In Vancouver, spring has truly sprung. On the street where I live, there are miniature cyclones of cherry blossoms whirling around on the sidewalk. The apple and pear trees in the backyard look as though they are slowly gearing themselves up to provide a bounteous harvest this year. As I write this at the inhumanly… Read more »
Here is the boogey-man when you’re six. He hides in the shadows of your bedroom. He awakens at the sound of your parents yelling at each other downstairs. He has wild hair, matted with blood, and several rows of sharp, gleaming teeth. He has open sores, and a taste for fresh blood and flesh. The… Read more »
VOICE WRITING CONTEST – 2006 NON FICTION CATEGORY FIRST PLACE WINNER! Reinventing Who We Are: Human Beings and Our Place in the World Here are some things that my daughter has taught me so far during this school year: ants never sleep; flamingos turn from white to pink because of the beta carotene content of… Read more »
Take a six-inch by six-inch square cutting from the black coat of a scarecrow at midnight during the dark of the moon when the corn is high. (For this, you will need to sneak out of your bedroom window with your son’s Swiss Army knife tucked into the pocket of your jeans.) For one month,… Read more »
There is a girl who grows up with five brothers and sisters in a one bedroom apartment in a dangerous part of town. The fields and forests of her ancestors are now paved over with mile after mile of grey asphalt. The alleys are littered with broken bottles. In high school, she studies the words… Read more »
In the middle of the night, when he’s trying to sleep, he hears the binners in the alley below the bedroom window of his townhouse. They’re yelling and laughing. They’re sorting their bottles and cans, spreading them out on the ground in a corner of the gravel lane just beyond the security fence. When he… Read more »
Once upon a time, when I was nine years old, there was the abandoned building lot, the wasteland, that used to be the exhibition grounds. It was filled with rusted metal hooks, bags of maggot-infested garbage, a broken fridge, a television set with its screen smashed in, and rotten, rain-soaked armchairs. It was surrounded by… Read more »
The new Pink Panther film, with Steve Martin portraying the buffoonish Inspector Jacques Clouseau of the Surete, is one Hollywood remake that I will definitely not be going to see. I cannot imagine any actor other than Peter Sellers filling the stumbling shoes of the inept central character. I have no illusions, by the way,… Read more »
Laughter not time destroyed my voice And put that crack in it – W.B. Yeats, The Friends of His Youth I have an old man’s knees and his crooked wrinkled hands. When the rains approach, my joints begin to ache. I find myself complaining about all the minor physical ailments, just as I remember the… Read more »
Be my fugu chef, my chief of staff. Be my Druid priestess, my crime scene specialist. Be my evil genius in torn black stockings, my comic opera heroine, my seventeen function wristwatch. Be my Sasquatch. Be an undercover reporter, the one who discovers my hidden super-powers. Be my Hound of the Baskervilles, howling on the… Read more »