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It is the eve of the new year, and I feel like I am standing on the precipice of a cliff on standing on one leg balancing plates in both hands held out at my sides.  It is a deep chasm, a steep fall, with rocky walls, and floor with jagged stone to mash me from my sudden stop from descent.  New years are about rebirth, about transforming into a better person, day by day, week by week, month by month, until at the end of the year, you are a better person then you were last year.  It is about renewal and cleansing, a shedding of the old, dry dead skin of the old year, no longer useful, but raw, rough, irritating. This is a process I have undergone myself many times, with my weight, with my work, with the clutter in my house. In 2013, I determined to lose about ninety pounds.  To meet that goal, I exercised everyday.  I set my alarm for early the next morning.  I deprived myself of the food I was wont to eating, substituting healthier, more nutritious foods...

I am not a history fan, because as stories go, most of history is messy and complicated.  Whereas fiction can be bent and manipulated, like casting spells.  Fiction can be perfected, honed.  It lends itself to beats and rhythm, crescendos, and releases.  History on the other hand is not so malleable.  It is like stone.  An artist can only chisel away details to show the statue underneath, but, after all the effort, history still is just what it is, a large sculpted rock. My dislike of history is so strong that I eschew even historical fiction, which although a fiction, still relies on certain unmovable details and facts which the author cannot eliminate or change but somehow incorporate into the work as a whole.  I purchased the first issue of Rasputin realizing that it was historical, the main subject being that mystical creature of Russian myth, large, dark, black-bearded, whose powers lie in the dark realms, and, upon whom a myriad of evil acts a...

I have to admit, outside of a few exceptions, people who create for merely shock value do not impress, especially when the shocking expression is void of any real substance or meaning. I am not overly impressed with Lady Gaga’s stunts. I never particularly bought into Andres Serrano or Robert Maplethorpe. Although I find Gwar humorous and a really interesting show, I never was tempted to become a devoted fan. Some shocking so-called art irritates me, not because it offends me, but because it is vacant of really any substance or meaning, that its shole raison d’être is its shock and the inherent commercial appeal arising from the controversy. I will never enjoy a Katy Perry song after hearing her “I Kissed a Girl,” a song trivializing the sexual confusion some teens suffer through as they develop into adults. I think it is especially ironic that Perry had formally sought success as a “Christian” recording artist but had failed. So when I first listened to the Vaccines song “Post Break U...

If I were asked what kind of weather I preferred, I would have to reply the cold, drizzly winter’s day. The Rio Grande Valley does not have many such days.  Usually, the sun burns hot in the sky year round, basking everything in such bright light that anything exposed to its rays seems to pale and bleach.  The unforgiving sun removes the dye from billboard signs and cars.  It evaporates the wet greenness from grass and vegetation, leaving behind a dry yellow and brown.  It burns the skin to dark brown.  It leaves deposits of salt and other minerals after pulling out the body’s juices. Simply, the cold, grey day is mythological event, a setting only existing in far away places such as Seattle or London, which may as well be Neverland.  When the occasional grey, misty day does present itself, I relish it.  I celebrate it, decorating myself and my house in the necessary and customary adornments.  My wife retrieves the thick white feather comforte...

“Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as as his partner.’  So out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name.  The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field; but for the man there was not found a helper as his partner.” Genesis 2:18-20 About a week and a half ago, I was walking from the parking lot where I park my car and began walking to my office.  The walk measures approximately a block and half and requires utilizing three separate crosswalks, two of which have pedestrian lights.  The office poses a barrier to a main thoroughfare through the town, and the developers diverted the roads around the building in a large square.  As a result, many cars speed around that square to get to ...

Before he leaves, he lays out a pair of dark socks on the manufactured quilt, not one made by a long-since-deceased relative, whose tales are recounted occasionally, a thread in the American fabric, which is connected to this family. No it was one of those quilts that had been packaged in an noxious plastic container, a plastic zipper surrounding its side, so that the quilt could be returned, and stored away. She wondered the sense in storing the quilt in the toxic container. Certainly, over time the plastic would break down, grow dried out, yellow, and stain the quilt, given it the same yellowed color, like urine. And when they retrieved the quilt when a guest came to stay with them, like her cousins, would the stain be discovered once the quilt was unfolded, and what thoughts might the guest have. The socks were laid upon the bed with exactitude, with purpose, one on top of the other, crossed. He had laid them there for her. She knew that without having talked with him. It was a ki...

I think crossover events in comic books are a lot like buying an expensive item. I recently purchased the new Samsung Galaxy Nook. I had purchased Nooks prior to purchasing the new one, starting with the Original Nook with had a electronic ink reading screen which made it easier on the eyes to read but really wasn’t very useful for reading magazines with images or trolling the net. And then I purchased the Color Nook, which solved those capabilities, but had a very limited number of Google apps, even though the machine was based on the Android operating system, and then the Nook HD, which was lighter and, more importantly, had access to Google apps, not just Nook apps. So I expected miracles with the Samsung Galaxy Nook. I had bought myself the Galaxy Note 10.1 when it first came out, which I have loved even though subsequent models have come out, so much so that I have not considered rooting the device and installing a custom rom on it as is customary for older devices. But the Samsu...

