CJ Woods III’s Story Archive

Everyone’s Hair is On Fire These Days

August 22, 2019 | by CJ Woods III

In the middle of our phone conversation Lisa said to me, “Bing’s hair is on fire.” She said that about my son-in-love because, “He’s talking to me.” When she was young, my eldest daughter learned from her parents the lesson of patience, and the avoidance of unnecessary interruption. In the … Read More

A Day In The Life

August 15, 2019 | by CJ Woods III

Walking east on Douglass Drive, a street in the Borough of Wilkinsburg just outside of Pittsburgh, Penn., I see fat white cumulous clouds, their bottoms smudged with a grumbling gray, posed against an impossibly blue sky, a blue I’ve never been able to coax onto a canvas. From the thick … Read More

The Good, The Bad, The Beautiful

August 8, 2019 | by CJ Woods III

“Call your brother. Cancerous polyp on his liver.” This text message from my sister was startling, and I acted on it immediately: I called my brother. My sister is the center of the universe that represents her living siblings. She once lamented, after the death of the second of her … Read More

Quitting

August 1, 2019 | by CJ Woods III

Moving from one home to another requires of us to make decisions about what to keep and move, and what to discard. Of course, it helps to move seldom; I had burrowed into my last apartment — a place I called “the loft” — and stayed for six years. When … Read More

The Confluence of Joyful Things

July 25, 2019 | by CJ Woods III

“You’re not very ‘CJ’ today,” Chelsea said as she served me my cider. I was sitting at the counter of the tasting room of my favorite cidery, nursing a “Dry” and a water. The noise was dying down as the attendants and presenters of the art event that I had … Read More