Jonathan Carroll's Blog, page 14

Your Disappearing Act

“Do you believe in forgiveness?”

“Believe? Sure, in principal. Have I experienced it or seen it in others, real forgiveness? No, although I’m sure it does happen sometimes. My perception is most people digest hurt and move on, or forget, or time sands the burrs and rough edges off our bad memories. However scars — physical or emotional — fade but they very rarely disappear. In the end forgiveness should be a disappearing act.”

Your Disappearing Act was originally published in Jonathan Carroll o...

Homework Assignment #2

Long ago in a graduate school creative writing seminar, one of our assignments was to write a happy story in three words.

I wrote “She said yes.”

Homework Assignment #2 was originally published in Jonathan Carroll on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The Secret of Success

Besides the requisite luck, talent, and personal drive, there is a secret to great public success in any field. You either inherently know that secret, or through life experience figure it out along the way and then move toward glory. Everyone else sits in the audience wondering how the hell do they do that? The star athlete, a titan of business, the award winning actor, the incomparable teacher or surgeon, a word magician novelist… all of them take their correct answer to that secret with th...

Far from home

There are people at the airport waiting in the lounge to board their flight. A man on a train struggling to slide that heavy bag into an overhead rack. A woman staring blankly out the window at an auto rest stop restaurant with half a bad chicken sandwich in her hand. At one point or another during the day, today, any day, all of these travelers will have the exact same blankness in their eyes that come with knowing they have another four or five or ten hours of travelling before they get to...

When she leaned in…

Just before they sat down, she leaned in very close to him again and sniffed. “What kind of cologne do you use?”

Taken aback both by the intimacy of her gesture and the question, he shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t have a favorite.”

“And I bet you don’t wear one enough. You should — this is a mistake for a man. The world is full of bad things — bad people, bad food, bad smells, bad situations. Men who walk through life smelling beautiful always have an advantage. Women are expected to sme...

You in a Plastic Bag

“What followed was a wretched series of exaggerated, supercharged affairs with men she initially welcomed but quickly grew to despise. She slept with them to try to find some kind of replacement for the one she could never replace. She was destroyed and knew it, but because she was beautiful there were always men around eager to try saving her, and she let them. She let too many of them try, but their touching enthusiasm and predictable desires only made things worse. She felt that she was su...

Sanctuary

A bedroom is always the emotional center of any house. The physical passion lives there. So does the greatest peace and sadness. Nor are we ever more alone than when we are in bed with only our secrets and inner voices to say good night or good riddance to a day. It can be a sanctuary, the safest harbor in the sea of our days, or it can be hell. The hours we spend there are sometimes the most important of our lives.

from the novel WHITE APPLES

Sanctuary was originally published in Jonathan Carr...

Your are my Thanksgiving Day Float

She asked “Tell the truth — what do you like about me?”

He smiled and said, “Everything about you is larger than life — your passion, your anger, intellect, humor, and appreciation of even the smallest things. Just who you are teaches me new stuff all the time. You’re like a Thanksgiving Day parade float of womanhood.”

Your are my Thanksgiving Day Float was originally published in Jonathan Carroll on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this sto...

That’s not poop on your shoe, it’s a memory

Some bad memories refuse to go away.

After stepping squarely into a pile of dog shit the other day and determinedly (unsuccessfully) trying to scrape every bit of it off my shoe afterward, it later struck me that this scraping was very much like how we try to scrape our minds clean of certain bad memories. But the sad truth is no matter how long, hard or vigilantly we may scrape, frequently some of the insidious stuff stays or hides in the cracks and it’s not uncommon for it, for them, to keep...

The Crazy Cafe

I love the crazy café. It’s not crazy every time I pass by, but very often something is happening in there that makes me smile and slow a bit so as to enjoy the moment. I’m always hoping the door is open so I get the full blast effect of what’s going on inside. Joyous laughter, heated arguments, loud music, dogs barking and sometimes running out onto the street pursued by their laughing owners… Often couples are dancing around in there with big smiles on their faces. Much of the time all the...