Patrick Meadows and Stephanie Shepard Memorial Site
It was inevitable, thought we didn’t know it at the time, that we should meet Bulent. Mari and I flew from Izmir to Ankara where we spent the night. Then the next day by bus to Adana. Sounds like a simple statement, but it was not so simple. The two-propeller plane took off from what (more)
Thursday I am pointlessly staring at my tea, now only a stain at the bottom of the mug. So I glance at my reflection in the glass door of the dish cupboard opposite the table where I am sitting already quite a while. Reflected is the window behind me, through which I see that the (more)
The joy had gone out of her life ten years ago already. Why pretend? Her friends tried to cheer her up, but stubbornly she held onto her empty life and empty house and empty bed. In fact she came to resent the happiness of others. Only the firmest of old acquaintances persisted, inviting her twice (more)
In this excerpt, set in Tampa in the early 1970s, Patrick describes how he first learned of Dr. Weightnovel, which turned into a writing project he worked on for the rest of his life, but never finished. I’ve made only minor edits, primarily fixing typos and punctuation. Caution to the reader: this story includes a (more)
Create a montage of those events that most often recur in memory. Mari got a a job teaching elementary art in Centereach. We found a cottage in Lake Ronkokoma to rent. Since she was teaching under the name on her teaching certificate, we lived under that name – last name Irvin. Her sister Nancy and (more)
He lost belief in almost everything. You might say he had a mysterectomy. Entanglements in quantum physics (also in relationships): Once 2 systems have interacted they must from that point on be considered a single system, even if they fly apart from each other and remain widely separate. Ian Smolin, “NYRB The Other Einstein” June (more)
How time flies. And with it memory, as swift or swifter. I picked up a book, The Fall, with me over fifty years, how I couldn’t say. I thought all the books from those years were left in a barn in Peculiar Missouri. Some of those books, only a few, i would have liked to (more)
Yet another excerpt from Patrick’s collection of files called Scattered Notes.odt. There are still another 60 or 70 pages to add, so it will take some time to share them all with you. From Gretchen: One of my earliest memories is cops giving us sandwiches at a Greyhound Station. Tile floors. Ugly light. JP already (more)
She left notes all over the house. Notes of regret, of recrimination and self-recrimination, of childhood memories. One by one he found them, and began a deep file into which one day he would look again, only superficially noting her silent reflections on her life and theirs together. Among these, a list of lovers, going (more)
The oncologist put his hand with outspread fingers in front of my nose. He had asked me to come alone to his office. “You don’t have to shove it in her face,” he said. “But you will want to know. She is going to die. She waited too long.” She found out for sure when (more)
Our daddy bought a piece of land on Lee Road that had, until then, been a watermelon patch, and on weekends he proceeded to build a four-room house. The previous owner was Lee Rhodes, who lived with his wife Carlee, on our right. His son Bill lived on our left with his wife Lorena. Over (more)
Only thought is fleeter than light. Five hours and light reaches us from Pluto. But in a nanosecond we can reach Pluto in our minds. We are not there, except in thought, but that is the point. The same happens with time travel. With a flick of a dendrite I stand on a varnished floor (more)
A segment from Patrick’s Scattered Notes collection. No one can deny that the media are changing the world. The three T’s – TV, Tabloids, and Tattler-ism are infecting every susceptible mind on the Tube network. Murders in remote English towns are rivaled by cannibals in a US city. The worst black-gay-immigrant bashing in Madrid is (more)
Here’s the prequel to Patrick’s autobiographical story http://www.patrick-meadows.com/heading-to-coos-bay/ about his brief time as a lumberjack with Lee. I found this in Patrick’s Scattered Notes collection. I was choker setter. Lee chased the cat. Before starting college, I looked for a summer job to accumulate funds for my studies. My parents could not afford to send (more)