The House at Dusk

Beyond our yard there was a canyon, and at its edge, as a boy, I used to lean into the wind. The Panhandle gives a child very little to hide behind. There were few trees, only plains running out in every direction, and the wind had the whole country to itself. It was loud in the way a large animal is loud, not in any one place but everywhere at once. I would stand where the ground gave out, tip my weight forward, and let it take me. It pushed back with exactly as much force as I offered, and so I did not fall. I felt free, and I felt held, and it did not occur to me then that those two things were supposed to be at odds. I came to that edge most often as a teenager, closeted and in a private misery I had no language for. I cried into the wind because it was the only place to put it. It asked no questions. It did not need me to arrange my grief into something presentable. I remember the words I said to it, because they were so few: Hold me. Love me. Accept me. Free me. They are the t...

There is an hour in the morning when the house belongs neither to the night nor to the day. The darkness has begun, almost imperceptibly, to surrender its dominion, though the windows offer little evidence of the coming light. Nothing stirs beyond the small, familiar sounds of a sleeping household. The world, with all its magnificent inconveniences, has not yet remembered that I exist. It is five o'clock, and for a little while, I belong to myself. My dogs settle on either side of me, faithful sentinels at the threshold of whatever country I am about to enter. They have no particular interest in my spiritual development, so far as I can tell. Nevertheless, they keep their watch with a devotion that would shame many a religious institution. I sometimes imagine them as hounds guarding the gates of hell, though their duties are considerably less demanding than those of their mythological relations. In my hand, I hold a stone. Usually it is the tiger's eye I have worn and kept clos...

 One of the earliest books I remember holding was a book about tarot cards. I was too young to make much sense of the words, but the pictures were another matter. There were kings and queens, strange creatures, figures suspended between heaven and earth, and people standing at the edges of things I did not yet understand. I remember studying those images with the peculiar seriousness children sometimes bring to subjects adults consider beyond them. I had no understanding of divination, occult philosophy, or the elaborate systems of meaning concealed within the cards. I only knew that something about them fascinated me. My mother had an interest in such things herself. For a time, she explored witchcraft and the occult, and although her involvement eventually diminished, she never discouraged mine. She bought me my first Ouija board. She allowed me to read about spells, spirits, and the curious possibilities of an enchanted world. I collected ingredients, imagined workings of my own...