“THOSE MARKS ON YOUR CUTTING board look like words in an ancient language,” observed Prosatio Silban’s customer. “They are, actually,” the cook explained. “The story it tells has been written by me almost every day for all my professional life,…
Category: Writing
My own serious stuff; the craft itself; those who inspire me in it; the art of reading.
Confessions of an Earnest High School Dropout
IT ENDED LIKE THIS: “MRS. J—–,” I said evenly, “you should work for the city sewer department instead of teaching English — because you know more about scat than you do about good writing.” Except I didn’t say “scat.” And…
Solstice Prayer (2019 Reboot)
“WE HAVE REACHED THE DEPTH of darkness. Let us now make the long, slow, purposeful ascent back toward the Light.” –Barbatus T. Elder
If truth is stranger than fiction, it is because it has a better and more creative author.”
— Jeff Forsythe
“NaSSWriMo!”
TODAY KICKS OFF THE WOULD-BE novelists’ annual motivational event, NaNoWriMo: National Novel Writing Month. The idea is to write 1,667 words a day for a total of 50,000 by November 30. (I participated one year, and have a fairly mediocre…
Prosatio Silban and the Golden Moment
You’ve read the preface. Now here’s the introduction. ALTHOUGH A SELF-DEFROCKED SACREANT, Prosatio Silban retained a sensitivity to the more spiritual aspects of his daily routine — but since his was the life of a traveling cook in a buopoth-drawn…
Fiction: Act of Who?
“THANK YOU FOR CALLING TOTAL Auto, may I help you?” “Yes, my car was swept away in the recent floods, and I would like to file a claim.” “I’m sorry sir, but flood coverage isn’t included in any of our…
Haiku: Timeless Time
THE SPACE ON THE CLOCK Between the Tick and the Tock. Have a good Shabbos!
On Homo relator (w/ Special Guest Star John Wheeler)
IT TOOK A WEIRD BOUT of synchronistic weather to illustrate how our species loves to tell stories. First, you need to know about Mugwort Manor. It was a Victorian apartment near the corner of San Francisco’s Fulton and McAllister streets…
Allegiance Redux
A FEW YEARS AGO, I revised the Pledge of Allegiance — instead of stating support for a piece of cloth, it celebrates what that cloth stands for. In today’s hyper-partisan political and cultural climate, it’s important to be both precise…
Let Us Sit Upon the Ground and Sing Glad Songs to the Memory of Groovy English Teachers
WHEN MRS. BOISVERT TOLD ME in ninth-grade English class that I had the soul of a poet, I grimaced. “I want to be a scientist,” I said. She had no answer to that. But she had answers to lots of…
Street Light (Fourth Indigent Sketch)
HE WAS A FLORID, BEEFY man in his mid-to-late 30s, perched on a high concrete bench in San Francisco’s lunchtime-crowded Justin Herman Plaza, and wearing a grey beltless trenchcoat tightly buttoned up to his thick neck. Every minute or so…