Category: Art

  • Who ARE you?

    The email subject said “Who ARE you?” I thought it was one of those cleverly-designed teaser lines that spammers use to get you to open their offers, scams and viruses. But still, I took a closer look, proving once again that we are all always on edge, waiting for that message from the deep and…

  • Women are my guides

    When my best friend in grammar school called me a “ladies’ man,” he hurled the words at me with the intention to hurt. He spit the phrase out like an epithet. It was the beginning of the end of our idyllic friendship, which had included secret forts, ambitious games of hide and seek involving the…

  • Grab the exquisite pain!

    Sometimes beauty hurts. Maybe it even hurts most of the time. Knowing exquisite beauty is a painful experience. It is a premonition of death. It is a foretelling of our end and of all that we will leave behind. This morning I watched and listened to a few songs of a concert DVD that I…

  • The beautiful illusion

    Today I gave away something that was very valuable to me. I gave away an illusion. It was an idea sprung from a long conversation with a friend Nick about community. It was one of those conversations that leave you both exhausted and frenetic at the end. Both of us are members of a men’s…

  • Luscious

    I stand on the cusp of the dawn. One day stands between me and the night. One day followed by a long night. I step into my one day, thrilled, embattled, twisting, ecstatic. As I am falling into it, tumbling awkwardly, arms flailing, I grab at things. I hold them for a while, but then…

  • Swallow

    Swallow. From the cliffs where the birds make their nests to the intimate scene in a hotel room full of colored lights, the word “swallow” makes its poetic appearance. From awkward dinner table scenes (“swallow your food”) to the heightened moment when one is waiting to find out who will: swallow. Words are artifice. Stare…

  • The Learning Curve

    I hit an oil slick on a sharp downhill curve and my bike and I went careening across the road. My partner, who went down right behind me on the same slick on the same curve, fared worse: his helmet grew a deep crack and he lost his short-term memory for a while in the…

  • Naked soul playing with fire

    Naked soul playing with fire

    “… with the amps blasting and Jason sweating as if he were being barbecued under the stage lights, he called for more air conditioning but no air conditioning would save him under those conditions – never mind that he seems to inhabit his own personal inferno.”

  • Rising from our ashes

    The day begins with a sigh, so much to lose, so much to gain. I disagree with those who say that we are born innocent and pure. Rather, we are born plump and unformed — beautiful in our rawness perhaps, but just a bare hint of who we may be. We are born of colliding…