by Larry Habegger Do you remember your first time? Sometimes the simplest thing can shake you loose from your moorings and show you the world again through fresh eyes. I was daydreaming at 30,000 feet above the Pacific with Pachelbel’s Canon in D wafting through my headphones when we ruffled through light turbulence. I looked […]
by Joshua Berman The pre-dawn sky is as dark and sparkling as it was when we ducked into the mosquito net, only a few hours ago. The last of the goat hadn’t been eaten until after midnight, and the party broke up soon after that. Now Tay and I are barely awake, awash in candle […]
by Michele Bergstrom Fog. Like delicate tatting, it weaves silver filigree between white birches and gnarled cedar roots, coating with the tiniest of drops the spider webs and orange-and-pink woods orchids along its soft path. It makes no sound but all things are aware it has arrived. Floating wild and unpredictable in Lake Superior mists […]
A friend flew from San Francisco to Panama last week and reported that his flight arrived late in LA, causing him to rush through the terminal and out to the shuttle at LAX worried he’d miss his connection. The shuttle bus took forever to circle the grounds and delivered him to the terminal for his […]
by Matthew Link When we were out at sea on Bungo Rye, we kids always wanted to jump into the crystal Pacific when it was calm. Dad would haul out the sea anchor: the big round canvas tarp connected by a ring of ropes like a parachute connected to the boat. Its drag would stop […]
by Jessica Kerry There were three shocking things about the Israel Defense Forces I kept running into with my parents and sister during our stay in Jerusalem. The first was the simple fact of seeing them in the first place. There were young troops everywhere, from the Israel Museum, to the Old City, to Yad […]
by Jann Huizenga The best thing about my short-term rental in Ragusa, Sicily is that it comes with a cleaning woman. Lucia arrives every Monday morning sporting a strand of pearls, heels, and a pencil skirt. She doesn’t shed any of them, neither while mopping the stone floors nor while scouring the bidet. I work […]
by Mei-Ling McNamara “What motivated such people to do their deplorable work? Anger? Certainly. But also the longing for order, a desire to turn the human world into an inorganic one, where everything would function perfectly and work on schedule. The longing for order is at the same time a longing for death, because life […]
by Jim Benning It’s Friday night in a small Tijuana arena, the kind of rickety Mexican structure that can make you misty for American building-and-safety codes, and in the ring before me, masked wrestlers are smacking and flipping and generally abusing one another for my viewing pleasure. Whap! The great Hijo del Santo goes down. […]
by Jann Huizenga On a flawless autumn morning en route to the market that hugs Ecce Homo Church, you round a bend into a narrow lane and come upon a pair of anziani, ancients, engaged in conversation. A shaft of sunlight illuminates them like a klieg light. Canes in hand, they lean into each other, […]
