The perfect love...that is what set off my giggles. You know that old jokey saying about when they passed out brains you must have been behind the door because you never got any? Well...if ever anyone or any Deity was…

[Fiction, a start to a scene in my novel about Berthe Morisot. Edouard refers to Edouard Manet.] Berthe doesn't worry about Edouard the way a lover would. They are only friends, acquaintances, as far as the world is concerned. The…

No regrets….I imagine we all...each and every one of us...would like to leave the life we are currently living with no regrets whatsoever...to the majority of you, that would mean we did everything right, everything perfectly, believing as we insist…

Last night I was reading my own (self-published) book Those Several Summers. Sometimes I do that: I open a book I’ve written or check out some old writing (I mean in terms of years, not months) to see what I…

In the last weeks of April, men wearing civilian clothes with a black diamond outlined in silver thread began appearing on Berlin’s streets. They were Sicherheitsdienst, Hitler’s secret service. Agatha saw them in front of Frau Bleich’s house where Hans,…

[Fiction, of the Dystopian Variety] Not a single regret was ever spoken during a session. The doctor didn't encourage it. A not common approach, perhaps--to encourage the patient to leave their sense of responsibility to other humans at the door.…

I wanted to write this morning, when the day was fresh. I knew that once it sat out for a bit, the day would lose its beauty. It was so perfect. But the morning passed, and I had to shelve…

I ever regretted the trip to California from Massachusetts that turned into spending my entire adulthood 3000 miles from home. Didn't care enough about family to pay any attention to how settling down a continent away from people who had…

Do regrets come in multitudes? And the statement cancels out the entire number of them, or almost, leaving behind the “single” regret, which is then denied. There’s the Frank Sinatra song that has the refrain: “Regrets. . I’ve had a…

[Fiction. Berthe Morisot's POV] The children play with the cat. I am anxious to get started. But the model has written to say that she cannot be here for another fortnight and I cannot say that I'm surprised, given the…

I speak in figures. The phrase is probably meant to address the report of an architect or a repairman or someone who measures your windows for drapes. Engineers, I would guess, although I have never been quite clear on what…

Her Face. Agatha looked in the mirror again and read her face. It was not the face of a child. It was not the face of the girl who had crossed the ocean and touched the waves with her hand…