Getting Along
”Nothing is what it seems… I’m not even what I seem.” She wails it with such self-involved pathos it would be funny if it was in a movie and I was just a spectator. I could enjoy the absurd black...
View ArticleDance for the Dead
I lived in the desert then, where the earth drops suddenly from a string of peaks two miles high to the sand and sagebrush below. I first saw them, a small band of Indians, eight or ten of them, up on...
View ArticleFragments
…from certain turnings in the road, as we wound our way along the endless knot, we, that is to say, our fine and diverse collection of travelers, serious and even desperate looking at times, but hearty...
View ArticleOut for Coffee
I’m sitting here at a patio table, at the coffee bistro on the corner, just done with my second strong cup, and so I am seeing little bursts of light, and I’m a bit excited, like on the threshold of...
View ArticleHarmless
The drunk from downstairs is standing on the back porch when I get home from work. He seems harmless, but I don’t much believe in harmless anymore. He and his girlfriend moved in below me about a...
View ArticleChanneling Ahab
In my third year of college I briefly had a girlfriend who was a Buddhist and was always talking about doing no harm and finding the middle way. We watched “Moby Dick” together one night. She saw the...
View ArticleYacht Club
I met her in a guitar shop. I became aware she had been there a while and never got too far away in the big store, that she was actually listening, that we had become aware of each other. Attention is...
View ArticleActuarian
Lecture: “Actuarial Science analyzes statistics with mathematical models to determine probabilities. Probabilities only function meaningfully on a scale large enough to successfully absorb individual...
View ArticleDiscontinuous Cows
They were just two middle school teachers on summer vacation, trying to see a little country, get away from the wilderness of Los Angeles, get somewhere you could actually see stars at night. They...
View Articleascendant
you can’t say we didn’t see it coming… people rising up into the sky… rising up, to paradise or another fate… rising up, as chosen ones… or sinners caught and summoned to reckoning… now we are...
View ArticleForgetfulness
Freddy’s Lament I am an anthropologist. I don’t mean it is something I was formally trained for or practice as a profession. It is only in my nature to be curious about men. My livelihood, that is,...
View ArticleTin Cups
Once upon a time there was a man who made tin cups. Tin cups were handy for dipping drinking water out of buckets and streams. They could be used for soup from caldrons and beer from kegs. They did...
View ArticleHistory
Books of history are often fat, sometimes coming in multiple volumes but still, the story seems to be quite repetitive, and we might wonder why history is taking so long. God gave Moses the ten...
View ArticleSixpack Rules
“As long as the centuries continue to unfold, the number of books will grow continually, and one can predict that a time will come when it will be almost as difficult to learn anything from books as...
View ArticleFried Food
Fried food can be a great boon in times of stress. It has a wonderfully filling and calming effect on one’s queasy stomach. The stomach, having its own priorities, can become anxious, what with so...
View ArticleGrowth Inc
I am the victim of relentless economic growth. It was an accident, really, that made my cash start growing. I guess you could say it was the result of a chemical spill. I had taken the few dollars...
View ArticleWashing the Dead
Farook was afraid. He had doubts that any man could speak for God. He had prayed for guidance and Allah had filled his mind with questions instead of answers. He was afraid of doing something...
View ArticleNecessary Evil
The success and dominance of the human species on earth has brought us to the point where the greatest threat to our continued existence is ourselves. We argue endlessly about who among us is to...
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