THE RHYTHMIC RAPPING OF STEEL on wood filled Prosatio Silban’s cozy galleywagon with the sharp tang of garlic, and he marveled – not for the first time – at how easily the aroma sliced through a quarter-century of cooking smells.…
Category: Writing
My own serious stuff; the craft itself; those who inspire me in it; the art of reading.
“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…
Prosatio Silban and the Light Breakfast
TO THOSE WITH LITERALIST SENSIBILITIES, the phrase “ridiculously beautiful” may suggest mere hyperbole and labored contrivance. But take dawn by the western bank of an iridescent river – black sands washed by rippling indigo sparked with silver and rose –…
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…
Neither Rain Nor Snow Nor Sudden Car Door
BOMBING STEEPLY DOWNHILL ON SAN Francisco’s pedestrian-thick California Street while screaming “No brakes!” was just another day in my brief life as a late-1980s bike messenger. I had gotten into “the life” by happy accident. Having been fired from a…
On Blogorrhea (And Its Opposite)
ALTHOUGH I STILL CAN’T SIT for very long, I am also still happy that my seven-year writer’s block has evidently ended (albeit with the death of a close friend). But I will know that it’s really ended when I can…