Colonial Failures First Hand

The young man stands there hesitant, staring up at the old Jaguar god whose empty eyes have long watched over this strange cafe by the train tracks.  Much of the free wall mural is now covered up with red and tan checkered boxes.  Black hat tilted to the side, the young man is moving slow, [...]

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To the Gates of Hell and Back, Part I

The wind began to blow on Sunday. The sky was gray and and the air held a vague hint of rain for the first time in months. Whistling down the asphalt caked streets and scrubbing away at anything colorful or alive on this February morning, the wind found its way into the house, scaring the cats and presenting to me the ghosts of everything I had sought this winter to forget.

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More than the absence of heat

The coffee shop is bundled up close and crowded against the gray of the sky. Cutting through my wool sweater drafts sneak past weather-stripped window panes, rather amused at our illusions of shelter. Drowned in burnt brown swill, caffeine invades my blood, welcome as a gleeful daemon summoned in the rash of youth and occult [...]

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Cheap wine and long sleeves

Winter has returned with razor sharp teeth. As the sun sets all the warmth bleeds out with the reds and oranges sinking westward. The full Moon seems over due, though she’ll arrive on time as always. The little dead oak tree out front is a black jagged sketch over blue shadows. A pot of orange [...]

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“Weak and frivolous by nature…”

A flat tire at half past midnight only a block from crossing Indiana Ave., and another ten minutes from home. Stumbling down the road nearly a mile back to lock up at the coffee shop and sit on the curb in the orange of the sodium street lights until my father arrived. Listening to a [...]

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On Lughnasagh

The Moon was dark last night in a sky stained vaguely orange by sodium light and haze. The promise of monsoon season has been forgotten several weeks now with green plants slowly bleaching and brittling every where under the glare of high summer sun. Green grass and delicate ornamental plants which do not belong in [...]

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Mirrors Everywhere

The moth does not fly into the candle flame and sudden death because it is stupid, or hoping to die.  The moth does so because it is in love with the flame. This is not a state of being which is subject to rules of reason or the basic instincts of self preservation.  It is [...]

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So It Goes

I wish the rain would come back. Or at least the cloud cover. Biking between noon and 7:30 or so in the evening takes on an aspect of danger in the flatlands. What I would give to splash around in a proper creek or pond, to have access to water flowing over the earth unbound [...]

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Ob my darling Clementine…

At night in spring in the city of Austin, frogs croak from shadowed creek beds and fireflies dance green streamers through the mist drifting through the orange street light glow after the rage of an unforeseen thunderstorm. I walk up and and down hills through the shadows and the artificial light, watching the crescent of the Moon lazily drifting westward.

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Sin Fronteras! May Day 2008 in Austin

It was the beating of the drums and the strength of voices screaming in Spanish that seemed to shake the dust of jaded bitterness off of my political sensibilities. My feet were moving and I also was shouting in Spanish with the crowd holding up U. S. and Mexican flags, bilingual banners, and babies.

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