ANYTHING CAN BE LEARNED, BUT not everything can be taught.
Prosatio Silban and the Ersatz Indigene
“A CHANGE OF CLOTHES IS not a change of man,” goes the old Uulian proverb – and neither is it a change of cultures.
Prosatio Silban wiped the copious sweat from his hairless brow and sighed. He and his quaint lumbering dray-beast, Onward, were making their way with difficulty through the infamous Emerald Incessance – that vast, reed-thick wilderness bordered on the west by the decadent Uulian Commonwell and to the east by the forbidding Blacktooth Mountains.
The beefy cook’s galleywagon swayed from side to side as it rolled over bumpy loam and through overtowering vegetation, following a barely discernible footpath.
What Maimonides (Or Was It Lao-tse?) Really Meant
“THOSE WHO KNOW, CHUCKLE.”
Prosatio Silban and the Proportional Mystery
SOMETIMES, EVEN AN ENCHANTER NEEDS a bit of mundane help.
Prosatio Silban was sitting, chin in hand, at one of his galleywagon’s two tables-and-chairs in cosmopolitan Soharis’ eastern marketplace, watching potential customers walk by and wondering what he could do to tempt them into spending some time (and coin!) at his portable establishment.
Keep It Under Your Hat
IT PAINS ME ON SEVERAL levels to do this, but I am currently wearing a tweed cabbie cap over my kippah.
The reason is simple — a dear friend sincerely and greatly fears for my safety in an era where Jews are being harassed, attacked, and beaten on the world’s streets. I respect her opinions and feelings. So I am honoring them.
In truth, I am of (at least) two minds about this issue. I first donned a full-time yarmulke in March of 2000 for a variety of reasons, one being my belief that, following a local antisemitic incident, we needed to become more visible, not less. I still feel that way. Covering my headgear feels a little like “letting the terrorists win.”
Prosatio Silban and the Evasive Death
STARLESS DARKNESS FILLED THE OBSERVABLE universe.
Where am I? Prosatio Silban thought.
He tried to make his voice work, but couldn’t find or even feel his throat. In fact, his entire body seemed to be missing.
What am I?
Only silence answered; a silence so profound that he felt part of it, that he was it.
Am I?
He had no answer to that question, nor to the next one.
Prosatio Silban and the Agreeable Disagreement
SOMETIMES, AND WITHOUT MEANING TO, religious faith can eat itself by blurring the lines between divine desires and human humbuggery.
By which is meant, O Patient Reader, that while the Flickering Gods always have a clear idea as to what They want, Their followers can (and often do) convince themselves that their gods want what they want.
Case in point: the village of Everfaire, situated on the dividing-line between lands administered by the city-state of Pormaris and those overseen by neighboring Soharis.