Family relies on the antics of nationalism: who belongs, who doesn’t, to whom are we loyal, to whom are we not . . . I suppose “family” is another F-word that can be something that brings pleasure, or that might be deployed as a weapon if in the mouth of the wrong person.
Do I come across as a middle child with first-child energy? Would you recommend treatment for my character, and if so, from a sliding-scale social worker or a psychiatrist? Meditation or medication? Out-patient or in?
An acclaimed Scottish writer and performer, Michael Pedersen is the author of two poetry collections, Play with Me and Oyster, and most recently a memoir titled Boy Friends, which celebrates…
Dad quit smoking via a hypnotist shortly before my sister Margaret was born. When I was eight or nine, he liked telling me the story of the hypnosis, sitting together on the green sofa in the living room, parallelograms of sunlight on the brown carpet.