Consider the short film someone . . . by John Timmons. Some of you will know what I’m referring to as “you” as audience may include contributors to a project called 100 Days and “you” will already have “considered” the video, which would mean that I’m asking you to consider it again, forcing a revisitation. […]
My parents did a strange thing. When my grandfather died, they buried him in a favorite spot in the woods, which is against the current law. The law calls for all dead people to be disposed of by licensed professionals and in plots designated by the state. But my parents decided to bury Grandfather is […]
One of the worst days of my life was when I heard a voice narrating my life, which is either a sign of schizophrenia or coma. How does it sound or feel, you ask? Or you ask, Wasn’t that a movie staring Will Farrell called Stranger Than Fiction? The answer to the second question is: […]
That famous scene in To Kill A Mockingbird. How should we approach it? By theme, by character, by tone, by timing, by its drawing of space, by it relation to Harper Lee’s novel? In this portion of the film, one action stands out: the act of standing up, which is a metaphor for courage in […]
In my living room I have a drawing of foxes dressed as English gentleman hunters. They’re drinking wine, eating fowl, and having a good time (except one of them has pissed his pants). When I turn away, they become a part of Mandelbrot’s curves and repetitions, his complex numbers. And I always turn away (as […]
My grandfather had a saying, “I will die a bitter man.” And he did. He owned the largest salt mine in Spain, you see. My father, who would smile when he told us stories about salt, fretted about our futures. “Mine was white,” he said. He said he wanted us to know color. “Explore it,” […]
It so happened that the man at the head of the auditorium told us that we were all fools and that we were being killed by technology. And it just so happened that I raised my hand and asked him how he’d come here, by what means had he made his way. “By train, of […]
At a point of my studies of the archive I came across what appeared to be a distant and recorded memory of an otherwise unmemorable but unremembered day. This I hadn’t expected. I hadn’t expected to find myself in the archive, which had always been a cliche, a cliche because I’d read about the work […]
People have that book they remember reading. They find the book later in life, pick it up, open it, then put it down because it isn’t the book they’d read when they were young. It has the same title, the same words, the same folds in those places where the reader had paused. But it’s […]
Just before the earthquake hit, I, I, I What was happening outside during Jim’s birth? They said a crash, something falling, a big light, or just the regular traffic passing If I could just be here forever Her skin is creeping off her bones and will soon cover the moon, which is a persistent dream […]
In the novel The Life of Geronimo Sandoval, the author explores the notion of the simultaneous and the coincidental. But we could also put it another way. Imagine three characters, Esmerelda, Diderot, and Wang, only one of which is a character in the aforementioned novel. Mornings for each of these characters happens at a different […]
Recently, I attended a gathering that required that the crowd stand for and accompany The Star-Spangled Banner and recite the United States Pledge of Allegiance. The first is derived from a poem entitled The Defense of Fort McHenry. The second is a result of an effort to sell flags and was written by Francis Bellamy, […]
One day I called myself. Reader, you may ask, “How could you call yourself.” The answer has to do with the nature of relationships. I have a relationship with an image (several really) of myself from many years in the past, in and around the time I met Juliette in the Lake Region. I was […]
My friend, Jesus, Jesus Villa, who was a chemist by trade (he worked in oil), and who was also my roommate in The City, asked annoying questions. “Should I wear pants today?” he would ask. Elena, who met us at the apartment every morning for coffee, would say, “What color pants?” I would say, “He […]
