At the age of 23, Addy Taylor still feels too awkward and half-grown for adult responsibilities. Yet here she is on her first day teaching English at Oceanside High School, and she has already fallen prey to a trick chair that collapses under her, becomes drawn into adolescent dramas not too different from her own young-twenties troubles, and lets the bossy assistant principal inflict on her the role of reviving the school’s long-defunct speech and debate team. [Read More]
Where I Live
Where I live
rivers rise
overwhelm
while rain presses
falling
calling
Be one with us
Be not dry.
[Read More]
After the Wind Rises? (movie review)
When I hear the name Hayao Miyazaki, I think of clouds. Like the kind we see in Cannon Beach on magical evenings after the sun has set, when gold lines our horizon and pink rims giant, puffy pillars. I think of long grass, like on our sand dunes, bending gracefully before mounting winds. And I think of flying images from his films: robots, planes, pig pilots, cat busses, girls on broomsticks, skyscraper-tall gods walking through forests… [Read More]
To Whoever Corrects Current and Previous Addresses (true prose poem)
I have been cursed with a curse! You see, I found the rotten corpse of a horse that presumably floated across the Pacific Ocean from Japan on the beach a few days ago. I took a picture of it’s decomposing skin and pulled 2 teeth from its decrepit mouth (which required much effort to sever the fibrous flesh rooting the teeth to mandible; I had to use a sharp drift-wood-stick to cut the sinewy strands). [Read More]
Multi-Generational Mystery: A Review of Whisper Down the Years by Elia Seely
It’s a blustery night on the largest of the Orkneys, a group of islands far off the northern coast of Scotland. Finn, a reporter from Ireland, plagued by ulcers and a moribund marriage, has taken temporary refuge in this remote agricultural community. Traveling on foot to attend a musical performance, he takes a shortcut through a cemetery and discovers the body of a murder victim… [Read More]
The Value of a Good Story or Feeding the Wolf Within
Wintertime for me has always been a time of introspection and recounting. I grew up in Alaska, in a culture dominated by the traditions, myths and stories of the tribes native to that titanic place. Stories were the textbook and sustenance of many long winters for me. Oral traditions from all over the world are rooted in histories so long that they cannot be mapped.
[Read More]
Slow Food for Thought
In the beginning there was conversation, musings, the exchange of local words. A good story might be gathered in the morning and roasted at fireside talks over many evenings. Words could be risky, we learned, but also nutritious, mind-blowing, and profitable. So people made petroglyphs, cuneiform clay tablets, papyrus scrolls, telegraph cables, CB radios, and smartphones…. [Read More]
Casa de la Paz
Por favor, tres a poniente
Y, camino de la luz.
The whale whisperer would
Like to be taken to
Casa de la Paz.
The ‘Grand Anderson’ Hotel
You’ve heard of hotels where every room offers a different theme, right? Down the coast in Newport, they have one dedicated to great writers. So, with The Grand Budapest Hotel opening, it made me wonder: If Wes Anderson were a hotel, and his movies were rooms, which room would you book?
The Secret Society of Rain: A Review of Walking In Rain by Matt Love
Imagine a secret society devoted to rain, rooted in the rich, sodden soil of the Pacific Northwest. Members recognize one another by the soaked state of their outerwear, hair plastered to glistening foreheads, eyes wild with the prophetic water that they invite to run down their faces. They exchange secret handshakes with slick hands and wrinkled fingertips. They gather in cabins moldering beside rivers, where rain infiltrates through a fallen roof and slides down walls padded with moss. [Read More]
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