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NOUS SOMMES ICI
The question, of course, is which is Frankenstein, which his monster a chicken and egg problem that invites debate, denies solution. They say, of course, it is you – We sent you Lafayette, never assuming quelle catastrophe would grow from our gift. Freedom doesn’t make you a God but somehow you never learned that too…
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SLOW STREAM
The river that I imagined, a torrent of words and images is little more than a dry trickle, construction cranes along one shore hauling away half- and ill-formed thoughts, leaving only desire and frustration as a marker of what might have been. I looked at each bend, hidden from sight as harboring that epiphany that…
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ROAD FOOD
In Hawaii I could stare for hours at a Taro field, the bent back of a farmer, and the same a gentle fold of spine I saw from the Shinkansen, Tokyo to Osaka amid the fields of yellow shoots, later rice in some bowl, perhaps even mine, or in Antwerp as the chef patiently picked…
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NICE JOB
It is stall after stall of tomates de Provence, choux wishing to be kale, peches, small and barely containing their juice. Courgettes beckon, pommes de terre call out their aerieal cousins, haricots quietly suggest a citron aussi. Walking along the boulevard a tourist obviously, without bags or cart, I get polite nods that say me…
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ANTWERP
It is seven in the morning Antwerp arises slowing in winter the small bar along seldom used quays of Schelde is almost empty, one old man tottering on his stool swaying to breath head pressed on the counter. Young couple, she brown haired pale white skin against white sweater, he long blond woven into a…
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CHANNELING
I am swimming strongly, easily my strokes powerful, gliding over the waves that seemed to collapse beneath me. The water is surprisingly warm not the frigidity I expected, more like a now tepid tub, but left too long. I can glance up and see the other side and it is approaching rapidly. This will be…
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SNAKE EYES
They roll in, one after the next, after the next, gaps that appear in their rank are soon enough filled. By night you mark them by their red lights, lemmings with no cliff in sight, so they sit one alongside the next in the queue, disgorging their chattering, smiling contents into the vast building, and…
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HELL’S PRISONER
I am pressed into a seat that would conform only to the body of some alien creature, or so it seems, for hours into a flight that increasingly seems eternal, particularly for the baby two rows back, who, like me would much rather be anywhere else. The crew dims the cabin lights the universal indicator…
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DO NOT FORWARD
I thought about sending you a postcard, one with the Riviera in the background or from Vieux Nice, with its teeming life, after all, we did have 30 years together. We never came here, I haven’t been back to the places we went together since they, like so much of what we shared, I left…
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STEPPING IN IT
Over the next few weeks I shall step into more churches than is safe for a formerly Jewish Buddhist, but in Europe it seems no tour is complete without one or more churches, at least one of which will be the most beautiful cathedral in all of [choose any country you wish and inserted here.]…
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an old writer and his words 