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, […]

A story is a story, but a narrative is the story plus how you tell it.   Genette’s essay titled Narrative Discourse inspires all sorts of thoughts. Mostly, he has me thinking about time. He analyses mood and voice too, but what really makes me shiver is time. For example, a narrator can narrate past […]