“HOW CAN YOU TELL FROM a single dish whether or not the cook is adept?” a customer once asked Prosatio Silban. “Simplicity in the complex, and complexity in the simple,” came the cook-errant’s swift reply. His customer creased her brow.…
Author: Neal Ross Attinson
Neal Ross Attinson is one of those text-compulsives who feels naked without a keyboard, or at least a a pad and pen. He is unafraid of adverbs, loves astronomy and gastronomy with equally unabashed passion, and lives with/in an eclectic library in Sonoma, California.
Prosatio Silban and the Weekly Vacation
LIKE ALL PEOPLE ACROSS THE Uulian Commonwell, the Cook For Any Price always looked forward with eager anticipation to Sixth. For the first five of the Uulian week’s six days, everyone (including beggars and outlanders) tended to their trades, professions,…
Prosatio Silban and the Dire Straits
FROM WHERE DO YOU DRINK when your once-abundant spring dries up? Prosatio Silban sighed, and – for the dozenth or so time – regarded his empty pantry, coldbox, and coin jar. I don’t imagine repeated examination is going to fill…
Pithyism #666 (Three Little Words You May [or May Not] Want to Hear)
“HERE THEY COME.”
Prosatio Silban and the Artful Dodge
HERE’S A SIMPLE QUESTION: WHAT is the essence and meaning of “art?” I have never seen such beautiful food, Prosatio Silban thought. The village of Pastisi had made a name for itself by crafting the most picturesque baked goods in…
IF YOU CAN’T EXPLAIN IT simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”
— Albert Einstein
Prosatio Silban and the Dueling Perfumers
THE SENSE OF SMELL IS an important component for that of taste. But can it stand alone? “I shall be brief,” said the woman in the jewel-bedecked caftan, smoothing a tailored crease upon one crossed knee. “My enterprise, ‘Sobor’s Scents,’…
Pithyism #20-20
EVERYTHING IS EASY — IN HINDSIGHT.
Prosatio Silban and the Tainted Wind
NOT ALL AWAKENINGS ARE RUDE – but some may as well be. Prosatio Silban stretched, yawned, sat up, and contemplated the interior of the curtained sleeping-berth tucked into his galleywagon’s rear. Something is amiss, he thought. But what? His inquisitive…
THE AX EXISTED FOR 1.4 million years before anyone thought to put a handle on it.”
— James Williams
Prosatio Silban and the Boundary Crossers
PROSATIO SILBAN HAD TO LOOK twice before he realized what he was seeing. Why is this Xao woman, he asked himself, dressed as an Uulian? It was a fair question. The Xao were almost the oldest original residents of the…
Pithyism #-30-
DO NOT MOCK THE DAMNED, for you yourself may be one of them someday. — Old reporter’s proverb