America is a pretty important place. And yes I call it America, because that is how I grew up hearing it. I like the name, too, what’s there to say. A-mer-i-ca. Merica. Murica.   If it suddenly stopped existing, which if we believe what anyone says, could be any day now, then I would like […]

A good book invites you to a world. A great book enters yours.   Both happened when I read the Alchemist.   Storytime. I was on my way to the airport, on my way to Europe to help the lady move her things to Bucharest. Per tradition, I made my round of phone calls to […]

“. . . come back to say goodbye to me, and I will make you a present of a secret.”   My uncle used to say, a bad lunch ruins your day. You go away hungry for not having eaten, angry for having spent the money, and, on top of that, you must wait until […]

The restroom was occupied.   So Margot danced to the center, where Gaspar and Linda were wrapped in a single embrace. When the couple noticed who was approaching, they made room.   “Happy birthday,” shouted Gaspar.   “You throw cool parties,” followed Linda.   Margot thanked the new couple, handing each a red solo cup. […]

(art attributed to Gerrel Saunders)   If you don’t count sleeping with someone you shared a bed with before your current girlfriend, then I have never cheated. If you don’t count video sex as intimacy, then I have never cheated. If you don’t count it as cheating when you are single but the other person […]

Today I would like to put words to the following concept:   ROMÂNIA.   The prompt is “Which country impressed you the most?” I won’t say “the most, the most”, but this one above many moves me to move there. To provide the post with a sense of focus, and fun, the following flow will […]

What if I told you a story?   Breakfast with mamá, galleria area Houston, 2014 — the year I came back home to live with my parents.   She hints at my finding a job as casually as she stirs the sugar in her coffee. I ruffle my nose. It would be easy, she suggests, […]

Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, Life is but a dream. (English Language nursery rhyme)     I wouldn’t have read Finnegans Wake if it hadn’t been for Ela. It was a winter weekday, stopping at a sidewalk book vendor, when I saw it for $3 and said, […]

Be water, my friend. Bruce Lee   Praise to the blocks, the stumbles and locks! They keep villains away, keep terror ad hoc. The purpose of a block is to channel, you know, a flow the consciousness doesn’t know; while laziness allows us to rock peace or pajamas. And what’s wrong with a lock? If […]

for Gloria Anzaldúa   Open your eyes. Over you stands an eagle-looking priest with an obsidian knife in his hand, ready to cut open your chest from throat to stomach. It’s for a god you do not believe in, but because your hands are tied, you better believe.   Dizzy, the rough of the sacrificial […]

Why not jot down the top ten bucket-list trips I would fancy? For now they are fantasy, that is deliberately wild. But thus all the more dreamy. Can you guess the common thread?   1. TRANS-SIBERSKI-EXPRESS The first would take a good two months, to do it real chill from tundra to camp, Moscow to […]

A poignant question, and I seem to have but an hour to ponder the thought. Thus I invite you to take your index finger and run it along the cracks of your vanity mirror, get it out of your matrix. This one’s on the penny side to-day. Ride.   Is it fair to call it […]

Big-breasted women, five steins a hand, and charming men in green, short-short overalls stuffed each other’s mouths with bratwurst and beer till they couldn’t rock no more. Bavaria. Its capital: München. Things played out a little differently there for the boys and me, who had gotten used to the exaggerations of Italy and indulgences of […]

The Elements of Style by Strunk and White rests on my bookshelf like a couple at the beach. Eyes closed, enjoying the sun, a tan, the sounds of the literary world tossed at sea, though thoroughly relaxing.   We have all, in our mission for clarity and acuteness, turned to these pages.   “The work […]

This blogger knows he is about to walk through a room cluttered with cliches (ex, “Art for art’s sake,” “Business is an art,” “Selling out,” “Get ya money”), but stepping past each one, eyeing them a second, so as to reach the clear corner of the room, to breathe.   Today’s target vocabulary: Artistic prostitution, […]