stillness is the move

MANY OF THE PATIENTS I treat were injured on the job, or through the negligence of others, so I end up participating in three or four depositions a year. The first few times, even though I understood intellectually that the deposition wasn’t about me, that it wasn’t me who was on trial, that I’m merely providing information, it still felt like I was on trial. The clipping of the mic on your shirt edge, the so-help-you-god oath, the videographer, the transcriptionist, the stacks of folders on the table — it’s hard not to be at least a little afraid, particularly when you realize that every word you speak is going to be precisely recorded. But now that I have quite a few depositions under my belt, I’m not so awed by them anymore. I used to dread them. Now I kind of look forward.

august

musical confessions, part 2

MY SECOND DISASTROUS vocal audition — magnitudes of order more disastrous than my high school show choir audition — was for a student-organized musical at Rice. Sid Rich College was staging Man of La Mancha and Karen and I went to the tryouts together one evening after dinner.

mounds on lake larose

ON THE BANK of Lake LaRose, within sight of one another when not obscured by foliage, are three mounds on property of Mr. Robert Martin of St. Martinville, La.

was was not a water moccasin

TIED THE PIROGUE to a ropy muscadine vine growing along the haunted oak tree, clambered up the moss-carpeted roots and onto its curving trunk, using the same vine as a kind of ladder to make my way up the face of the steep bank.

morning muscadine

LOADED THE PIROGUE into the truck early this morning and drove it to the landing at the park. Paddled down to the forks, the sun still peeking through the treeline. Plucked wild muscadine for breakfast and waited for daylight to come streaming through the vine leaves.

the forks