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CARTOGRAPHY
On the map are neatly etched lines drawn by a fine stylus in a skilled hand separating blue from yellow. This soil is cinnamon there tending to mahogany no line, only a post here, one there and a gun emplacement to deter those who cannot see a line writ on water. In the wind the…
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LEAVING STILL
He never wants to leave this place. He never wants to leave wherever he is at that moment. Moving is the hardest thing for him, arriving is easy. She points out that you cannot arrive here without leaving there. He reminds her that something being easy is not the same thing as something being desired.…
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CULINARIA
My repertoire was so much wider then for that is the mis-appreciated burden of youth. My bookshelves groaned under the weight of a couple of hundred cookbooks, tomes focused on the apple, fish, chicken, or on isolated corners of what seemed to me to be an infinitely large world. Azeri food seemed a continent apart…
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MOST WONDERFUL THING 鐵笛倒吹 六十語
Which is more beautiful, the fragile flower or the stone set in the road? And which is the uglier? The stone, washed in a stream may shine like a diamond, the flower picked soon withers to dust. Each contains beauty each contains ugliness. When you see this you may smile until you feel the blow…
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NEWS
The most interesting thing about visiting websites from foreign news services is that so many offer content in English and how deaths that occur locally seem to invoke the same sadness, horror, belated honor, and that local disasters take precedence over our own disasters not merely because it happened there and not here, but because…
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DEPARTING
We now live in a strange world where nothing is as it was mere weeks ago. I am blessed to live on a small nature preserve and have been spending my afternoons with camera in hand. So if you want something other than words (which follow) you are welcome to visit https://www.flickr.com/photos/98342503@N00/, my Flickr site,…
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THE DARK TIME
The trees, bearing up strongly against the still falling snow remember leaves, though the memory has run deep into the sap and slowed. Beneath the frosted bed the bulbs imagine summer, try to picture their blooms, but quickly returned to frozen stasis. The cat thinks of venturing into our yard, sinks its paws into the…
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A NIGHT AT THE ROSE
Three beers over two hours and, giddy, I want to sing along with the Irish house band in my horribly off key voice, just two choruses of Irish Rover or Four Green Fields. It’s beginning to snow outside and it’s a four-block walk to the Government Center station. I suppose it would sober me up…
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AND TODAY?
He walks with what he considers a swagger. He will gladly stare you in the eye, and you will look away. He prides himself on constancy, knowing you will arrive each day, knowing you will bring nothing in response to his request. He’ll turn his back on you and ignore you once again. Then he…
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ON ROMULUS
For years all I wanted was a working familial cloaking device. The kind the Romulans had in the early days of Star Fleet. It was easy to feel overwhelmed amid them, teaming together for holidays, reunions. I never could, I never did disappear though she felt my sometime silence oppressive. Now that I am part…
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an old writer and his words 