I'm Still Here

  A Quiet End   Author’s note: I thought that I would hit you with a short, short story this time on the blog. I wrote it a number of years ago, and it has been through numerous edits. I warn you; it is somewhat grim and brooding, which as you all well know, fits perfectly with my personality. I welcome your positive or negative feedback. Criticism is welcome. A Quiet End A Short Story by Matt Cantillon                   The old woman sat smoking a cigarette in her TV room. She was surrounded by hundreds of books, dozens of medicine bottles, empty soda cans and full ashtrays. She hurt. Her knees and ankles, her gut, her arthritic hands all throbbed in an unsettling and painful dissonance. For the hundredth time that day she silently wished that she were dead.                 The room in which she sat was a small den at the back of her condominium. It contained a love seat and rocking chair, two TV trays and several bookshelves crammed with books. Also, of course, there

  Service   I heard an interesting and resonant expression yesterday on NPR. The expression was “We should work in service to one another for a better world”. And indeed, if we kept in mind at all times that we are a society, as opposed to a group of individuals, I do believe we’d have a better world. What do we owe one another? That is an interesting and integral question. I was raised and educated to believe that my life is all about service to others, and while it took some time, some maturity, some loss, and some suffering to lend some heft to that belief, I believe I have probably done a passable job of adhering to that moral imperative. We live in a society that places a strong emphasis on individual rights as opposed to the good of society, and often those two concepts end up in stark conflict. Just where is the line between an individual’s right to live as she wishes, and what is good for society in general? We find ourselves dealing with a public health crisis of epi