by Matt Herron
The alchemist’s success was marred by one crucial misstep: lack of foresight.
He always dreamed of success, of course. For himself, for his family, for his small but proud country, buried, as it was, at the edge of the “third world,” that trite phrase that removed them from the immediate benefits of science and civilization. He dreamed of his name burnished in lights, of a banner with his achievements written across the stars, of an anchor in the sky that pulled his country onto modern industry’s center stage. —Read on »
by Matt Herron
Imagine that a man is sitting on a park bench with a burlap sack of bird seed. To one side of the bench is a map of the world that children have inscribed on the pavement in chalk. The man reaches into the sack and grabs a hand full, then cocks his arm and scatters the bird seed out over the map of the world. —Read on »
by Matt Herron
Merry Christmas to all you wheezing sacks of meat. I hope you fully enjoy this day. It’s your lucky day. Not because baby Jesus was supposedly born on this day, or because you get to play with your new overpriced toys. Today is your lucky day because today is my day off. —Read on »
by Matt Herron
Do you smell that? Something is burning. It is the residue of me. I gathered it all up with patient strokes of a 99 cent lint roller and set it on fire. —Read on »
by Matt Herron
Remember when you were a kid and everything was magical and new? When the fruit was sweeter, the trees were taller? Remember when the ocean waves loomed larger and crashed harder? The capacity remains, surely. We are all capable of wonder. But where has it gone? Have we lost it to the rise and fall of the tides of time? We grow up and we begin to take things for granted. We grow callous to wonder, to the beauty in nature, even to life itself. And in despair of the magic lost, we ask if the day will come when we see things again with new eyes. We search out the people, the places and the drugs that help us see things in new light, and we keep them close while their novelty lasts. But then again, we grow used to all things, and even drugs lose their appeal. New cities become mundane. Exciting people learn how to bore. And that is life: we are always looking for something that is not built to last. We devour the things we love and leave empty shells in our wake. We drain the magic to feed our souls, but we are never satisfied. Fundamentally creatures of appetite, our hunger is always renewed, is expanded the more we consume. We will never be full. We wander the world in an endless search. So learn to appreciate things while they last. Keep wonder alive. Wonder is the wine of life.
by Matt Herron
The first time he saw her, stepping out of a taxi in front of the Opera House in Toronto, wearing black stiletto heels, a thigh-length white dress, and a silver chain necklace with a single emerald that rested an inch below her delicate clavicles, the central verse of the Beatles song, I Want You (She’s So Heavy), flickered across the backside of his mind: I want you, I want you so bad, babe; and it stayed in his head until he saw her a week later and learned her name. Tamara, she said with a shy smile. Then the soundtrack of his days echoed: I want you so bad, Tamara, until it was unbearable to sit still if she was not the centerpiece of his line of vision.