Like most schools that I attended, students were often grouped by interests that they shared. In high school, populations of students accumulate around extracurricular activities. Band members grouped together with other band players. The newspaper/yearbook students all collected together usually in the journalism teacher’s room. Even our debate team found a cohesiveness. College presented a more organized version of populations in which students were gathered by various majors and minors. In high school and later on in college, I found it very difficult to find a wolf pack which I felt kinship towards, though I spent a little bit of team in each of the above groups. An aspect of my personality always ran ragged against the group’s tenants. For example, I disliked marching instead only wanting to play the music itself. I never had focus enough to do anything meaningful in journalism though I managed through out a couple of articles with photographs which went into the school paper. The...

Yesterday, I was perusing an idea for a story, this image of a rag and bone woman, an idea, which like the woman at its core, cunningly refuses to fully reveal itself. The only truly distinct image I visualize is the image of the witch from the movie, the Dark Crystal, an ugly old hag, with rams horns hidden underneath a bird ’s nest of hair, a wrinkled old, gray face, thick lips turned down in a frown, and a set of dark eyes, one open, the other closed, as if she were perpetually in painful thought. The song “Rag and Bone” by the White Stripes gave rise to the idea, a metaphor waiting to be explored, I thought. The image of persons who sought out items of personalty to collect when no one else wanted them appealed to me, essentially rag and bone men and women. The song exemplifies the soulful jaunt that has come to characterize the White Stripes, a simple guitar rift over which Jack White and his eager sidekick, Meg, speak rather than sing, a kind of rhythmic kind of cadence, wavering...

Dante’s K-car, a rental provided to him by the company, slows to a stop, a popping rising from underneath the tires as it rolls over rocks, a persistent hissing pressing out from under its hood, a greyish cloud seeping from the hood’s seams. Dante, standing next to the over-heated automobile, could smell what he assumed was a mixture of rubber and auto fluid wandering through his nose, a fine perspiration dotting his forehead and pooling underneath his eyes. Dust spreads across the South Texas town in large wisps, a searing hush twisting in devilish whirls, brushing past Dante’s ears, finding hollow, empty spaces echoing the ghostly voices of dead aliens who penetrated the border, only to find their mortal body could not outrun the need for hydration. Dante surveyed the area for any signs of life. The town bears the appellation of a Spanish namesake, an inheritance of from a saint, transformed from the English, made holy by adding the word “san” in front of it, something like San Migue...

I. The four parts of my heart thrum a rhythm against the sheath of ice, gripping their cavities, and, in concert, slide through the space where the rib I gave you used to be, leaving a ticklish sensation as they squeeze through. They abandon a residue  of slow sadness and frenetic anxiousness in the emptiness.  II. My brain. A haze presses upon its folds, exhausts the optic nerve, leaves a rawness behind my eyelids, leaves a soreness where the sclera meets the skull, and draws the eyes wide and weepy, dispatches pieces of static across my scalp and out the hair follicles. III. My limbs, like heavy branches grasp, fumble with  the fruits of your sorrow, weighted by a frigid numbness. Gravity drags on weakened joints, until the connective tissue snap, riving arteries and veins, disengaging bone from bone, permitting my arms and legs to disown the thickness of my trunk. IV. I am no longer a whol...

Valentin had one hand on the handle of the mailbox on the corner Morning Dove Lane and Evening Sun Avenue, a lone blue metal box, with a domed top, a white eagle flying in from the left, a dynamic profile, fast, efficient. Not as efficient or fast as an email. Not as fast or efficient as a text message. Not as fast or efficient as just speaking directly to his wife, in the morning, after his morning run, after a hot shower, over a hot bowl of apple cinnamon oatmeal, heated up in a microwave with a bit of milk, and flavored with pieces of fruit, raspberries, blackberries, or strawberries, whatever hadn’t spoiled in the refrigerator as a result of not being consumed quickly enough. Valentin thought about that fruit, about how frustrating it was that no matter how quickly he tried to consume the berries, the bananas, some of it managed to go bad. The berries softened, turned dark, deflated, and then grew moldy. The bananas grew dark brown spots like skin cancer across the skin. He pinches...

I feel the blood puddle at my feet, feel the wetness seep up into my sandals, the thick stickiness finding its way between my toes. A hot storm roils in my stomach while a sharp pressure in the back of my head causes everything in my view to start to turn a fuzzy steel grey. The contents of my stomach would have fled my stomach had I not kept them down by swallowing with large gulps. However, my throat burns with the fierceness of hot coals. The body lays at our feet, all of our feet. I cannot give myself permission to call him by his name because he is no longer here. Whatever he was, that part of him has escaped the mortal form and gone on to something better, leaving us to figure out how to deal with the fallout of it all. Igor says something I didn’t catch, the blood pumping too much in my ears, like waves of guilt. I was a good girl. I am a good girl, or so I keep telling myself. Maybe I should have followed the example of Karen, who was strong enough to know when enough was enou...