Andrew
So I write books about fish and papers about the Bible and columns about the Mavericks. To me, this represents a perfect circle, but that probably bears explaining. There’s nothing unnatural about doing the things you like doing. You can’t be unnatural to yourself. Your interests are related because you’re interested in all of them, [...]
Why Are Republicans Winning the Arguments with Republican Voters?
Why Are Republicans Winning the Arguments? This is not, incidentally, the same as “Why are the Republicans getting what they want in Congress for which the answer is “Congress’s rules”, which some people want to change, and which I’m not going to weigh in on here much at all. Obviously it’s a shame that the [...]
Merlin Rogers is a man keenly, painfully, awake to the reality of horrible decisions. That’s something a lot of people don’t understand. The girl you shouldn’t have married, but she had something you hadn’t seen before and lacking an objective way to determine effective love, you figured you had it about right. The career path [...]
Fintan had been born in what was then Canaan and raised by humans, because in those days he was a human, although he still liked swimming. He and his future wife had bonded over a shared hatred of the god Ba’al. “You hate Ba’al?” He’d said. “Me, too!”. Good enough. Then the flood happened. Fintan [...]
Diomedes
Diomedes could not die and he didn’t, though our feathers graze his dreams Our cry wild and indistinct From deep-voiced Argos we came, wooden strong — We left Argos with our youths in hand Like trinkets for foreign embassy. The unbordered ones, coming to conquer nothing and —- We came to an end. — We [...]
Mid-November
What do we want to be? It’s a phrase that’s hard to write because it seems pretty used up, and can’t have an answer like “doctor”, “scientist” or ” astronaut” any more. We, in our mid to late twenties have made decisions causing a narrowing of our world. Yes, you can always be anything, or [...]
Fintan 2
The whole human story is comprehensible only through what is currently known, because of its cumulative nature. Angus McGillicudy is unaware that he is a descendant of Eoghan MacMurrough, the fifth century Irish king about whom William Butler Yeats once wrote, a few days before his own death “There in the tomb, drops the faint [...]
Fintan 1
Part one: Allegro It was by a series of miracles, not altogether kind, that the fish, Fintan, arrived at the Boston aquarium. As aquariums are, some would say, the perfect place for captive fish, it would not seem to have required miracles, adjectival or not to get him there, but the fact remained that it [...]
The swirl of a thin flounced skirt in motion like the Earth. The delicate line of the trapezius, rolling like a cord (a masculine note in a most feminine body) from the thrown back head, to the ample, muscular bottom, an equator of humming energy. Who knows what a painter’s eyes see? Degas sits in [...]
Oak prows dividing moss-water. The stars above, newly-made. The longboats on their night-time career, thin knives, cutting the darkened waves. This is the Cyclades, long ago. One of the great mysteries of the world. Long before Britain ruled the sea, long even before the Phoenicians, the people of the Cyclades plowed the deeps. They had [...]
Imagine a man. He wears an overcoat and a scarf, and he carries a briefcase. What does he want? He is a Russian spy, and he wants Pentagon secrets. He is an insurance salesman looking a little better so you know he doesn’t sell insurance to the riff-raff. This guy actually provides a valuable service. [...]
Chapter 10
Dr. Katherine nodded. “The third voyage of Odysseus, you say? Well that’s an easy one.” “Is it?” “Yes. There isn’t one.” “Oh.” “But….” She paused, a finger in the air, concentration on her face. “Come to think of it, there should have been, I believe.” Aneirin looked up. She pulled a volume from the wall [...]
Chapter 11
Elizabeth Browning Barrett’s name was a joke that almost nobody had gotten even back on Earth. She was not actually a cook, she was an administrator, a bureaucrat. However, when the cook who the ship had hired, in those heady early days, turned out to be a man who could make a mean soufflé but [...]
Chapter 12
In the snack kitchen, Aneirin ran into the Mcilwane brothers. All three of them, in good spirits as ever. “Hey, Aneirin! Come by for a beer?” He thought that was John, the older one. He nodded and sat down. “Well my friend, have I got a treat for you. My own recipe. The new batch [...]
Chapter 13
He dreamed he was sitting on the prow of the ship, in the middle of space. Sometimes he forgot how beautiful it really was. The silence was terrifying, the unblinking eyes of the stars could drive you mad if you thought about them for long enough, but it was the most incredible sight one could [...]
Chapter 14
The tall shadowed figure waved his hand at the communications room monitor. “Show me another.” A boat is on the shingle, gray, just above the waterline. Hard to see. A longboat. No one in the village put it there. Night is falling. A man peers out his cottage door, then slams it shut. Night is [...]
Chapter 15
Elizabeth counted in her head, at the giant stars roaming outside the port windows. Her cattle of the sun, here before any sun would have risen, on black pastures, and she was counting cups of milk for oatmeal. Never forget, she thought to herself, that there was a long long time where none of this [...]
Chapter 16
The Earth the Argo had left had not been in great shape. The first major upheaval occurred in 2030 when America broke apart. In a way, as a nation increasingly unable to give up or properly tend to all of its priorities, it was a long time coming. The right’s firm belief, since Reagan, in [...]
Do beards matter?
I grew a beard for three weeks and then shaved it off. No one but Robyn commented on its existence or lack of existence, when that latter time had come. There had been beard, where previously there was not, and one day there was not where there had been. The whole experience left me only [...]
The hours blossom into pearls of bizzarity. Look, I spend a lot of time alone. I do, I spend a lot of time sitting, and I’m reading books and looking at dictionaries . When that happens, social interactions are particularly intense. Especially for someone as weird as I am, I gotta, you know, I gotta [...]
You know, all apartments have noises. My own is notable for a certain gurgling that makes it sound like the sink’s about to hurl and an interesting basketball sound coming from the heater. Robyn, on the other hand, lives on the only street in Providence which anyone takes to go anywhere, which often leads to [...]
Ways in which I have recently been cruel
1) Being the person to point out, to the one person at the party(?) who didn’t know anyone else, and who was no doubt nervous, that the “strange-tasting” beer he was drinking was, in fact, a club soda. He saw the Canada thing and figured, Molson’s. 2) Breaking Mario’s heart. My Halloween costume–The kid from [...]
New York
This weekend I headed down south to the land of the pines, but I got a little bit lost and ended up in New York instead. Decided to make the most of it. Got the chance to see Leighton perform “Ruby Sunrise”, in which she was just superlative (can I use that without a noun? [...]
Anna Begins
The first several times I heard this song, I thought it was boring. Most people I make listen to it, and over the years that’s been a lot, think it’s boring. It’s not boring. It’s a play. Don’t give me that need for instant gratification. It’s a 4 minute song. You were going to spend [...]