, inflaming a golden aureole around Artus’ head. The rectangular lights of the mullioned window had been refashioned, all luminous, stretched and laid flat on […]
Continue reading“Genuine Happiness”
“When one has gained inner stability, then a quiet joy constantly fills one’s life. One no longer depends on external developments to bring happiness; one is already happy. The sun may shine or the rain may fall; the stock market may rise or it may drop; wrinkles, gray hair, and illness may come, but the […]
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