The succulent roses are behind a white picket fence. The fence protects an improbable garden surrounding an even more improbable white house. Outside the white picket fence is the Patagonian steppe, an endless sea of scrub and dust. Only the white picket fence stands between the two states of creation: on one side, human warmth…
Pleasure dogs have read what’s been written and aren’t impressed. Pleasure dogs have long lines of prose stuffed in their pockets and poetry gathering like filth between their toes. Their desks are covered with pleas and the floors of their dwellings are littered with crumpled responses. The walls are covered with old photographs. Pleasure dogs…
[audio: https://www.kevincarrelfooter.com/podcasts/podcast-8AUG2010.mp3] AGIA GALINI, Crete – At night, myths rove about us on this island. They come out when the sun is setting, emerging from their caves and from the sea, to wander through the olive orchards and sit under the bougainvillea, luminous in the moonlight: the Minotaur, Icarus, Kronos and Rhea, Zeus and Europa.…
[audio: https://www.kevincarrelfooter.com/podcasts/podcast-1AUG2010.mp3] MADRID, Spain – I am looking to an illuminated blue horizon as if the edge of the world were rimmed in neon. Three church cupolas form a panorama to impress believers and non-believers alike. Down below, there is the sound of the occasional group of passing revelers or a lonely accordion going from…
MADRID, Spain – On the far cusp of the night, I sit undressed on the edge of the bed drinking in the air that has finally cooled. You must wait until everyone has gone to sleep to receive the cool air with its messages from beneath the sea. I chuckle at the audacity of this…
PARIS, France – I see them on the streets. I overhear them talking on cell phones. I watch them conversing oh so fluently to their French boyfriends in cafes. I see them basking in the light of desire in the city of light. The American girls are joyfully under siege this summer in Paris. I…
In the performing arts, as in politics, there are “handlers.” They occupy a role just a fraction of a degree from the center of attention but buried in shadow. The purpose of a handler is to bring out the extraordinary qualities of the person they serve. They are many things — counselors, coaches, flack-catchers, confidants…
At the smorgasbord restaurant, in the banal flatlands where gangs and throaty V8s roared like the cleavage of the girls on the corner and the only swath of green was the cemetery behind its high gates — high because everyone was clamouring to get in — we stood in line for custard. Because it was…