“WE HAVE REACHED THE DEPTH of darkness. Let us now make the long, slow, purposeful ascent back toward the Light.” –Barbatus T. Elder
Category: Writ
My own serious stuff; the craft itself; literary (and authorial) inspiration; the art of reading.
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…
Introduction: Prosatio Silban and the Golden Moment
You’ve read the preface. Now here’s the introduction. ALTHOUGH NOW A FORMER SACREANT, Prosatio Silban retained a sensitivity to the more spiritual aspects of his daily routine – but since his was the life of a mercenary cook in a…
Haiku: Timeless Time
IT”S 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 for me 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…
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…
Haiku: The Nameless Name
THAT-WHICH-SOME-CALL-“GOD“: Universal, non-dual. What is It for you?
Unless you are at home in the metaphor, you are not safe anywhere.”
— Robert Frost