Tim Barrus Blog
Posts tagged with death
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A Bar in Paris
I took a tab of acid before I left to hit the bar right at five. Up and down my alley by five is when the screaming starts. Men and women mainly women. Most were pissed off about something or other. You are accountable to the Homo sapiens who love…
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CPR
I would not be worth – all of this – high action traction where the arch of the story itself could explode from pure adrenaline. That tone from word one to the end, lightem up, up, up. Litem up, up, up. I am glad people can coordinate and go for…
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Sitting in the Car Alone
I see shadows. And they move. Time itself is a choreography. I still cannot believe he’s gone. I only get kicked like this if there’s rain. I have no idea why. I had to break the door down. He was so glad to see me. I realized, he was probably…
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Tim Barrus, New York Times
The term – health insurance company – means a big brick wall, taller (just) than publishing tall, it’s not going to pay although you will receive. Stratospheric bills for the insurance itself, and co-pays times twenty. There are many reasons why this paradigm does not work. It’s called greed. The…
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Tim Barrus: In the Thick Dust Our Village, the One Convicts Scratched To Salt, and From It Corn Whiskey Trickles Down the Logging Road
The one thing we know is that the death of light has turned inside out, and the riverbed changed the diversion of sound, sight, and memory. Time itself was another Irish priest slipping beneath a little boat that carried the vaunted authority along in scant excess among the vultures because…
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Tim Barrus: Call Survival What It Is
I grew up in a cabin and I am not the rich boy – let us say cast into caste – that Wikipedia says I am. The idea is a contempt symbolized by the discussions on Wikipedia as to how they would get me. I do wonder what the people…
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Tim Barrus: On Writing
People will tell you to hang in there. It’s not malevolent. It’s stupid, but not outright evil. It’s just sound coming from a mouth, signaling closure. I’m autistic. I do not get this stuff. What does it mean when their eyes look up into the sky. There is a message…
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Bent Over Blue Shadow Ghosts
Tim Barrus, The New York Times Blue Shadow Ghosts I am a communist. Not a Communist With Guns. But a communist who in the face of complete political insanity, fumbles, bumbles, and stumbles through my nightmare of a bi-polar world, two sides to everything. But look at physics. Public Policy…
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Antelope
We all knew where the vampires lived. Those pale rich boys we would beat up. That would set off the island of the troubles times ten. So we just burned them in their coffins. They were not apathetic. They were rich.
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Write A 2-Page Report On Your Field Trip 2 The Slaughterhouse
We were not supposed to be there. I cannot tell you how we got in. If I did that, the lives of those who get us in once a year would be in gave danger. They would be murdered. They live with thousands of deaths every day. I am not…
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Tim Barrus, New York Times
I do not want to live in an American rat race. I do not want to live in America where there is hunger for the poor, and the aristocracy laughs. I do not want to live in an American nightmare where cops are the military and the military are the…
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Tim Barrus, New York Times
Rage is Often All We Are Left With Rage is often all we are left with in the face of culture’s demand that civility prevail in a place where anger is bad, angry people are bad, and no one knows what to do to rectify anything. New York Times’ gatekeepers…
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Various Portraits
I shot myself. I was an adolescent. Subsequent problems are a nightmare. You cannot know the horror of it. Even if you think arrogantly, you can. Do not go down that dark rabbit hole. I was being sexually abused. The adult abusing me was the guy who gave me the…
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Tim Barrus, New York Times
I contracted a fatal disease. Dementia sets in. I do get lost, and find it rather interesting as it is usually somewhere I have never been. I have a 16-year-old (going on 27) “helper” who does everything. His spelling is bad but he proofs my stuff which is always a…
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Tim Barrus, The New York Times
I live in Appalachia. Our people have dogs. Because they help keep us safe. Because we are afraid. For many of us, dogs are all we have. It’s difficult for people who live in parts of the country where things at least sometimes work. Can you imagine a place where…
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Tim Barrus, New York Times
PEOPLE IN THE NEW YORK TIMES ASK ME MANY, MANY THINGS. OFTEN, I HAVE NO ANSWERS. TODAY THE NEW YORK TIMES BRINGS QUESTIONS FROM READERS THAT ARE STUNNED BY THE ROLE RELIGION PLAYS IN DENIAL AND INTOLERANCE Religion has abandoned its roots of martyrdom for Institutional Martyrdom even as its…
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Tim Barrus, New York Times
Trump Supporters and the Lizard Brain Homo Sapiens usually have an ideological safety net called family. Most verterbrate species hand down the ideas of what is “reality” as law via generations from the past. There is no human history where patriarchy was not ascendent. The pregnant female who left the…
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WHAT DOES THE PHOTOGRAPHER OWE THE DEAD
I have been taking photographs for sixty years. It’s a blur. During that time, some of the people I have taken pictures of have died. Car crashes. Suicide. AIDS. Cancer. Covid. Cardiac arrest. The list goes on. Some of the photographs of these people were taken while they were children.…
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Food Stamps: $31.00 per Week for Food
He is losing weight. There is hunger in America. Children always pay the price. Senate Republicans are opposing any increase in food stamps for kids. At twelve, he’s not flourishing. He’s floundering. Medically, he’s now in the highest risk group you can fall into the cracks. It’s a hard fall.…
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Dying Alone
his wings in the jagged glass shadows have been clipped hideously/ they say sedation is this empty vacuum where you are not conscious/ this is a lie/ get used to it/ they’re going to lie to you and force feed you murmuring the dark selves songs/ curling discontent, you hear,…
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The First Time I Met Jasha
The first time I met Jasha was in Moscow. I knew right away exactly how talented as a photographer he was. Photography was his life. All my adventures with Jasha were road trips. Moscow to St. Petersburg. Then, later, New York to New Orleans. We were drunk on fun. It…
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For Tristan
Et exactement, où es-tu ce soir? Si vous pouviez voir les Appalaches, vous ririez de votre cul magique.
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Memory’s Machine
the two of them could be silent as a blackboard/ i no longer know what it means to simply be/ their history is one of burning bones and whipped and a cigarette of fiery scars you cannot see/ who could do that to a child stop asking me that question…
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Fuck World AIDS Day
World AIDS Day Is Out of Touch
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Ginger’s Pasture
when old ned died, we had to drag the horse’s body with a tractor to a pit i had spent a day digging/ i had loved that horse, and could not shake the feeling that we were hurting him by dragging his dead weight with a rope tied around his…