Dreamers Rise

I got a chance to see Freedy Johnston live the other night. I had seen him once earlier, playing with his longtime lead guitarist Cameron G...

Whatever things this notebook may be, at various times, and despite the title, it certainly is not a dream journal, an undertaking that wou...

I was outside the other evening watching dragonflies in the back yard. There seemed to be about a half a dozen of them, though it was hard t...

A bullfrog hops out from under a hedge, croaking loudly. A few feet away, another emerges and begins to sound off in turn. A third frog — th...

How many a year has passed and gone, And many a gamble has been lost and won, And many a road taken by many a friend, And each one I've ...

It is absolutely necessary, for the peace and safety of mankind, that some of earth's dark, dead corners and unplumbed depths be let alo...

He sits alone at the table with his notebook closed in front of him, now and then sipping the coffee from a paper cup. It's a Friday nig...

I'm not quite halfway through re-reading Cortázar's Rayuela and my copy is now in three pieces and threatening to disintegrate enti...

For the uninitiated, the above is the opening phrase of Chapter 73 of Gregory Rabassa's translation of Julio Cortázar's Rayuela (Ho...

When I was a kid there was a low-lying vacant lot across from our house, mucky and smelling of skunk cabbage in the spring, and if you turne...

Update 2014: the discussion below is now very much out-of-date, but I'll leave it up in case it's of use to anyone. Julio Cortázar...

As far as I can recall, it's been at least twenty years — maybe more like twenty-five — since I last read Cortázar's Rayuela (Hopsc...

(A synopsis of a story, perhaps a screenplay) The setting: Northern Europe; a small island community on the edge of the sea; sometime before...

There’s a new eatery in town, a kind of delicatessen / restaurant specializing in chicken, and we went in to check it out. While we were eat...

Thanks to a correspondent from Italy who contacted Andy Irvine, I now have the Macedonian lyrics and an English paraphrase for "Mechkin...

Here are some of the names of the ancient megaliths scattered through the countryside of England and Wales: The Pipers; The Hurlers; The Mer...

Yesterday I revisited William Cronon's ecological history of New England, Changes in the Land, and — borrowing some additional ideas fr...

Looking out of my window, and over the rusty or — now — snow-covered roofs of the warehouses that are the closest buildings to our office, t...

What song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, though puzzling questions, are not beyond all conj...