the tyrant's reign ends with death; the martyr's begins with it

Speak into my good eye.

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There are those awkward interfamily squabbles that you are both witness to and proximate cause of. I never want to sell a kid down the river – on two or three occasions I’ve ended up defending a kid in my presence as his/her parent(s) go off on all the disappointments that the kid has been dishing out in the family – which doesn’t make things testy so much as it ends in resounding silence. Awkward really isn’t the word but it’ll do.

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At this date, from this perspective, it seems funny to me that people actually live in Malibu. For some reason I have a hard time accepting that you would have to fill up with gas, buy groceries, and attend to the banalities of life if you reach a certain stratospheric income level. It’s puzzling. On the other hand, it no longer seems to chafe my imagination to conceive of twelve people living in a two bedroom house. I can picture it because I’ve read that story a dozen times in mini-essays and “free writes” and the unexceptional tone smoothed over whatever ruffles gathered at the outset of this experience.